Man or God

[Guest guest]

Srimate SrivanSatakopa

Sri Vedanta Desika Yatindra Mahadesikaya nama:

 

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yes">                              Man or God?

The world today is

full of Godmen. While many are genuine and truly guide their followers through

the minefield of Samsara without any expectation of quid pro quo, there are

many others, who are but pseudo-gurus, adopting Spirituality as an occupation,

like any other commercial activity. They profess to teach you anything from

mere deep breathing exercises to how to realise God. While the Upanishads

prescribe a mere 32 paths for God-realisation, it would appear from the

statements of these Godmen, that the paths to Liberation can be tailored to

suit individual tastes, predilections and fancies. While rigorous discipline is

prescribed by the Scripture for climbing even the very first step on the lofty

mountain of MOksha, these mystics tell us that it is just a lap ahead,

reassuring us that we need give up none of our creature comforts for achieving

this exalted goal. Funnily, many of them have quite a rigid fee structure for

their “Professional Services”, indicating how altruistic their efforts are. If

it is a ten-day course of PrANAyAma (which is a part of our daily

Sandhyavandanam, if only we care to do it properly), the compensation expected

is around Rs.1000 per head. For the comprehensive course on the

”Art of Living”, much more is charged. How wonderful! To think that at a cost

of a mere thousand or two, we are able to acquire wisdom which would stand us

well in this world and also provide us a passport to Paradise! It would appear

that the essential qualifications for becoming a modern Guru are—sufficient

anonymity of background, a flowing beard (preferably white), saffron robes

(silky and shiny), a smattering of Sanskrit but facility in English, with

ability to quote long and unintelligible scriptural (?) passages at the drop of

a hat, in and out of context and an endless repertoire of funny stories with a

“message”. And, in all humility, these “Guru”s don’t call themselves divine,

but simply do not protest when their followers ascribe divinity to them.

 

This is not intended to

be a tirade against Godmen, but to emphasise that while mere Men with feet of

clay are trying to act as Gods, there was a God, in fact the God of all Gods,

who insisted that He was a mere mortal and refused all attempts to glorify His

divinity. He protested vehemently that He was a man, the son of another man,

with absolutely nothing special about Him. And He prayed to Gods much inferior

to Him, for attaining something, which He Himself could have achieved in a

trice effortlessly, to establish His humanity.

 

After Sri Janaki enters

the fire to prove Her chastity, all the exalted deities including BrahmA,

RudrA, Indra et al assemble at the site, to request Sri Rama to accept the

unblemished Sita. On the occasion, the Devatas sing the praise of Sri Rama in

unison, extolling Him as the Supreme Power, the Ultimate. “You are indeed the

Creator of all the worlds, the most exalted among all deities. You are indeed

the repository of all wisdom and virtue and it is You who are seen constant and

unchanging, at the beginning and end of all creation.” Here are the sweet words

of praise from the Devas—

 

“KartA sarvasya lOkasya

shrEshttO gnAnavatAm vara:”

“trayANAm hi lOkAnAm Adi

karta svayam Prabhu:”

 “antE cha Adou cha lOkAnAm drisyasE tvam

Parantapa!”

 

Unmoved by all this

adulation by one exalted deity after another, Sri Rama stands on the ground,

His palms folded in supplication, and tells the celestials that He considers

Himself to be a mere man, the son of Dasaratha—

“AtmAnam mAnusham manyE,

RAmam DasarathAtmajam”

 

It is this attitude of

Sri Raghava that endears Him to us all the more. Being the Parabrahmam, He

could very well have accomplished the avowed mission of eliminating Rakshasas,

through His mere Will, without having to be born to Kousalya after a

twelve-month imprisonment in the human womb, trekking all the jungle trails

behind the heartless VisvAmitra who made the Paramapurusha walk mile after mile

in dense and inhospitable forests, accepting uncomplainingly a fourteen-year

exile in the terrifying jungle in lieu of a princely life at Ayodhya, cohorting

with all manner of people including monkeys and bears, stoically bearing the

unbearable pain of separation from the Lokamata whom He had pledged never to be

parted from, having to wage a virulent war against the most terrible of

Rakshasas for reclaiming His innocent and suffering Consort. All these could

have been accomplished merely by the Lord deciding that it be so—“TatthAstu”—but,

instead, He chose to be born among us mortals, to share our pain and pleasure,

enthralling us with His soulabhyam, souseelyam, and innumerable other

auspicious attributes.

 

And after doing all this,

He meekly tells BrahmA and Rudra, ”I consider myself a mere man, the son of

Dasaratha”. In this world of people who are forever projecting themselves in a

larger-than-life mode, here is an entity who was the Supreme Lord, the

incomparable and immaculate being beyond contemplation, who refuses to put on airs

and chooses to adhere absolutely to the character He has adopted as a mortal.

 

BrahmA is so moved by the

sight of the Parabhrahmam standing on the ground with palms folded in

supplication, that he bursts into a lengthy adulation, a compilation sweet to the

ear and the tongue, which is to be found in the 120th Sarga of the

Yuddha Kandam.

 

However clear Sri Rama

might have been about His role as a man, there appear to be contradictions in

how He perceived Himself and how others viewed Him. Further, some of His acts

during the Ramavatara too cast a doubt as to His real nature and His insistence

on being a human being.

 

In the introductory

chapter of Srimad Ramayana, Sri Valmiki’s question to Sri Narada, which forms

the genesis for the great Epic, is worth analysis. Sri Valmiki lists sixteen

glorious guNAs and seeks to know from Narada as to which human being is endowed with all of them.

And Sri Valmiki is very specific about a Man—“tvam

samartthOsi gyAtum Evam vidham naram”—not

a God or even a demigod. And in reply, Sri Narada too, after deep

consideration, indeed finds such a human

being and tells Valmiki to listen carefully—“MunE! VakshyAmi aham

buddhvA tai: yuktam shrayatAm narai:”  It is thus very clear from the prologue

itself that Sri Rama was considered a Man and not a deity, both by the author

and his interlocutor.

 

We move next to the

arrival of VisvAmitra to demand the services of Sri Rama for protection of his

yagyam. When Sri Dasarata, concerned at the capability of the boy (still in His

teens) to confront deadly Rakshasas, is reluctant to send the darling of his

eye along with the Maharshi, Visvamitra tells the Emperor that Sri Rama is no

mere human infant and that His true prowess and glory are known only to those

immersed in penance and austerity like VisvAmitra himself and VasishttA—

 

“aham vEdmi mahAtmAnam

RAmam satya parAkramam

VasishttOpi mahA tEjA: yE

chEmE tapasi shritA:”

 

It is clear here that

VisvAmitra has full realisation of Sri Rama’s true nature as the Supreme Being,

capable of annihilating the entire clan of Rakshasas singly.

 

Puzzlingly, however, the

very same Visvamitra calls Sri Rama a man—a

tiger among men—when waking him up

one morning in the jungle, for the performance of adulatory rituals addressed

to deities—

 

“KousalyA suprajA Rama!

poorvA sandhyA pravartatE

uttishtta nara sArdoola! Kartavyam daivam Ahnikam”

 

Was He only a Model Man,

a Model Monarch and a Magnificent specimen of humanity, or was He the

Parabrahmam personified, we keep asking ourselves while perusing the various

key events of the Epic. And we find that we are not alone in trying to resolve

this incongruity, as a senior Acharya, Sri Koorattazhwan, devotes quite a few

verses to this puzzle, in his “atimAnushtvam”.

 

“I ask You, my Lord and

do give a straight answer. You said you were a man and displayed all the

limited wisdom of a Man, in going after the golden deer that was MArIchA and

later exhibited all the grief and sorrow of an average Man separated from His

beloved wife, not knowing the whereabouts of Sri Sita and beside Yourself with

grief at Her loss. I do agree that all these were indeed in tune with your

assumed role as a man. However, can You explain, being after all a human being,

how you were able to promise the paradise to JatAyu? You told the devoted bird

plainly, “gaccha lOkAn anuttamAn” (You will reach the coveted worlds above)—how

was this possible if You were a mere man?” enquires Azhwan of the Lord—

 

“PricchAmi kinchana yathA

kila RAhavatvE

MAyA mrigasya vasagO

manujatva mougdyAt

SItA viyOga vivasO na cha

tat gatigya:

PrAdA: tathA para gatim

hi katham khagAya?”

 

“If you were capable of

awarding JatAyu’s selfless services with a berth in the highest of worlds, why

then did you roam about the DandakAraNyam, in tears and torment, searching for

the lost Sita who was hundreds of miles away?” enquires Sri Azhwan, posing

inconvenient questions to the Paramapurusha. In sum, the query is,” If you have

power enough to promise paradise to a bird, how come you didn’t know where your

own wife was?” 

 

Continues Sri Azhwan—“You

showed your matchless prowess by riddling seven tall trees, not even in a

straight line, with a single potent arrow, let off almost playfully from your

magnificent bow. When you had such boundless strength, courage and prowess, why

at all did you seek the assistance of mere monkeys in the search for Sita?”

 

“SAlAn hi sapta sagirIn

sa rasAtalAnyAn

EkEshu manda javatO

nirapatraya: tvam

TEshu Eka vivyathana

kinna bibhraNunnam

ShAkA mrigam mrigayasEsma

katham sahAyam?”

 

“Oh Lord! You set out in

Sri Ramavatara to enact the role of an ideal Man and to establish the standards

of behaviour for human beings, by your own impeccable conduct. This being so,

why did You perform superhuman acts like building a bridge across the ocean,

with the aid of rocks and mountains playfully thrown on the water by monkeys?”

 

“MAnushyakam charitam

Acharitum pravritta:

dEvAdhikam charitam anga!

Kim angyakArshI:

yat sAgarE batha

babandhita nAtha! sEthum

shailai: plavangama

samingita sampraNunnai:”

 

“When Vibhishana fell at your

feet at your camp on the opposite shore of Lanka, how did you declare him to be

the King of Lanka and perform an impromptu coronation, without even

ascertaining the strength of enemy forces, with no strategy on hand for

crossing the waters to Lanka, without any intelligence on the relative

strengths of the armies? If you were indeed a man, how was it possible for you

to display such supreme confidence in crowning Vibhishana the king of Lanka,

with the war being a wide-open affair, with not a single arrow fired yet and

the battle yet to be won?” enquires Azhwan further—

”abdhim na tErita, na jigyatha rAkshsEndram

 naivAsya jagyitha yathA cha balAbalam tvam

 nissamsaya: sapadi tasya padE abhyashincha:

tasyAnujam katham idam hi

VibhIshanamcha?”

 

Sri Rama might have

considered Himself to be a man, but we do not agree, nor does Azhwan, in view

of the numerous “atimAnusha” (superhuman) acts, which He adopts during this

avatara. He might hide His Paratvam or supremacy behind a human façade, but His

wisdom, prowess, etc. give Him away every time, whether it be the infructuous

sharanagati to Samudra rAjA, the transformation of a wayside stone into the

RishipatnI ahalyA, the single-handed annihilation of fourteen thousand

rAkshasAs at JanasthAnam, the dispatch of JatAyu and Sabhari to exalted worlds

and so on.

 

However, to us devotees,

it matters little whether Sri Raghava was a Man or God. Each and every act,

every little gesture of His, speaks volumes about how we should live, speak,

act and think. He has endeared Himself to each one of us through His glorious

conduct and the ideal relationships He forged with not only those near and

dear, but with absolute strangers too. God or Man, He has pervaded every little

nook and corner of our hearts, towering head and shoulders above Men and Gods

alike.

 

Srimate Sri

LakshmINrisimha divya paduka sevaka SrivanSAtakopa Sri Narayana Yatindra

Mahadesikaya nama:

dasan, sadagopan