VibhIshaNa SaraNAgathi and killing of Ravana

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Dear Members,

My Namaskarams to one and all.

It's been an interesting series of posts by learned members of

this group about "vibhIshaNa SaraNAgathi" which is an illustrious

portion of the epic, that elicits the Lord's ready admission to

His Feet for pure and sincere bhaktas.

My view is more in the lines of the posting of Sri Ramakrishnan

Balasubramanian. Pls. read on.

 

A gn~yani knows the Truth, the Truth that Body being material

is `immaterial' and it's the jIvan that "Is". So when the Lord who

is the Ultimate of gn~yanis, in His avatar, punishes a particular so

called `individual', His intention is not to inflict pain on the sthUla

SarIram of that individual entity. He only puts a `period' to the play

of that sthUlam on this earth which would otherwise go on causing damage

to dharma. This act of His doesn't smack of any lack of mercy.

So actually, Lord's mercy comes to be talked and enjoyed about,

only when He grants or not grants His Holy Feet to a jIvan and not

when he chooses to strike or not strike with His Great weapons,

which in my opinion are only symbols of His Omnipotent Nature.

After all, why should we think that the kAruNya rAman did not

show mercy to the asuras like Ravana etal., when he is Omniscient

and is in the know that Ravana is noone but the Mighty Guard of His

Divine Abode who took such abject birth after incurring the sin of

causing apachAram to sanakAdhi munIs. So if He really meant to not

show mercy to Ravana would he not have dumped the jIvan into the

nether lOkAs besides afflicting severe pain to his sthUlam. But he

took Ravana back to parama padham after waiting for one (??) more

samhAram during krishna avathAr abiding by the curse on the jIvan.

This shows that rAma's or krishNa's striking or not striking somebody

won't mean He didn't show mercy etc., because He never considers the

bodies that He fells as anything more than flesh, blood and bones.

Would it not be a misunderstanding of the essential nature of the

Lord to think otherwise, He being the Supreme gn~yani who preached

and made Arjuna realise that:

"what gets destroyed by your bow is only the bodies which don't

have existence after the soul parts it; but know that, that which

pervades these bodies and all, that jIvA, is eternal and cannot

be destroyed...."

 

In this light of thoughts, can we still continue to think that

rAmA intended to punish the asurAs by striking their bodies by

his kOdhandam and didn't possess mercy in doing so?!

 

In this same line of discussion, one more thing could be thought of:

We call this event as "gajEndra mOksham". This is because we don't

think that the Lord saved the elephant only from the physical pains

of getting horribly bitten by the reptile but saved from the earthly

ills and granted it mOksham.

So Lord's mercy is aptly talked about and enjoyed only in terms

of His granting mOksham to a jIvan.

 

adiyEn,

chandrasekaran.