Utpanna Ekadashi

Utpanna Ekadashi falls on Kartak Vad 11 in the Gujarati calendar (Margashirsha Krishna Paksha in the north) — and it is the birthday of Ekadashi herself, which is why its name means 'arisen, born'.

The katha reaches back to Satya-yuga. The asura Mura had overrun the devas and driven Indra from his throne. Shri Vishnu fought him through a long battle and then withdrew to rest in a cave at Badrikashram. Mura crept in to strike the sleeping Lord — and at that moment a radiant devi burst forth from the Lord's own body, fought the asura, and slew him. The Lord, pleased, blessed her: because she arose on the eleventh tithi she would be called Ekadashi; she would be dearest to him among all tithis, the destroyer of sins; and whoever honoured her day with fasting and bhakti would gain his love and his dham.

So every Ekadashi vrat of the year traces back to this one day. Traditionally, one who wishes to take up the Ekadashi vrat begins it from Utpanna.

Utpanna turns the Ekadashi vrat inside out, beautifully. We tend to think of fasting as our effort, our tapasya offered up to Prabhu. This katha says otherwise: Ekadashi is not something we made for the Lord — she came out of the Lord, his own shakti, given to us as a gift. That sits very close to the heart of Pushtimarg, where everything, even our sadhan, is understood as Prabhu's anugraha; pushti means grace, and here the vrat itself is grace embodied.

So the bhav of this day is gratitude. Twice every month, the Lord has left a standing invitation: a whole tithi set apart, in which the world's claims loosen and a day can be spent wholly with him — in seva of Shrinathji, in kirtan, in smaran. On Utpanna the Vaishnav thanks him for the invitation itself. Its phal, the shastras say, is both bhakti and mukti; the devotee's asking is simpler — that no Ekadashi of the year pass by unloved.