HH Shri Swamiji's Ramayana pravachanam at Atlanta : (.Contd..)

[Guest guest]

Jai Srimannarayana!

 

Shri Swamiji brought out a subtle resemblance of human behaviour while

describing Kabandha vadha.

 

Kabandha was a deamon who had two big long hands (each ran upto

several miles), a huge stomach with a cave like mouth in it, and a

single eye in his stomach. He had no head/brain or any other limb.

He had ever-insatiable hunger and when he prayed to Brahma, to show him

a way to satisfy his hunger, Brahma gave him two long hands,

with which he could grab and eat anything that moved within the radius of

his two hands to get satiated. Hundreds of animals

and living beings including sages became prey to his hands and

died everyday. Such a beastly deamon became very lucky when his hands

grabbed Rama, who is none other than Srimannarayana!

 

After Sita was kidnapped, Rama and Lakshmana started looking for

her, met Jatayu, gave sadgati to Jatayu, and were wandering

in the dense forests in search of Sita. Suddenly two giant

things caught hold of them and with amazing speed started taking them

into a giant cave. Both Rama and Lakshmana were amuzed and amazed at the

monstrous being, his strength, speed and vikrutha roopam. They

decided to chop the hands of the deamon. Taking out the swords,

they chopped them off. Then Kabandha hearing their conversation,

realized that they are Rama and Lakshmana.

 

After ascertaining the same fact, he prayed to Rama, to bury him first

so that he could give a clue about the whereabouts of Sita to them.

Rama insisted that Kabandha should reveal the clue before he could be buried.

Kabandha pleaded to Rama that he could not do so unless and until he was

buried, fearing that Rama may leave him without burying, if he told the clue.

Swamiji explained that deamons will attain sadgati or sa:pa mo:ksham only if

they are buried. Rama assured him that he is not a man of two words

(Ra:mo: dwirna:bhibha:shathe:), will certainly bury Kabandha as

promised, and urged Him to reveal the clue. Kabandha blamed it on his memory

and said, unless he was buried, his divyatvam will not return, and he

can not reveal the clue. Rama had to finally agree to his request and

buried him by digging a pit of several miles area with their own hands.

Imagine how much time it would have taken for them and how much strain

they would undergone for burying this huge rakshasa. Finally, Kabandha

attained his divya purusha swaroopam and told Rama to go and meet

Sabari and after that everything good will happen to Rama.

Kabandha told these sentences without any furthur details and disappears.

 

 

The surprise revealation by Shri Swamiji to us was when He equated

Kabandha with the evil possessiveness in all of us, an insurmountable

quality . Yes, we are all Kabandhas in one form or another.

We tend to grab everything that comes in our way and try to possess

them. Whether it is a thing to eat, wear, keep, ride, live with,

decorate, enjoy etc. whatever it may be, our hunger for possession of

material wealth is ever-insatiable. We will never stop accumulating

or acquiring material comforts and wealth. If we get a job, we seek

salary rise, then a promotion, then good stock options, then power

to manage, a house, a car, good family, good children, good name in

society then a bigger company, then more millions and so on..

If one becomes a head of a county he would like to become a mayor

then to the state then to the country. After becoming head of a country

his kabandha like hunger will force him to look for means to become

head of the world or control the whole world. After getting into that

position he would try and control other planets like Mars and satellites

like Mooon. Rama! Rama!! Rama!!! Yes.. Kabandha in us needs none other

than Lord Rama.

 

There are hundreds of such vicious circles in which we keep on moving

our imaginative long hands and try to grab everything that comes

in our way. Grab it, stack it, grab more, stack more is the policy

without even a pause let alone stop. As Kabandha did, we do not apply

our minds in this activity which goes on forever like following a

blind curve. Even if we think ahead, it is not farsighted enough,

as to where this would lead us and what should be our goal.

 

The beauty of the story was when Kabandha grabbed Rama and Lakshmana

in his possession, immediately he got his Divya purushathvam, for

which he was waiting for thousands of years. He could get Divyathvam

only when he was buried and that too with the help of Rama and

Lakshmana.

 

Similarly, when we extend our imaginative possessive arms to encompass God,

Lord Srimannarayana, then only we get our Moksham. There is no way we can

stop this evil quality of material possessiveness, without the help of

Perumal and Acharya. Rama and Lakshmana here symbolise Perumal and Acharya.

Only when we are fortunate enough after innumerable births and

deaths in this materialistic world, Perumal gave us this noble life of

a human being. And still, with His limitless karuna and daya on all of us,

He has descended in the form of Acharya to uplift us. And our Acharya has

benevolently stumbled upon us, making us the 'fortunate Kabandhas' of all

the 5 billion human beings on this planet + unimaginable number of other

beings.

 

We should all pray to our Acharya and God to divert our evil qualities

like egoism, possessiveness etc and ari shadvargam (Ka:ma, Kro:dha, Lo:bha,

Mo:ha, Mada, Ma:tsarya). We can never win over these qualities and

only God through Acharya can alleviate all those qualities including

our Karma and lead us to the blissful Moksham to be with Him eternally,

enjoying His Kalyana Gunas, doing His Kaimkaryam.

 

Kulase:khara:lwar says in his Mukundama:la "Jihve: Ki:rthaya Ke:savam

...."

Let us all make use of the five karma indriyams and five gnyana

indriyams given by God in His service and not be attached to the

evilness of the world, and get moksham from the kabandhatvam.

 

I am thankful to HH Shri Swamiji, who has blessed me with this ability

to post, in this electronic form, a summary of what He gave

us in Atlanta, and also for His encouragement. With His blessings, I

will try to present the Sabari episode in the next email!

 

Jai Sriamannarayana!

Murali Krishna Kalvapudi

Ramanuja Dasa!

Attachment: vcard [not shown]

[Guest guest]

Priya Sriman Muraliji!

Jai Srimannarayana!

Your presentation of the Aranya Ka:nda is really so

nice. It is so clear than what we spoke there.

Continue the way you are doing. This is what we wanted

from someone to make the groups enlightened, and , we

got you as apt person to do so. We are sure that all

the discourses, given at different places may be sent

to you and you can keep continuing this tradition. We

suggest Raghu to collect and give them to you. You can

contact him.

 

How are children and other devotees there? our

Mangalasanams to all.

 

Jai Srimannarayana

 

=chinnajeeyar=

 

 

 

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