TiruppAvai flavoured sundara-kaandam: Part 6; The despair of Sri Rama: pOginraarai pOgAmal kaatthu...

March 6, 2007

Dear friends,

Human Despair is indeed the predominant theme of

Valmiki's " sundara kAndam " .

*****************

Despair degrades the human spirit absolutely. There is

virtually no humanity left in a man who has lost all

hope in life or himself. The despairing soul travels

but one road: the road to slow self-destruction and

inevitable perdition.

Self-destruction and perdition take 2 forms. One is

Suicide and the other, Terrorism. One is mindless

violence directed against oneself. The other is

indiscriminate violence unleashed upon the world at

large. The pyschology and pathology of both the

suicidal as well as the terrorist mind-set is

portrayed vividly through the events and characters of

the " sundara-kaandam " in the Valmiki Ramayana.

***************

Rama's grief and despair over the separation from Sita

as described by Hanuman in the " sundara-kAndam " has

been briefly sketched in this series of postings

earlier (Posts #4 and #5). Clearly, from the story of

the Ramayana, we see how Rama's mind began seriously

and steadily degrading as he waited out the days and

months in the company of Lakshmana, alone in a dark,

cold cave outside the capital city of Sugriva's empire

in Kishkinda.

Rama was forlorn, frustrated and utterly hopeless.

Slowly but surely, his mind began falling apart under

very great emotional distress, until it almost

unhinged itself entirely. The despair of Rama was like

poison -- killing him slowly, corroding away his sense

of self, security and all hope in life.

The loss of Sita to Rama was more than merely loss of

a spouse or loved one. It was loss of meaning in life.

Raison d'etre -- the very reason for his existence --

became a matter of abject and philosophical doubt for

him. " Why should I continue living in this state? To

what purpose this life of mine if my Sita is lost

forever? What earthly purpose am I serving? What

desires do I have left in life? Why must I labour

forth in life, to what end, and to gain what

outcomes? " . Such was the dire existential vacuum --

that shoreless sea of human despair -- in which Sri

Rama found himself floundering during the dark,

endless days and nights he spent alone in Kishkinda.

When we read these passages in the Ramayana, we are

instantly able to relate to Sri Rama's predicament,

and the agony of his profound despair. For it is a

state which we too -- ordinary men and women of this

sorry little world -- often find ourselves in, from

time to time, to greater or lesser degree as we might

want to imagine, in the many difficult situations we

encounter along our own respective paths in the long

journey of life. Despair is a universal human

condition. And even God Almighty, in his avatar in the

Ramayana, was powerless to except himself from it.

**************

In that state of overwhelming Despair, Rama's mind

underwent a dramatic and unfortunate metastasis.

His despair slowly drove Rama's mind to begin

entertaining inhumane thoughts which his own good

nature would have under normal circumstances wholly

abhorred. It drove him to thought of malice and

malevolence, vengeance and mindless violence. A

temporary madness seized Rama, making his mind begin

harboring ideas and plots like those of a modern-day

terrorist.

We must turn to the passages of the " aranyA kAndam " of

the Valmiki Ramayana to understand this sudden and

ugly transformation of Rama's frame of mind. This is

what he says in a fit of fury one day to Lakshmana:

" tathAham krOdha samyukthO

na nivaryO'shiya samshayah

purEva may charudhatI manindatAm dishanti

seetAm yadi nAdya mythileem !

sadEva gandharva manushya pannagam

jagatsa-shailam parivartayAmyaham II "

(III. 64.75.78 Valmiki Ramayana)

" Lakshmana, I can wait no more! I am now going to take

law into my hands! No scourge on earth will be so

fierce and pitiless as I am going to be, I swear!

" I am up now and I swear nothing is going to stop me!

I am going to take full toll of all this world, all

this universe! I'm going to turn it all to ashes! I

will bring death and destruction everywhere! I have

beseeched everyone, every creature to show me where my

Sita is ... I have addressed the waters and streams,

the trees, the earth, the beasts and birds, but none

responds to me! None hears me or knows my grief, my

despair!

" And the gods too I have beseeched! They at least, O

Lakshmana, who see and know everything, surely they at

least should be able to tell me where perhaps Sita is

now languishing, and if she is well and safe! But

alas, they too remain silent and unmoved by my plight!

They conceal her from me!

" What should I do now but to use all the force at my

command to destroy all of them! I'm going to destroy

everything and everyone brutally in this world! If

they will not give her back to me, I shall surely be

destroyed but not before I have destroyed and wiped

them all too from the face of the world! "

**************

Here, in the passages of the Ramayana, we see stark

confirmation of how even God's own mind, when in the

grip of profound, moral despair such as what possessed

Rama's, is indeed but only a step away from harboring

the black thoughts and baleful ideas which in the

world of the 21st century we live in today -- filled

as it is with hate, bloodshed and suffering, from Iraq

to Palestine, Afghanistan to Chechnya, from Bali to

Serbia -- it is those very same ideas that we have

come to associate with the " terrorist " mind-set, the

" anarchist's " manifesto and the " suicide bomber's "

armoury.

In his moment of supreme despair, Rama's mind without

doubt turned almost " terrorist " . He swore he would

destroy everything in the world and reduce it all to

ashes! If we reflect deeply upon this matter, we see

that this line of thinking is not all that different

from that of the " suicide-bomber " today, say, in Iraq

or Palestine.

I have now lived and worked in Kuwait for the last 8

years. In the past 3 years, ever since the war in

next-door Iraq began wildly spiralling into the

deadly, unceasing cycle of mindless bloodshed it has

become today, I cannot recall a single day when I

opened a local newspaper in Kuwait and did not find a

news-report of another " suicide-bomber " blowing up a

dozen or more ordinary, innocent fellow-citizens in a

crowded Baghdadi vegetable market-place or a

bus-station.

As I read these daily reports of grim carnage in

Baghdad and the neighbouring provinces of Iraq, in

Sadr City or Tikrit -- or in Nablus or elsewhere in

occupied Palestine, for example -- I can't help asking

myself often: " What could possibly drive a man right

over the edge of humanity to think nothing at all of

strapping kilograms of lethal RDX around his waist,

walk into a crowded souk swarming with hundreds of his

own brethren, and then, in an instant within the wink

of an eye, detonate himself and all of them too ---

all of those poor innocent men, women and children --

unto death? "

The answer to that question I come up with always is:

Despair.

The " suicide-bomber " of the modern time, much like Sri

Rama in the passages of Srimadh Valmiki Ramayana, I

often find myself reflecting, is really not a man in

rage but a man in terminal Despair in life. His rage

springs not so much from loss of sanity but from loss

of hope in life, and loss of faith in the world as a

place worth cherishing or preserving.

The " suicide-bomber's " violence is nothing but despair

that has turned itself into suicidal rage at the

world. Like Sri Rama, the poor Iraqi " suicide-bomber "

has had his own family taken away from him -- a wife

perhaps killed during a military bombing, a child

buried perhaps beneath beneath the rubble of a

school-building hit by sudden rocket-attacks, an old

mother who fled home to escape sectarian street-

violence and never returned and has never been seen

anywhere since....

Those are the sort of life-events in which the

" suicide-bomber " too lost his loved ones, and has

since then plunged into despair and a life-weariness

so deep and painful that he daily seeks escape from it

but simply cannot see a way out of it. He must hence

find a way out of it either in suicide or violent,

rampant destruction...

All this is in fact exactly as the Valmiki Ramayana

describes a human mind will react when caught up in

life in a vortex of soul-destroying despair...

***************

Fortunately, for Sri Rama in the Ramayana, in the

moment of extreme distress and despair when he

teetered precariously between humanity and

sub-humanity -- when he was caught in the cross-fire

of emotions good and evil, when he almost succumbed to

the mindless rage of a terrorist mind-set --

fortunately, he had his brother Lakshmana beside him

to prevail upon him with sage counsel and exercise a

measure of soothing, calming, sane influence.

In the story of the Ramayana, when it seems as though

Rama would simply go over the brink of despair, and

give way to the rage and violence seething within him,

we see his brother Lakshmana stepping in right in time

and pulling his brother away from the very edge of

tragic disaster which the other brother otherwise

would have certainly plunged into headlong in a

free-fall of moral degradation, as it were.

*************

It is here that we must briefly digress. We must pause

to examine a line, a phrase from the famous Tamil hymn

of the Vaishnavite faith, the TiruppAvai of AndAl.

In the TiruppAvai, there is a well-known stanza in

which an extraordinary poetic phrase appears -- one of

the most quotable of lines, in fact, in the whole

hymn:

" pOginraarai pOgAmal kaathu... "

Now, in the specific thematic context of the

TiruppAvai itself, this line has been quite copiously

commentated upon by several scholars of Tamil

literature, Vaishnavite theologians and Vedantic

philosophers. But our present interest in this phrase

is not so much the theological or philosophical angle

as it is in its literal interpretation and application

in the context of the " sundara-kaandam " and the theme

of human Despair presently discoursed upon.

The literal meaning of the phrase " pOginraarai pOgAmal

kaathu... " means in simple English, " Pulling someone

back, just in the nick of time, from going away " . It

means rescuing someone at the very last moment; saving

someone from going down a road to destruction;

effecting the rescue of someone at the very last

minute from grave moral disaster.

Now, when he saw his brother Rama sinking in despair

and his mind being slowly disfigured to begin

resembling the darkest side of a " terrorist's "

personality, Lakshmana immediately knew he had to step

in and play the restraining role of a moral estoppel.

In other words -- or more accurately, in the words of

the TiruppAvai -- Lakshmana knew he must pull Rama

back from the brink of a grave personal disaster --

i.e. " pOginraarai pOgAmal kaathu... "

Thus, it is that we see in the Ramayana, it falls to

the lot of Lakshmana, the younger brother, to save and

comfort the elder Rama. It is a somewhat unusual

incident in the Ramayana since throughout the epic on

many occasions, it is hotheaded and reckless Lakshmana

who is often reined in and reprimanded by Rama for

folly. But here the wonted position is reversed.

Lakshmana thus tells his brother: (III. 65.

4-6/66.18-19)

" ekasya naaparAdaath lOkaan hartUm tvamarhasi

budhischa tE mahAprAgnya devairapi duranvayA

shOkEnAbhi prasUptam tE gnAyanam sambhOdhayAm-yaham "

" Do not become a stranger to your own innate good

nature, Rama! Ravana has taken away your wife, but why

do you wish to punish the whole world and universe of

life for it? Is it the real you, the inner and true

man within Rama, who is saying these things as you do

now?

" Give up this boiling rage! Let us instead go about

now to somehow search and find Sita. Unable to bear

your grief, your despair, Rama, you have allowed

yourself and your good sense to go to sleep. Beware!

Go no further down this path! Pull back! This is not

the way for you to go. The world , the gods, the

creatures of the forests at large are not responsible

for your plight. They do not deserve to be the target

of your rage. They are not the cause of your despair

and condition...

" I'm only trying to awaken you, Rama, that's all. I'm

not trying to reprimand or redeem you, my dear

brother! Arise, shake off these grim thoughts that are

unworthy of you! "

***************

It is one of the most beautiful scenes described in

the Ramayana -- this particular scene where the Lord

Almighty in his avatar as Sri Rama is pulled away from

the edge of a moral precipice -- the perilous road

that leads to a " terrorist " way of thinking, to the

" terrorist " mind-set and moral position in life --- at

the very last minute indeed by Lakshmana.

And if ever we need no more than a single poetic

phrase to describe fully that poignant scene of the

Ramayana, we need look no further than borrow from the

TiruppAvai and say:

" pOginraarai pOgAmal kaathu... "

(to be continued)

Regards,

daasan,

Sudarshan MK

Warm Regards,

Sudarshan

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as

life " .

(Andre Malraux)

________

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March 7, 2007

Very nice analysis of "human" psychology, the way a human mind works in any era and region! Isn't it sad that we do not have, in this yuga, Lakshmanas to say "Ekasya nAparAdhAth lOkAn hartum tvamarhasi", and Ramas, who in spite of utter despair, have a kindling divine spirit to listen to their brothers!Thank you, swamin, to be guiding our humble minds to think.Adiyen, VijayAOn Mar 6, 2007, at 7:02 PM, sudarshan madabushi wrote: