RAMAYANA AND PERSONAL LIFE

Is the Ramayana, comprising as it does stories from ancient times, practically relevant today? The simple answer is -Yes, it is relevant because the stories, though from an ancient setting, embody timeless values.

From “me” to “we”

One of the primary values that it conveys selfless sacrifice is especially relevant in our present times that are characterized by obsessive selfishness. Contemporary culture largely glamorizes the “me” paradigm, which impels people to seek their personal gratification without caring about its cost for others. When the same inconsiderate individualism causes us to neglect or manipulate the people around us our family members, our neighbors and colleagues, then it boomerangs to wound our heart, afflicting it with emotional ruptures and gnawing loneliness. Thus, the “me” paradigm, despite its instinctive appeal to our ego, is disastrously myopic. If we wish to have more satisfying and sustainable relationships, we need to rise from this myopic “me” paradigm to the holistic “we” paradigm. As this paradigm shift can be challenging, it is helpful, even essential, to have inspiring role models and narratives to draw from. For mining such inspiration, the Ramayana serves as an inexhaustible mother lode; it offers us a panorama of jewel like personalities who embody the spirit of sacrifice in various poignant real-life situations:

1.      The example of Rama’s sacrifice in accepting the sentence of exile despite having committed no fault just to preserve the word of honor of his father, king Dasharatha, points the way to bridging the ever expanding parent-children generation gaps.

2.      The example of Sita’s sacrifice in preferring the dangers of the forest to the security of the palace offers a stirring example of valuing the marital bond that has become much devalued due to an increasingly casual approach to sexuality and matrimony.

3.      The example of Lakshmana’s sacrifice in choosing to stand unflinchingly by the side of his elder brother during the latter’s hour of crisis and thereby gaining a profound mutually enriching bond can serve as an antidote for the superficial relationships that characterize today’s siblings.

4.      The example of Bharata’s sacrifice in resolutely refusing the kingdom meant for Rama can offer a signal lesson for the many succession battles among children that break open after the death of a wealthy parent and sometimes even before the death.

Inspiration, not imitation

At this point, we may object, “If we sacrifice like this in today’s self-centered culture, we will be exploited.” That’s possible and that is why the Ramayana tradition offers the examples of its protagonists not for imitation but for inspiration, not for duplication of the particulars of their sacrifices, but for appreciation of the principle of sacrifice. As our relationships and interactions occur in real life, we need to consider the various contexts and their implications before we decide how to apply the spirit of sacrifice in our lives.

Lest we feel that the spirit of sacrifice is entirely inapplicable today, we need to look no further than popular team sports like cricket or soccer which throws up both jarring incidents when a self-seeking player chases after a personal milestone at the cost of the team’s success and uplifting instances when a sacrificing player puts aside individual glory for the sake of the team’s victory. If sacrifice plays a valuable, even critical, role in a relatively frivolous activity like team-sports, then how much more indispensable will be its role in real life relationships which are also like teams, but teams that last much longer and mean much more to us?

Shades of black

The Ramayana complements these examples of heroic selflessness with examples of tragic selfishness and its unfortunate consequences. Significantly, it demonstrates these ramifications of selfishness through characters with varying shades of blackness:

1.      At the pitch dark end of the spectrum is the epitome of ungodliness, the demon-king Ravana, who due to his selfish lust, commits innumerable atrocities and finally meets his nemesis when his evil eye extends to Sita, the goddess of fortune.

2.      Toward the middle of the spectrum is the monkey-king Vali, who lets him be misled by a hasty and nasty misjudgment about his brother Sugriva’s mentality and so selfishly dispossesses the latter of home, wealth and family, and eventually meets his own end in a heart-rending fratricidal showdown.

3.      At the bright end of the spectrum is the queen Kaikeyi, whose temporary spell of selfishness perverts her from her normal kindness, gentleness and wisdom to an uncharacteristic cruelty, harshness and folly that causes agony to her family members, brings about the anguished death of her husband and subjects her to a lifelong regret for her insane self-obsession.

Thus, the Ramayana by illustrating its caveats about selfishness not just through outright ungodly characters but also through godly persons who succumb temporarily to selfishness inspires all of us to keep up our guard against selfishness and thereby prevent it from sabotaging our relationships.

Redefining the “we”

If this message of sacrifice as a means to deep fulfilling human relationships was all that the Ramayana offered to the world today, then that message in anode itself would be valuable. But the Ramayana’s gifts are much greater and deeper.

The central hero of the Ramayana is not a human being, but the Supreme Being. Rama is an incarnation of the Supreme Lord playing the role of a human being.

So the bonds of all the associates of Rama with him are examples of the human-divine relationship that is far more lasting than the best human-human relationship. All human-human relationships, even if fulfilling, are ultimately distressing due to the inevitability of rupture at death. But the human divine relationship, when understood as a spiritual relationship between the eternal soul and the eternal Supreme, is eternal and eternally fulfilling.

The Supreme Lord possesses fully and forever the six opulence beauty, wisdom, strength, wealth, fame and renunciation whose fractional and fleeting presence in worldly people attracts our heart to them. Lord Krishna indicates that the attractive features that worldly people possess ultimately originate from him when he states in the Bhagavad-gita, “Know that all beautiful, opulent and glorious creations spring from but a spark of my splendor.” Just as the complete fire can provide far greater warmth than a tiny spark, the Supreme Lord can provide far greater warmth of love for our hearts than any worldly person.

In fact, the Lord descends as his various avataras to offer us this supreme warmth and ultimate fulfillment. The Bhagavad-gita indicates that when we understand the true transcendental nature of the Lord’s pastimes the incredible loving exchanges between the Lord and his devotees that comprise their heart, then the desire to have a similar loving relationship gets kindled in our heart and that desire when fully developed helps us attain the Lord’s eternal abode, where we eternally rejoice in love with him.

But developing our relationship with the Lord, like developing any other relationship, requires commitment and sacrifice. If we miss this essential point, then we end up conflating authentic spiritual life with the inanity of ritual religiosity or the “feel-good” sentimentality of new-age spirituality or any other similar form of shallow or shadow spirituality. The Ramayana conveys the necessity and the glory of sacrifice in the service of God through its refreshing portraits of extraordinary and ordinary persons who achieved deep devotional relationships with the Lord by activating their individual spirit of sacrifice.

To summarize, the Ramayana’s perennial relevance lies in its power to inspire us to broaden our consciousness from “me” to “we” and to momentously expand the definition of “we” from the human-human paradigm to the human-divine paradigm.