Nirjala Ekadasi 2186

King Yudhishthira asked Sri Krishna about the Ekadashi of the bright half of Jyeshtha. Sri Krishna said, "Vyasa, the pious son of Satyavati, who knows the essence of all the scriptures and has mastered the Vedas and the Upanishads, will tell you about it."

So Yudhishthira turned to Vyasa. "I have heard the duties taught by Manu and by Vasishtha," he said. "Now tell me the duties of the devotees of Vishnu."

Vyasa said, "The duties taught by Manu and Vasishtha cannot be kept in the age of Kali. But the Ekadashi vow is the essence of the Puranas. It is easy, it costs little money and little effort, and it gives great fruit. Even sinners and those of wicked conduct reach the Lord if they do not eat on Ekadashi."

When mighty armed Bhima heard this, he trembled like a leaf of the ashvattha tree. He bowed to his teacher and said, "Grandsire, listen to me. Yudhishthira and Kunti, Draupadi and Arjuna, Nakula and Sahadeva all keep this vow and never eat on Ekadashi. They always tell me, 'Bhima, do not eat.' I tell them that hunger is very hard for me to bear. I will give gifts and I will worship Vishnu."

Vyasa said, "If you wish for heaven, and if you think hell is painful, then you should not eat on the Ekadashi of either fortnight."

Bhima replied, "Grandsire, I cannot get through even on one meal a day, so how can I fast? The fire called Vrika lives always in my belly, and it is put out only when I eat many times. I cannot keep even a single fast. Choose one vow for me, and tell me that by which I may reach heaven. That one I will keep properly."

Vyasa told him of this one Ekadashi of the bright half of Jyeshtha, to be kept without taking even water. By it, he said, one gains the fruit of all the Ekadashis of the whole year. "Keshava, who holds the conch, the discus and the mace, told me Himself: 'Leaving all else, a man should seek refuge in Me alone.'"

Vyasa said that the fearful dark messengers of Yama, with their staffs and nooses, never come near one who keeps it. Instead the gentle messengers of Vishnu, dressed in yellow and holding discs, swift as the mind, carry him at death to the city of Vishnu. Sins as large as Mount Meru and Mount Mandara are burnt to ash by its power. Those who keep it with calm and devotion take a hundred generations of their family, past and future, with them to the abode of Vishnu. Both the one who hears this story with devotion and the one who tells it go to heaven, and hearing it brings the fruit of a shraddha offered at Kurukshetra during an eclipse of the sun.

From that time Bhima kept this Ekadashi, and the day after it became known in the world as Pandava Dvadashi.