You are here: SriPedia - SriRangaSri - Archives - May 2004

SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00029 May 2004

 
May 2004 Indexes ( Date | Thread | Author )
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]


                                   
                     Srimate SrivanSatakopa Sri Vedanta Desika Yatindra 
Mahadesikaya nama:

 

              Man or God?
The world today is full of Godmen. While many are genuine and truly guide their 
followers through the minefield of SamsAra without any expectation of quid pro 
quo, there are many others, who are but pseudo-gurus, adopting Spirituality as 
an occupation, like any other commercial activity. They profess to teach you 
anything from mere deep breathing exercises to how to realise God. While the 
Upanishads prescribe a mere 32 paths for God-realisation, it would appear from 
the statements of these Godmen, that the paths to Liberation can be tailored to 
suit individual tastes, predilections and fancies. While rigorous discipline is 
prescribed by the Scripture for climbing even the very first step on the lofty 
mountain of MOksha, these mystics tell us that it is just a lap ahead, 
reassuring us that we need give up none of our creature comforts for achieving 
this exalted goal. They have too new-fangled notions of Liberation, vis a vis 
those prescribed by the Scriputure.  Funnily, many of them have quite a rigid 
fee structure for their "Professional Services", indicating how altruistic 
their efforts are. If it is a ten-day course of PrANAyAma (which is a part of 
our daily Sandhyavandanam, if only we care to do it properly), the compensation 
expected is around Rs.1000 per head. For the comprehensive course on the 
"Art of Living", much more is charged. How wonderful! To think that at a cost 
of a mere thousand or two, we are able to acquire wisdom which would stand us 
well in this world and also provide us a passport to Paradise! It would appear 
that the essential qualifications for becoming a modern Guru are-sufficient 
anonymity of background, a flowing beard (preferably white), saffron robes 
(silky and shiny), a smattering of Sanskrit but facility in English, with 
ability to quote long and unintelligible scriptural (?) passages at the drop of 
a hat, in and out of context and an endless repertoire of funny stories with a 
"message". And, in all humility, these "Guru"s don't call themselves divine, 
but simply do not protest when their followers ascribe divinity to them.

 

This is not intended to be a tirade against Godmen, but to emphasise that while 
mere Men with feet of clay are trying to act as Gods, there was a God, in fact 
the God of all Gods, who insisted that He was a mere mortal and refused all 
attempts to glorify His divinity. He protested vehemently that He was a man, 
the son of another man, with absolutely nothing special about Him. And He 
prayed to Gods much inferior to Him, for attaining something, which He Himself 
could have achieved in a trice effortlessly, to establish His humanity.

 

After Sri Janaki enters the fire to prove Her chastity, all the exalted deities 
including BrahmA, RudrA, Indra et al assemble at the site, to request Sri Rama 
to accept the unblemished Sita. On the occasion, the Devatas sing the praise of 
Sri Rama in unison, extolling Him as the Supreme Power, the Ultimate. "You are 
indeed the Creator of all the worlds, the most exalted among all deities. You 
are indeed the repository of all wisdom and virtue and it is You who are seen 
constant and unchanging, at the beginning and end of all creation." Here are 
the sweet words of praise from the Devas-

 

"KartA sarvasya lOkasya shrEshttO gnAnavatAm vara:"

"trayANAm hi lOkAnAm Adi karta svayam Prabhu:"

 "antE cha Adou cha lOkAnAm drisyasE tvam Parantapa!"

 

Unmoved by all this adulation by one exalted deity after another, Sri Rama 
stands on the ground, His palms folded in supplication, and tells the 
celestials that He considers Himself to be a mere man, the son of Dasaratha-

"AtmAnam mAnusham manyE, RAmam DasarathAtmajam"

 

It is this attitude of Sri Raghava that endears Him to us all the more. Being 
the Parabrahmam, He could very well have accomplished the avowed mission of 
eliminating Rakshasas, through His mere Will, without having to be born to 
Kousalya after a twelve-month imprisonment in the human womb, trekking all the 
jungle trails behind the heartless VisvAmitra who made the Paramapurusha walk 
mile after mile in dense and inhospitable forests, accepting uncomplainingly a 
fourteen-year exile in the terrifying jungle in lieu of a princely life at 
Ayodhya, cohorting with all manner of people including monkeys and bears, 
stoically bearing the unbearable pain of separation from the Lokamata whom He 
had pledged never to be parted from, having to wage a virulent war against the 
most terrible of Rakshasas for reclaiming His innocent and suffering Consort. 
All these could have been accomplished merely by the Lord deciding that it be 
so-"TatthAstu"-but, instead, He chose to be born among us mortals, to share our 
pain and pleasure, enthralling us with His soulabhyam, souseelyam, and 
innumerable other auspicious attributes.

 

And after doing all this, He meekly tells BrahmA and Rudra, "I consider myself 
a mere man, the son of Dasaratha". In this world of people who are forever 
projecting themselves in a larger-than-life mode, here is an entity who was the 
Supreme Lord, the incomparable and immaculate being beyond contemplation, who 
refuses to put on airs and chooses to adhere absolutely to the character He has 
adopted as a mortal. 

 

BrahmA is so moved by the sight of the Parabhrahmam standing on the ground with 
palms folded in supplication, that he bursts into a lengthy adulation, a 
compilation sweet to the ear and the tongue, which is to be found in the 120th 
Sarga of the Yuddha Kandam.

 

However clear Sri Rama might have been about His role as a man, there appear to 
be contradictions in how He perceived Himself and how others viewed Him. 
Further, some of His acts during the Ramavatara too cast a doubt as to His real 
nature and His insistence on being a human being.

 

In the introductory chapter of Srimad Ramayana, Sri Valmiki's question to Sri 
Narada, which forms the genesis for the great Epic, is worth analysis. Sri 
Valmiki lists sixteen glorious guNAs and seeks to know from Narada as to which 
human being is endowed with all of them. And Sri Valmiki is very specific about 
a Man-"tvam samartthOsi gyAtum Evam vidham naram"-not a God or even a demigod. 
And in reply, Sri Narada too, after deep consideration, indeed finds such a 
human being and tells Valmiki to listen carefully-"MunE! VakshyAmi aham buddhvA 
tai: yuktam shrayatAm narai:"  It is thus very clear from the prologue itself 
that Sri Rama was considered a Man and not a deity, both by the author and his 
interlocutor. 

 

We move next to the arrival of VisvAmitra to demand the services of Sri Rama 
for protection of his yagyam. When Sri Dasarata, concerned at the capability of 
the boy (still in His teens) to confront deadly Rakshasas, is reluctant to send 
the darling of his eye along with the Maharshi, Visvamitra tells the Emperor 
that Sri Rama is no mere human infant and that His true prowess and glory are 
known only to those immersed in penance and austerity like VisvAmitra himself 
and VasishttA-

 

"aham vEdmi mahAtmAnam RAmam satya parAkramam

VasishttOpi mahA tEjA: yE chEmE tapasi shritA:"

 

It is clear here that VisvAmitra has full realisation of Sri Rama's true nature 
as the Supreme Being, capable of annihilating the entire clan of Rakshasas 
singly.

 

Puzzlingly, however, the very same Visvamitra calls Sri Rama a man-a tiger 
among men-when waking him up one morning in the jungle, for the performance of 
adulatory rituals addressed to deities-

 

"KousalyA suprajA Rama! poorvA sandhyA pravartatE

uttishtta nara sArdoola! Kartavyam daivam Ahnikam"

 

Was He only a Model Man, a Model Monarch and a Magnificent specimen of 
humanity, or was He the Parabrahmam personified, we keep asking ourselves while 
perusing the various key events of the Epic. And we find that we are not alone 
in trying to resolve this incongruity, as a senior Acharya, Sri Koorattazhwan, 
devotes quite a few verses to this puzzle, in his "atimAnushtvam".

 

"I ask You, my Lord and do give a straight answer. You said you were a man and 
displayed all the limited wisdom of a Man, in going after the golden deer that 
was MArIchA and later exhibited all the grief and sorrow of an average Man 
separated from His beloved wife, not knowing the whereabouts of Sri Sita and 
beside Yourself with grief at Her loss. I do agree that all these were indeed 
in tune with your assumed role as a man. However, can You explain, being after 
all a human being, how you were able to promise the paradise to JatAyu? You 
told the devoted bird plainly, "gaccha lOkAn anuttamAn" (You will reach the 
coveted worlds above)-how was this possible if You were a mere man?" enquires 
Azhwan of the Lord-

 

"PricchAmi kinchana yathA kila RAhavatvE

MAyA mrigasya vasagO manujatva mougdyAt

SItA viyOga vivasO na cha tat gatigya:

PrAdA: tathA para gatim hi katham khagAya?"

 

"If you were capable of awarding JatAyu's selfless services with a berth in the 
highest of worlds, why then did you roam about the DandakAraNyam, in tears and 
torment, searching for the lost Sita who was hundreds of miles away?" enquires 
Sri Azhwan, posing inconvenient questions to the Paramapurusha. In sum, the 
query is," If you have power enough to promise paradise to a bird, how come you 
didn't know where your own wife was?"  

 

Continues Sri Azhwan-"You showed your matchless prowess by riddling seven tall 
trees, not even in a straight line, with a single potent arrow, let off almost 
playfully from your magnificent bow. When you had such boundless strength, 
courage and prowess, why at all did you seek the assistance of mere monkeys in 
the search for Sita?"

 

"SAlAn hi sapta sagirIn sa rasAtalAnyAn

EkEshu manda javatO nirapatraya: tvam

TEshu Eka vivyathana kinna bibhraNunnam

ShAkA mrigam mrigayasEsma katham sahAyam?"

 

"Oh Lord! You set out in Sri Ramavatara to enact the role of an ideal Man and 
to establish the standards of behaviour for human beings, by your own 
impeccable conduct. This being so, why did You perform superhuman acts like 
building a bridge across the ocean, with the aid of rocks and mountains 
playfully thrown on the water by monkeys?"

 

"MAnushyakam charitam Acharitum pravritta:

dEvAdhikam charitam anga! Kim angyakArshI:

yat sAgarE batha babandhita nAtha! sEthum

shailai: plavangama samingita sampraNunnai:"

 

"When Vibhishana fell at your feet at your camp on the opposite shore of Lanka, 
how did you declare him to be the King of Lanka and perform an impromptu 
coronation, without even ascertaining the strength of enemy forces, with no 
strategy on hand for crossing the waters to Lanka, without any intelligence on 
the relative strengths of the armies? If you were indeed a man, how was it 
possible for you to display such supreme confidence in crowning Vibhishana the 
king of Lanka, with the war being a wide-open affair, with not a single arrow 
fired yet and the battle yet to be won?" enquires Azhwan further-


"abdhim na tErita, na jigyatha rAkshsEndram

 naivAsya jagyitha yathA cha balAbalam tvam

 nissamsaya: sapadi tasya padE abhyashincha:

tasyAnujam katham idam hi VibhIshanamcha?"

 

Sri Rama might have considered Himself to be a man, but we do not agree, nor 
does Azhwan, in view of the numerous "atimAnusha" (superhuman) acts, which He 
adopts during this avatara. He might hide His Paratvam or supremacy behind a 
human façade, but His wisdom, prowess, etc. give Him away every time, whether 
it be the infructuous sharanagati to Samudra rAjA, the transformation of a 
wayside stone into the RishipatnI ahalyA, the single-handed annihilation of 
fourteen thousand rAkshasAs at JanasthAnam, the dispatch of JatAyu and Sabhari 
to exalted worlds and so on. 

 

However, to us devotees, it matters little whether Sri Raghava was a Man or 
God. Each and every act, every little gesture of His, speaks volumes about how 
we should live, speak, act and think. He has endeared Himself to each one of us 
through His glorious conduct and the ideal relationships He forged with not 
only those near and dear, but with absolute strangers too. God or Man, He has 
pervaded every little nook and corner of our hearts, towering head and 
shoulders above Men and Gods alike.

 

Srimate Sri LakshmINrisimha divya paduka sevaka SrivanSAtakopa Sri Narayana 
Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

dasan, sadagopan 

 



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]




------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar.
Now with Pop-Up Blocker. Get it for free!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/L5YrjA/eSIIAA/yQLSAA/VkWolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

 
Yahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SriRangaSri/

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
     SriRangaSri-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
     http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
 


[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index ] [Thread Index ] [Author Index ]
Home Page
http://www.ibiblio.org/sripedia
srirangasri-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
To subscribe to the list