1.#Opinion :Tuesday, August 02, 2022. 06:00. 2812. /// Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 8. Swami Krishnananda.

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1.#Opinion :Tuesday, August 02, 2022. 06:00. 2812.

2.#Chapter 6: Similarities between the Ramayanam and Mahabharatam -8.

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The idea behind justice is that a judge is not a human being at that time. He raises his perspective, his vision of things, into a larger dimension of comprehensiveness, wherein he lifts himself up above the personality concept of himself. A judge is not a man or a woman sitting there; he is a judiciary in the sense of a large justice or worthwhileness, which is the welfare of the whole nation. As a person he is physically like any client, but the vision before him is not like the vision of the client. An impersonality is at the back of the vision of the judge, while a personality is at the back of the client, or even the advocates arguing the case.

Similarly, in the epics, the concept of dharma is to be interpreted more from the universal point of view than from merely a particular point of view. Even after reading the Ramayana and the Mahabharata a hundred times, we will not find a good solution to these problems. Even today we have great difficulties. What justice was meted out to Rama? For no fault of his, should he be thrown out because somebody said something? Though it is true that he had to obey the word of his father and reap the consequences even if they were bitter, did he deserve it? Can you mete out undeserved punishment to a person in the name of law and justice or dharma, as the case may be? Even though it may have been right on the part of Rama to obey the word of his father who was, of course, to be respected in every way, Rama had undeserved punishment, which was the point of Lakshmana, to which Rama did not agree; and this disagreement between the viewpoints of Rama and Lakshmana is a point of great social quandary to the interpreters of the Ramayana even today.

Secondly, we have got the encounter of Rama with Vali. I am not taking up that subject here, but it is a question that is raised even today. Why did Rama kill Vali? Did Vali deserve that punishment? What mistake did he commit? Well, he had a little disagreement with his brother, of course, and there was a family feud between Vali and Sugriva, but what did Rama have to do with this matter? Why did he interfere? If it was because of the fact that he had made friendship with Sugriva for the sake of reclaiming Sita, Vali could have also done that work. Vali said, “If that is the reason, I would have done that work for you. In one minute Sita would be here. I would have bundled up Ravana and brought him here. For that sake you killed me, for no fault of mine. What dharma are you practising?” Rama had some answer, but what answer it was, God only knows.

Many other questions also arise. Of the dharmanishta Rama, the greatest of the incarnations of dharma and justice, equal to whom nobody existed in this world, Valmiki says ramo vigrahavan dharmah: “Dharma or justice incarnated itself, as it were, in the personality of Rama.” Such a Rama asked Sita to be brought after the death of Ravana, and the jubilant Sita came. Her joy knew no bounds. But what did Rama tell her? “I have not come for you. You can go wherever you like. I have done my duty.” He told worse words than this. “You can marry Lakshmana or Hanuman if you like.” What does this mean? A dharmanishta who is the incarnation of dharma speaks to Sita, who had no fault on her part. In public, before all people, he said, “Go. Marry Lakshmana or Hanuman.” Well, Sita's heart broke, and what broke, God only knows. And then he banished her for no fault of hers.

These are quandaries not merely in the story that Valmiki depicts before us, but a predicament in which every one of us will find ourselves one day or the other. The difficulty is that the world is a mix-up of values, empirical as well as transcendental. Even today, we are living partly in heaven and partly in hell. That is to say, part of our nature is conditioned by transcendent aspirations. The soul in us is transcendentally asking for freedom in the Universal, whereas the body is pulling us down. We have society, we have hunger and thirst, and we have our occupations whereby we earn our livelihood; we have little conditions which are earthly, physical, social, material, economic, together with the soul asking for liberation from all this turmoil. The quandary of human existence, the conflict between the higher and the lower, the transcendent and the empirical, the Absolute and the relative, is presented here before us in a poignant manner in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, where on the one hand the justice of the Universal speaks in its own language of universality, and on the other hand there is a weakness of human nature which is social, personal, political, economic, and so on.

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To be continued ....

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JAI HIND

JAI BHARATHAM

VANDHE MADHARAM

BHARAT MATHA KI JAI.

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