In the previous episode we witnessed the major purposes of Bhagawan’s incarnations on this world – To protect righteous people, to destroy the evil and to restore Dharma (Righteousness) in this world. Today we shall see the importance of Lord Rama’s incarnation. Why was He born? What was the main agenda of his incarnation? Let’s see one by one.
Lord Rama’s main purpose of life was to establish the Dharma that a son should listen to and obey his father’s words. In general, we can say that a person should at any cost, obey his/her elders. It maybe a mother and a son/daughter, a father and a son/daughter, a guru (teacher) and a sishya (student), an elder brother and a younger brother, etc. In this context, I remember the “Aathichudi” in Tamil, composed by the very famous poet “Avvayyaar”. She says the following:
“Thandai sol mikka mandiram illai!! Thaaiyin sirandha kovilum illai!!”
She says that there’s no other “Manthra” that is more powerful than the words of a father and there’s no other temple (place of worship) that’s equivalent to that of a mother. Here we can see the importance that is given in our ancient scriptures with respect to our parents. Hence, this is a big message for all of us – Come what may, we should obey and respect the words of our parents and it’s our bound duty to make them happy!
This is exactly what we see in the Ramayana too – Lord Rama’s life is an example to all of us as to how to respect our parents’ words. We’re now talking about the “Threta Youga” wherein Bhagawan had a fear that this Dharma wasn’t practiced properly in the world and he wanted to incarnate and restore this!! If this was the state during the “Threta Yuga”, we cannot even imagine the state of affairs in our present-day “Kali Yuga” – Are we following this Dharma that we should obey the words of our elders? It’s time for us now to introspect within us!! Because, in this Kali yoga, in the modern day we’re exposed so much to an “Individualistic” style of living, wherein we are made to think that we ourselves are the masters of everything and we needn’t pay heed to anybody else!! Hence, by listening and reading through these precious scriptures we should inculcate in us the “Dharma” of obeying elders as much as we can.
Only if we listen to elders at home, this same habit would reflect at the workplace too – Wherein we need to pay heed to feedbacks and suggestions given by our superiors at work. At this juncture, I remember one big advice given to me by my Carnatic Music Guru. She says, “While you perform a concert on a stage, think within yourself that you’re the boss of everything and the audience do not know anything about what you’re singing. Whereas, when you come down the stage, think within yourself that you do not know anything and the audience know everything – This would open up our minds to receive feedback from experts who listened to the concert!!” What an amazing message from an 85-year old woman!! Hence, let’s try to follow this “Dharma” meticulously from now!!
To add further to this discussion, a question may arise in today’s world – Why at all should we listen to the words of our great Maharishis’ (Sages), Alwars, Aacharyaas, etc.? The answer is very simple – They were people who never lived for themselves, but only to spread their high knowledge and experiences to all of us. Had they not done that, how would we get to know about all these scriptures today? Hence, it’s only due to their selfless nature of spreading the Dharma to the future generations of people like us. Moreover, they do not expect anything in return from all of us. That’s the most important characteristic. All what they expect from us is to go through the Shastras again and again and follow them without cross-questioning. This is the greatest form of respect that we can offer to them from our side!
And, it wasn’t easy for all of them to physically write everything with their hands. Those were the times wherein there was not even the concept of a paper and pen! They had to write on palm leaves (Also called “Olaichuvadi”) with a nail. If while writing with the nail, the leaf tears apart, then they had to throw away that torn leaf, take a fresh one and write from the beginning!!
Do we have all this kind of difficulty today? Nowadays we are in the computer age wherein we have spell-checks and grammatical error-checks enabled, so that even if we make a mistake, it gets auto-corrected! All these weren’t there during those days – Of course they didn’t require all these because of their extremely high levels of intelligence. In today’s world we require all these kinds of facilities only because our intelligence levels have shrunken so much!
Hence, it’s with this much of difficulty and challenges that the ancient Maharishis (Sages) have written all these scriptures for us. Now, how did Valmiki Maharishi start to write the Ramayana? What were the series of events that took place? Let’s see in the next episode!
The Indian Dharma 