…There was once an ignorant forest dweller who had never had contact with people who lived in towns and villages. One day, as he wandered deeper into the woods to cut down some firewood, he came upon a man meditating. The forest dweller had never seen an apparition such as this. He wondered why this man sat still with his eyes closed. The forest dweller walked round and round the man, wondering what in the world this man was doing. The forest dweller finally sat down and waited, hoping the man would open his eyes. After a long time, when the man looked up from his meditation, the forest dweller asked, ‘What are you doing? Why are sleeping while sitting up?”
The man laughed at the forest dweller’s lack of knowledge and said, “I’m a disciple of the great saint Shankara. I’m not sleeping. I’m meditating on my favorite form of God.”
Innocently, the forest dweller replied, ‘Meditating? Your favorite God? What does that mean?”
“It’s not possible for you to understand.” With this, the man closed his eyes once again.
Every day the forest dweller passed by the meditator and eagerly waited to talk to him. After many meetings, the forest dweller asked, “Who is this God you are looking for?”
“I am contemplating my Lord Narasimha, the lion-man, an incarnation of the great Vishnu,” he said.
The forest dweller became even more puzzled, wondered why the man whom he now referred to as “master” looked for a lion while sitting with his eyes closed. Above all, he couldn’t understand how a half-man half-lion could be God.
As the months passed by, these two became good friends. The forest dweller noticed that his master was getting thin from not eating, and weary from not lying down to sleep. He was worried and became angry with his master’s lion for staying away for so long. All the forest dweller could think about was that the lion’s refusal to come causing his master too much suffering. One day the forest dweller decided he would look for the lion and bring it to his master. But first he would ask permission. The disciple of the great saint once again laughed at his forest-dweller friend’s ignorance. To pacify him, he gave consent for the search.
The forest dweller set out on his journey, looking for the man-lion everywhere- under every bush, in every cave, on every mountaintop, and in every valley. On and on he pursued his quest for his master’s lion. When he had hunted every corner, every inch of the forest without success, he began to call out, “My master’s lion, come here, come here!”
He became so focused on his search for the lion that he felt no hunger or thirst, stopped eating and sleeping, incessantly crying out, “My master’s lion, come here, come here!”
Eventually the forest dweller’s mind became silent, all thoughts disappeared, even the verbal calls stopped. His search had transformed itself into an intense inquiry that had purified his body and mind. All that was left within him was the burning fire of love that soared up into the heavens to the abode of Lord Vishnu. The forest dweller’s meditations had become so powerful that the great Vishnu was compelled to respond. And so it was that the Godof Preservation took the form of Narasimha, the man-lion, and appeared before the simple forest dweller.
Delighted that he had found what his master was looking for, the forest dweller picked a length of vine off a tree, tied it around Narasimha’s neck, and led the man-lion back to where his master meditated. This time, the forest dweller did not wait for his master to open his eyes. He called out, “Master, look, I have found your lion! Open your eyes!”
When Shankara’s disciple came out of his meditation, he could not believe what he saw. He rubbed his eyes and opened them again. As he fed the man-lion a handful of green grass, the forest dweller said to his master, “Come down from your rock. I have your lion. He’s not dangerous!”
The man scrambled down from his meditation seat, prostrated in front of Narasimha, sobbed and cried out for the forgiveness for his vanity and ignorance. The forest dweller was puzzled by his master’s behavior until he heard Narasimha speak: “Stand up, my dear one,” he said to the forest dweller’s master. “Do not feel disappointed. I dwell both within and without. The prideful ego cannot exist where there is real love. And where there is real love, then I can easily enter and dwell.”
Narasimha called the forest dweller to him, placed his hand on his head, and granted him final liberation. The Lord then consoled the devotee of the saint Shankara, told the now genuinely humbled mediator that he, too, would reach that ultimate state during his lifetime