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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Honouring The Ramayan Part 2

by

20130508

�2 Part Two

In this In­di­an her­itage month of May, we pause to cel­e­brate the ar­rival of the first con­tin­gent of In­di­an im­mi­grant labour on May 30, 1845. These ar­rivals were gen­er­al­ly un­let­tered but were versed in In­di­an lan­guages and were able to read quite eas­i­ly the vers­es of Hin­du holy scrip­ture, the Ra­mayan of Saint Tul­si­das. He, him­self was in­spired at a place called Chi­trakoot.

Chi­trakoot means the "Hill of many won­ders" and falls in the north­ern Vin­d­hya range of moun­tains spread over the In­di­an states of Ut­tar Pradesh and Mad­hya Pradesh. It is a holy place in­hab­it­ed by the great sages, abound­ing in mon­keys, bears and var­i­ous oth­er kinds of fau­na and flo­ra.

Tul­si­das who pro­duced the Ra­mayan, is the saint-po­et of Hin­duism and has spo­ken very rev­er­ent­ly of this place. It was here that he had the dar­shan (vi­sion) of his beloved de­ity Lord Ra­ma at the in­ter­ces­sion of Hanu­man­ji.It is de­clared of the Ra­mayan that as long as the moun­tains stand and the rivers flow, so long the Ra­mayan will be re­cit­ed, sung and lis­tened to for the up­lift­ment of all of hu­man­i­ty. The Ra­mayan is ap­pre­ci­at­ed uni­ver­sal­ly and across race, re­li­gion, caste, eth­nic­i­ty and ge­og­ra­phy.

The en­act­ment of the Ra­mayan through Ram­leela drama­ti­sa­tions is one of the grand­est achieve­ments. The phi­los­o­phy, cos­tum­ing, scenery and oth­er el­e­ments of dra­ma con­sti­tute a mag­nif­i­cent por­tray­al of the hu­man sit­u­a­tions and re­ac­tions. It is a learn­ing the­atre.Apart from the mean­ing of this scrip­tur­al text, the work in­cul­cates the lofti­est thoughts and the high­est tra­di­tions known to man. It has al­ways suc­ceed­ed in pro­vid­ing en­light­en­ment to seek­ers and has been an ef­fec­tive so­lu­tion for de­stroy­ing un­hap­pi­ness and mis­for­tunes.

The Ra­mayan is re­plete with hu­man in­ter­est sit­u­a­tions and guides and ad­vis­es on moral and eth­i­cal prin­ci­ples. It tar­gets every sin­gle in­di­vid­ual and has mass ap­peal through its uni­ver­sal and time­less mes­sage.The sa­cred Ra­mayan, above all, in­stills an at­ti­tude of rev­er­ence to God who as­sumed a mor­tal body to live like a com­mon hu­man. In as­sum­ing such a form, Lord Ra­ma is able to en­gage the at­ten­tion of every in­di­vid­ual to lis­ten with ab­sorp­tion, the mes­sages which he de­liv­ers for the up­lift­ment of all mankind.

The Ra­mayan is ac­ces­si­ble and loved in the small­est of vil­lages and the largest of cities. It syn­the­sis­es, fus­es and rec­on­ciles the var­i­ous streams of thoughts and phi­los­o­phy of Hin­duism, and in­te­grates the full spec­trum of val­ues for ap­pre­ci­a­tion in dai­ly life. While the Vedas and Uparishads (ma­jor Hin­du scrip­tures), are large­ly icon­o­clas­tic in study (ashrams and li­braries es­pe­cial­ly), the Ra­mayan and the Bhag­wat Gi­ta are con­sid­ered the two most loved books wor­thy of the high­est re­gard and ven­er­a­tion.

The cen­tral theme of the Ra­mayan is bhak­ti or de­vo­tion. It has in­spired devo­tees to turn their lives to the Lord Ram as con­fir­ma­tion of their very ex­is­tence. It has been taught through dis­cours­es by Lord Shi­va to Moth­er Par­vati, saint Yag­navalkya to Bharadi­va­ja, Kaakb­hushun­dr to Garu­da and Tul­si­das to the mass­es.

Tul­si­das' love for Lord Ra­ma through the Ra­mayan is mir­rored in how Ra­ma took the hu­man form to bring an end to all forms of un­right­eous­ness, to bless the devo­tees, sages, saints, holy cow and oth­ers, as well as to de­liv­er the most pro­found dis­cours­es on all as­pects of hu­man con­duct. The Ra­mayan al­so con­veys the un­der­stand­ing and ap­pre­ci­a­tion that every­one in the world is sub­ject to the va­garies of life but the path­way to free­dom is de­liv­ered through the com­fort­ing mes­sage of de­vo­tion to God.

The Ra­mayan pro­vides for in­ner and out­er il­lu­mi­na­tion. It grants us the wis­dom to dis­crim­i­nate be­tween good and evil, pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive, and the en­tire spec­trum of du­al­i­ties. Prayer to God is the an­ti­dote to tran­scend all du­al­i­ties. The path­way of de­vo­tion is easy and both the let­tered and un­let­tered have equal op­por­tu­ni­ties in at­tain­ing re­al­i­sa­tion through de­vo­tion.

The spir­i­tu­al pow­er of the Ra­mayan val­i­dates and con­firms all the qual­i­ties that are re­quired to con­quer the low­er self. It re­peat­ed­ly points to the dan­gers of pur­suit of greed, in­fat­u­a­tion, ar­ro­gance, lust, ha­tred, jeal­ous­ly and oth­er al­lied neg­a­tive qual­i­ties.

The Ra­mayan en­cour­ages and in­spires self­less ser­vice in every in­di­vid­ual (Nishka­ma Bhak­ti), and teach­es the no­ble son how to suc­ceed over neg­a­tive qual­i­ties and ten­den­cies. Those who seek the wel­fare of oth­ers are guar­an­teed an aus­pi­cious state. Ra­mayan al­lows us to un­der­stand how to tra­verse the ocean of birth and death, while re­mind­ing us that every­one reaps the fruit, good and bad, of his/her ac­tions.

Sri Ra­ma promis­es the devo­tee eter­nal bless­ing in re­turn for com­plete sur­ren­der. He as­sures every in­di­vid­ual that the great­est dis­tress and grief can be ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed if one has the right spir­it to con­front all dif­fi­cul­ties.

The en­dur­ing mes­sages of the Ra­mayan make it one of the great­est trea­sures known to man, and mil­lions the world over have been con­soled by the sooth­ing words and ad­vice. No won­der then, the Ra­mayan is kept in devo­tees' homes, chant­ed by pun­dits and bowed to rev­er­ent­ly by hu­man­i­ty on a dai­ly rou­tine.


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