Rama Ultimate Truth or Myth

Description

Rama Ultimate Truth or Myth

CONTENTS

• Foreword
• About the Author : Maharajshri: An Emblem of Sri Ramcharitmanas

1. Absolute History, Eternal Faith ?
2. The Strength to Live the Ideal
3. Quenching the Thirst of the Soul
4. The Court That Still Convenes
5. The Devotee’s Clever Plea
6. Grace for the Fallen
7. The Golden Deer and and the Inner self
8. Sugriva — When Fear Becomes the Path
9. Hanuman— Companion to the obedient God
10. The Living Deity of the Temple

• Publications by Maharaj ShriRamkinkerji
• Book Orders & Contact Information

1

Absolute History, Eternal Faith ?

WHEN WE ENTER DEEPLY into the characters of Shri Ramcharitmanas, a natural question stirs within us: are the figures of the Ramayana historical persons, products of imagination, or beings born of our deep faith ? To this crucial question the Manas gives a most extraordinary answer; and when we look upon its characters from that vantage point, we find them very close to our own hearts.

At one place Goswami Tulsidasji insists that the Ramcharitmanas is pure history. By  this he means that it is not a work of fiction, nor a set of imagined ideals, but a true account of beings who actually took birth in this world. They came into this world, and the events described in the Ramayana truly occurred—at some time, in the past, in this very land. Yet here he adds a word of great importance, a word that places before us the perfect meeting of itihaasa (history) and bhakti (devotion). In the Uttarkand of the Manas he declares :

Kaheun param puneet itihaasa

• Ramcharitmanas, 7/125/1

“What I am narrating is absolute and sacred history.” By joining the words param puneet (absolutely sacred) to the word itihaasa, Tulsidasji confers upon the Manas a rare and singular dignity. For there is a great difference between the outlook of a historian and the vision of a devotee. Read from the purely historical angle, the Ramcharitmanas speaks only of persons who existed at some moment in the past—persons we can no longer behold in the present. Consider the very meaning of the word itihaasa in Sanskrit :

iti — ha — asa

— that is, “thus, indeed, it happened.” So long as we treat the Ramayana merely as history, we suppose that although its characters once lived, they now belong wholly to the past, beyond the reach of our sight. But here Goswamiji adds a new dimension to the story. On the one hand he repeatedly portrays Shree Ram as a historical person; yet even as he does so, he insists that Shree Ram is not merely a man but Ishwar, God Himself. This insistence places the reader of the Manas in a delicate position. Just when we are most absorbed in the unfolding of Shree Ram’s life, Goswamiji quietly reminds us that He is Ishwar. So it is in that episode where Shree Ram laments for Laxmanji and for Sitaji—a scene that melts the hardest heart—at that very moment Lord Shankar is heard saying to Parvatiji :

Uma ek akhand raghurai, 

nar gati bhagat kripal dekhai 

— Ramcharitmanas, 6/60/18

“O Uma, the Lord of the Raghus is one, indivisible and eternal; out of compassion for His devotees He but enacts the ways of a man.” Shree Ram is truly God; He merely performed the life of a human being. To one who reads the Ramayana only as a great work of literature, such a disclosure is unsettling. Absorbed in the drama, the reader is suddenly told that the hero is no ordinary mortal but the Divine in human form—and this revelation seems to interrupt the very enjoyment of the tale.

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