The meaning of Rama

Rama. The two-syllable name spells worlds of incomparable beauty and truth.

Rama was born on the Navami of waxing moon of Chaitra, the moon rising in the fourth paada of the Punarvasu nakshatra, Jupiter and Moon occupying Cancer, Mars occupying Capricorn, Venus in Pices, and the Sun and Mercury posited in Aries. This is Valmiki's word.

Rama is not only real for us, he is the greatest Reality. Guru Vydhyanatha says that Rama's spiritual sphere is close to the earth, an orange mandala of divine energy.

Rama is fact, fiction, fantasy and philosophy rolled into one...everything that the eyes can see, the mind imagine and the soul divine.

What a resounding impact Rama made! A man like no other, his life, the greatest story ever told to humanity.

If he is just an overblown fiction to pseudo secularists, thatha astu for them.
Apparenty, Rama is the reality that hare-brained realists cannot touch! They cry out that Rama is a mere mortal...brave and self-righteous.....a man who was banished to the forests by his step mother, and lost his wife to another king. And this is the man whom some chaps worship, what fools!

Even when these know-alls consider the life of Rama as a story, they prefer to dwell on details of their own choice.

What about the underpinnings of the story...that Vishnu, in deference to the wishes of the gods, chose to be born as the son of Dasaratha, the king of Ayodhya? Conveniently forgotten. Interpolation or extrapolation perhaps. Rama, by axiom, cannot have been anything worthwhile.

When god was born as man, he chose to tread the earth as man, as a great man with great aspirations great standards and great might no doubt...but as a man...incomplete, unknowing, faltering. How great a concept, how beautiful!

Hindus of course worship Rama in a million images, but they don't claim that he is above all doubt and humanity. They don't make a law of his every act, they don't take out statutes about what is right and wrong from his life. In short, they don't make a burden of his life. In fact, in the manner of Joseph Campbell, they have internalised Rama's life as an ever-living myth, its grand dimensions flowing in and out of their lives for ever. Rama is not a historical character -- though he well might have trod this earth once -- frozen for ever in the chilly arctics of time. Rama has to be a myth, in the best sense of the word, so that Rama is happening for all time. Rama is a not a sepulchre...Rama does not have to rise from his death...he is the ever living reality for whoever will see....Rama is happening today, the day of his birth millenias before, and will keep on happening...because he is endless.

If Rama was a passing earthling, how come the Tiruvaiyyaru bard hitched his creative cavalcade to him and rose as a god himself in the pantheon of eternal composers?

If Rama was a blundering mortal, how come Kamban, whom Bharati celebrated as the greatest Tamil of all times, delved into the Rama's life and leapt into the skies as a cloudburst of immense creativity? Bharati held that Kamban was trying to point to infinitude through signs and symbols.

If Rama's story was just a fancy tale and nothing else, how come it has a myriad meanings for millions of people!

I dwell with him and savour the extraordinary human aspects of his personality.

When Rama's stepmother, even after having easily secured an aye for his banishment, goads him into leaving Ayodhya swiftly, he is forced to make a stirring declaration which is almost a slap on her face...

''Who do you think I am? I am not one who greeds for wealth and royalty. Know me to be a rishi, walking the unsullied path of righteousness!''.

When Rama leaves Ayodhya, he salutes the city of his forefathers....honouring it with his respect and reverence. Do we urbanites think for a moment about the city that gives us our life, our dwelling and our world? That we need to give back something to the city that gave us all.

Based on Valmiki's descriptions, Kamban pictures Rama meeting the people of his city with great love and consideration. Wasn't he the Poorvabhaashi, ever the one to take the initiative in conversing with people?

When Rama came to the banks of the Ganges, and sighted Guha, the hunter and leader of boatmen, he alighted from his chariot and walked towards him in warm friendship.

Vibheeshana was unwilling to perform the obsequies of Ravana, but Rama declared that all enmity dies with death. And the phrase that follows is unbelievable...'He is to me now, what he is to you' (A brother).

Can people who fight under cover of darkness and stab in the back understand the nobility of a warrior who even gave the kidnapper of his wife another chance to come back and fight?

Not only Rama, but all those who came within his ambit...his mother Kausalya, his other stepmother Sumitra, his brothers Bharata, Lakshmana and Shatrughna, his friends the boatman Guha, his envoy and adorer Hanuman, his devotee the tribal woman Shabari...all of them are not names and tales and characters floating in our minds...they are living realities...they are our blessings. In the words of Sri Aurobindo, they are the living human images of India's ideals.

As Rajaji said, they not only live in our hearts but also envelop us in their worlds....When the children of India know their Ramayana truly, India will be a great nation in the world. A nation that lives by great ideas and uplifting values.

The life of Rama (as embodied in the Valmiki Ramayana and its variations in the other languages of India) embodes for the Indian imagination, ''its highest and tenderest human ideals of character, making strength and courage and gentleness and purity and fidelity and self sacrifice familiar to it in the suavest and most harmonious forms'' (Sri Aurobindo).


Rama is near to us as a human...Rama is our ideal as a follower of dharma...In these days when fake politics speaks of love and equality and democracy and every man's right and loots people in their own name, Rama's righteousness is a far cry. But it is a stirring word for the likes of the Satyendra Dubeys, Manjunaths and Satish Shettys. In the Rama way, Truth is Supreme.

Let Rama take birth in your heart today...your life will enlarge into fragrant spiritual horizons.
(Posted in blogs, vamananinsight.blogspot.com and vamanan81@wordpress.com on Ram Navami day)

Hinduism's many gods and its one godhead

Question by Vajrakrishna in the mythology section of Absolute Astronomy - 'www.absoluteastronomy.com/discussionpages/reply.'

''I am constantly asked these questions... so I am very curious to know what explanations others may have:

Why did Rama banish Sita because a washerman doubted her faithfulness? What is the lesson for us? Why does a God behave so callously?

Why are the Puranas and Hindu mythology filled with Gods defeating Demons? What practical wisdom or significance does it have for a person's life? There is hardly a sense of ahimsa in such stories - it is dramatically misleading.

What is the lesson of Tara living with Soma (God of the Moon) and refusing to return to her husband Brihaspati (Teacher of the Gods), which leads to war? What symbolism is there in even the Gods behaving as humans do? Who is there to guide the way? How is Brihaspati meant to teach the Gods when he deals with the situation with such lust and attachment?

What is the symbolism of Brahma fornicating with his own daughter Sandhya? What is the lesson for humanity?

I am asked again and again why the Gods are not behaving with compassion and all-knowing wisdom and mostly - a lack of attachment and selfishness - in the mythological stories? Because who would want to pray to Gods who behave so selfishly and lustfully?''
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My answer to the above question in the absoluteastronomy site --

Rama is indeed worshipped as god...but Rama was an avatar of god as a man. So though he showed many great qualities he also had some faults. There are various turns in the Ramayana where Rama became despondent. When a Hindu worships Rama, he worships the divinity through Rama...it is not a frozen deity he is addressing himself to. It is energy flowing into him from the deity...and he too is energising the form of the deity with his consciousness of it.

Indeed as you say, Rama banished Sita. It is a poignant turn in his story. But he did it for setting an example as a king. It is a controversial decision no doubt. In today's libertarian scenario, people in positions of power commit many crimes and manage to get away. But Rama was prepared to himself suffer and also inflict suffering on his dear wife for the sake of the people. If you cannot forgive him for these actions, it is your right..You can choose some other ishtha devata for yourself. If you have to be satisfied with everything in a religion many millenias old to start worshipping and spiritually evolving, you may have to wait for a long long time.

You ask why the puranas are full of the stories of gods defeating demons...perhaps the same reason why film heros keep on gaining victory over villains...and fairy tales end with 'they lived happily forever'.

You see, the various gods of Hinduism, especially the devas and the minor deities, should not be taken as God..but as various divine manifestations that have their strong points and weaknesses... You can pray to them for things they can do for you, but you need not take them to be the omniscient all-pervading almighty!

Violence and anger are part of man, and not only Hindu mythology, but those of other religions too are full of violence.

I am not so well versed in Vedic symbolism and cannot tell you the meaning of Brahma's 'fornication' with his daughter Sandhya? But I can see that the term daughter for Sandhya is itself figurative. And as you say, it is a symbolism...don't be greatly exercised over it.

Hinduism is a vast ocean into which various rivers of devotion, philosophical enquiry and yogic practice flow. The mythological stories are perhaps only ways of clothing some perceived truth. As times change, the original thrust of the meaning is lost.

Look to texts like the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita and Bhagavatham for the compassion and all knowing wisdom that you seek. You may indeed find them there. The truth of the Vedas is that everything that you are searching for is within yourself!

Welcome to a vibrant, vast, immeasurably rich Hinduism

This is my first posting for this blog titled Hinduism Unlimited.

I first thought of naming it ‘My Hinduism’.

But I think Hinduism Unlimited also means the same thing.

‘I’ too am unlimited.

I always felt large, like the ocean and the sky. I walk with Walt Whitman in that sense.

Of course friends brought me down to earth, but I more or less swim in the wide blue skies.

When somebody asked me how old I was (I would rather be asked how young I am), I replied that I am thousands of years old.

I was not trying to be funny or plain impertinent.

I spoke only what I felt.

And I feel the centuries and millennia spinning in my being.

What does all this have to do with Hinduism?

Well, Hinduism is my road map to Unlimitedness.

Hindu sages and savants keep telling us that Sanatana, meaning Eternal, is the actual name of this religion.

And of course we are told times without number, that this is a way of life rather than a mere religion, doctrine or dogma ( a ‘matham’ meaning opinion).

But Hinduism, this hold-all of a hundred thousand ways of transcendence is a beleaguered religion today.

Hinduism may be a way of life for some, but besmirching Hinduism has become a way of life to many others.

And that includes governments, and sadly, our governments. And sadder still, many Hindus as well.

Macaulay’s minutes, which spoke of an English education that would turn Indians against themselves, seem to be extending to eternity.

Just as there are a million ways to live Hinduism, there are manifold ways to malign it.

As a renaissance man standing at the crossroads of a hoary spiritual past and a western and materialistic present, I would like to interpret to myself the genius of my forefathers, sifting out the pith and kernel of their meaning.

I invite all friends to Hinduism’s highpoints…to its celestial fragrances….and to the poignant turns it faced in the past and is facing at present.