642
Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam
[Canto 1, Ch. 12]
him, Rāvaṇa became so powerful that he wanted to challenge the authority of Lord Rāma. Of course, Rāvaṇa was never helped by Lord Śiva when he fought with Rāma, the Supreme Personality of Godhead and the Lord of Lord Śiva. To Bhaumāsura, Lord Śiva awarded a benediction which is not only awkward but also disturbing. Bhaumāsura became empowered, by the grace of Lord Śiva, to vanish anyone's head simply by touching it. Although this was awarded by Lord Śiva, the cunning fellow wanted to make an experiment of the power by touching the head of Lord Śiva. Thus the lord had to take shelter of Viṣṇu to save himself from trouble, and the Lord Viṣṇu, by His illusory potency, asked the Bhaumāsura to make an experiment with his own head, and the fellow did it and was finished himself, and so the world was saved from all sorts of trouble by such a cunning beggar of the demigods. But the excellent point is that Lord Śiva never denies anyone any sort of gift. He is therefore the most generous, although sometimes some kind of mistake is made.
Ramā means the goddess of fortune. And her shelter is Lord Viṣṇu. Lord Viṣṇu is the maintainer of all living beings. There are innumerable living beings, not only on the surface of this planet but also in all other hundreds of thousands of planets, and all of them are provided with all necessities of life for the progressive march towards the end of self-realization, but on the path of sense gratification they are put into difficulty by the agency of  māyā , the illusory energy, and so travel the path of a false plan of economic development. Such economic development is never successful because it is illusory. These men are always after the mercy of the illusory goddess of fortune, but they do not know that the goddess of fortune can live only under the protection of Viṣṇu. Without Viṣṇu, the goddess of fortune is an illusion. We should therefore seek the protection of Viṣṇu instead of directly seeking the protection of the goddess of fortune. Only Viṣṇu and the devotees of Viṣṇu can give protection to all, and because Mahārāja Parīkṣit was himself protected by Viṣṇu, it was quite possible for him to give complete protection to all who wanted to live under his rule.
TEXT 24
सर्वसद्गुणमाहात्म्ये एष कृष्णमनुव्रतः । रन्तिदेव इवोदारो ययातिरिव धार्मिकः ॥२४॥
sarva-sadguṇa-māhātmye eṣa kṛṣṇam anuvrataḥ rantideva ivodāro yayātir iva dhārmikaḥ