Narayana
नारायण nārāyaṇaA name of the cosmic person who rests on the serpent Shesha on the waters between cycles of creation, identified with Vishnu.
Where this term appears
- Saguna and Nirguna: Form and the Formless Deities
For him Brahman is personal by its very nature, Vishnu-Narayana possessed of infinite auspicious qualities, and neti neti negates only the divine's defects, never its perfections.
- Who is Vishnu? Deities
Here a second name enters that will fuse permanently with Vishnu: Narayana.
- Āgama and Veda: two revelations Lineages
The special rites of the Pāñcarātra lie beyond the reach of perception and inference; only an omniscient God could have known and instituted them; and the same Nārāyaṇa who gave the Veda gave the Āgama.
- Ishvara, Bhagavan and Brahman: How Hinduism Conceives God Essentials
For him Brahman simply is the personal Lord Narayana, endowed with infinite auspicious qualities, and the Upanishads' talk of a "quality-less" absolute means only that God is free of all bad and limiting qualit…
- The Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās Lineages
…into the Veda: the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa describes the primordial Puruṣa Nārāyaṇa performing a pañcarātra , a five-day sacrifice, and by it surpassing all beings and becoming everything.
- The Twelve Jyotirlingas Temples
The Shiva Purana version is austere: the sages Nara and Narayana, forms of Vishnu, performed long austerities worshipping an earthen linga, and Shiva, pleased, manifested at Kedara as a jyotirlinga "for the wel…
- The Vishnu Sahasranama Worship
Narayana is the one whose resting place is the waters, or the one who is the refuge of all who move.
- What are the Āgamas and Tantras? Lineages
Where Vishnu or Narayana reveals, it is called a Saṃhitā , "a collection," and the stream is Vaiṣṇava, its corpus known as the Pāñcarātra .