There is a Ramayana
Partha Desikan
There is a Rama, therefore, there is a Ramayana.
Let us look at what Prof V.V.Raman, who writes under the pen name Acharya Vidyasagar, has to say in his website http://hinduperspectives.wordpress.com/ (in the last
paragraph of his 31st article in a series giving his views on Hinduism and Hindu culture.
I have read our epics as masterpieces of literature, as compositions of gifted poets. I have difficulty imagining that Brahma revealed the saga of Rama to Narada who, in turn, told it to sage Valmiki who relayed it to us. I feel equally uneasy accepting the story that the Mahabharata was dictated to Lord Ganesha who patiently transcribed the entire epic. And yet, deep in my heart Rama and Krishna are divine beings out there somewhere in ethereal space. I cannot take them as concocted characters, and I often imagine them as superior beings in flesh and blood who walked in Ayodhya and Mithila, in Mathura and Vrindavan. In my mind, they are more real than Romeo and Juliet in Verona or Antonio and Bassanio in Venice. Such is the sway of the culture on one brought up in Hindu culture.
To this gifted intellectual, Ramayana exists, the same way the Shakespearean plays ‘Romeo and Juliet' and ‘Merchant of Venice' exist. He understands the 24,000-sloka-epic known as Valmiki Ramayana as the Ramayana and values its poetic grandeur and unquestionably valuable content. He cannot be bothered to listen to debates on whether Valmiki wrote all of it or whether anyone modified it before it reached us in this age, anymore than he is bothered about the authorship debates going on about Shakespeare's works. He may pick up other versions of Rama's story and enjoy or dismiss them on merit just as he would deal with abridged versions of the English bard's retellers and remakers.
Professor Raman also has difficulty in considering the story as having been revealed to Valmiki through Brahma's Grace and Narada's help. Like a large number of learned men of the modern age, the Professor cannot imagine truth being revealed. Truth has to be discovered with the senses available on a person, with the thinking faculty available to a person, with tools he can fashion himself or have some one else fashion for him. Truth may be orally or otherwise communicated. Truth can be learned and taught, but no, it cannot be revealed by ‘God'!
But, I am being unfair. I am putting words in the honest Professor's mouth. He only said that he has difficulty in imagining that Brahma revealed the Rama saga to Narada. This does not amount to saying that he cannot imagine it. He only says that there is difficulty. Fair enough!
For note that he also says that deep in his heart, Rama exists as a divine being, located somewhere out there in ethereal space. He cannot take him as a concocted character. He often imagines him as a superior being in flesh and blood (translate to avatara, if you like), who walked in Ayodhya and Mithila. In his mind, Rama is more real than Romeo or Antonio.
We find the Professor looking for a logical cause for his apparent lack of logic. He weighs and finds that the Hindu culture has this remarkable sway over him, because he was brought up in it.
What is this sway that the learned teacher, with both feet planted on the ground and clear head definitely above the clouds, is talking about? I for one would admire his forthright honesty in acknowledging a phenomenon which is somewhat difficult to explain, and express my hope that he has already come to terms with the possibility that there is no need either to understand or explain.
A large number of scientists, and non scientists who trust only scientists and not other lay-humans in understanding or interpretation of truth/truths/aspects of truth, can have peace of mind, if they can be reconciled to the idea that if they want to know truth, they have only to seek it most sincerely, the way some of our ancients and their likes even in the present age seemed/seem to do. And truth will be revealed to them as it has been revealed to others.
I find Professor Raman making up his mind somewhat along these lines, when I go through his article 29 in the same series. The Professor is here on a personal quest to find out whether there was something common and universal in the message of all religions.
Then, were personages like Ramakrishna, Guru Nanak, and Ramana Maharishi fooled into thinking that all religions are the same?
In an effort to find an answer to this question, I launched a project many years ago. Every week I visited a place of worship of a different denomination, often accompanied by my wife. Fortunate circumstances in my life have taken me to various churches, synagogues, mosques, and also to Buddhist, Bahai, and Hindu temples: mosques in Cairo and Algiers, synagogues in Curaçao and Penfield, Churches in Vienna and Seoul, Bahai temples in Wilmette and Delhi, Buddhist temples in Bangkok and Los Angeles, Gurudwaras in Calcutta and Rochester, Hindu temples in Kanya Kumari and Kalighat, and to many other places of worship. I even spent an hour at a worship center in Lapland.
Everywhere, I participated in the collective spiritual mode, not as an observer, but as one who wanted to feel a little of the spirit that moves people to piety. These were enormously rewarding experiences. I know very well that not all religions say the same thing: a well-intentioned, but naïve generalization that has rightly come under attack. Unfortunately such attacks come, not always from people who have the most generous heart towards, or respect for others, but more often than not from religious chauvinists who fear that any such identification would bring their own religion from the pedestal which they feel is its due. Every frog within every religious well is always croaking that not all the wells contain the pure and clear water that its own well does.
My own conclusion is that Ramakrishna wasn't at all deluded, as some of his critics suggest. I interpret his truth to mean that all religions have the potential to give an aspirant genuine spiritual fulfillment. Everywhere I went during a worship service, I saw an outpouring of reverence and devotion for the Unfathomable Mystery visualized and invoked in different languages and modes, through different symbols and gestures. Even with all the atrocities and abominations perpetrated in the name of religions by brutal bigots and deluded devotees, something sublime and spiritual is infused in the hearts and minds of people who are prayerful in a place of worship. Of this I became certain.
After my experiment, I was more convinced than ever of the wisdom in the lines:
akâshât patitam toyam yatha gacchati sâgaram
sarvadevanamaskârah shrî keshavam pratigachati.
As waters falling from the skies go back to the self-same sea,
Prostrations to all the gods return to the same Divinity.
The experience of participating in a pious worship-ritual of a religion is not the same as the experience of the founder of the same religion, when in the course of his sincere quest for truth, some significant aspect of it was revealed to him in a special way, moving him to share it with a number of others. But the one is rooted in the other. If prayer services of different kinds reassure the good professor of the oneness of the identity of a supreme principle, surely another lay seeker like me would be justified in seeing oneness in the Rama principle or the Rama saga being conveyed to Brahma, Narada, Valmiki, Kamban, King Kulasekhara, Lord Siva, Vedavyasa, Kakabhushundi, Tulasidas, the Alwars, Sri Thyagaraja, Sri Raghavendra, Sant Ramadas, Mohandas Gandhi, Kabir, Muslim chieftains and British collectors and several unsung devotees of Sri Rama all over the blessed land of Bharat through all of time!
Let us celebrate the significant similarities in the revelations and the colourful differences in the details! Let us know the devout from the scoffers and let us join in experiences which we do not need to understand, but only enjoy.
Rama exists for me as God. Therefore any story of his which focuses on his divinity and also carries any number of other features is Ramayana to me. If any of it can be proved to be history, historians are welcome to the findings. The tendency of Indian writers of old times to be supremely indifferent to dating their recordings and the difficulty of meaningful archaeology probing so much into the past stand in the way. But the messages of the epic story are evergreen, the most significant being the essence of sharanagati. All Hindu Acharyas without exception see in Sri Rama's advent the promise from the Infinite of deliverance from the unending cycle of births and deaths for those human beings who have the strength to believe in the one Infinite and to surrender to it.
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written by Jim Clark, 2009-01-27 05:27:37
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-06-05 08:47:09
Thank you for your thoughtful comments, which offered comfort, even while seeming to seek it from something unsaid in my article.
You would have noticed this pair of sentences in my reply to Avi's comment:
'In the absence of the hardware and software of our ancients, some of us can take in faith, where we cannot prove, and enjoy even what we cannot understand immediately. That alone was my thesis.'
I was unconsciously quoting Tennyson's surrender to his belief system.
These powerful lines of his prayer are said to form a preface to his poignant long elegy composed lingeringly when he lost his precious friend Hallam. But I firmly believe these were composed after he had finished with his salute to Hallam in memoriam, when his mind finally cleared itself and could contemplate surrender to the Infinite.
Believing where we cannot prove, we do not falter, we only derive strength!
Thanks again for your kind fellow-feeling.
Regards. Partha.
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written by Soumi Basu, 2008-06-05 06:11:08
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written by Soumi Basu, 2008-06-05 05:55:50
I was reading Pradip Da's article on the Pope and the Jihadis today and thinking that all places of worship have their spiritual vibes that instantly gives you peace only if you allow them to do so. And then I read your article, it seemed liked you have already voiced my inarticulate thoughts.
Yes, the epics are masterpieces of literature, that is perhaps one of the main reasons why they have survived through the centuries.
The question you raised about the divine muse is interesting. Because not only the Hindu texts but many European poets and scholars also claim that it was divine muse that was aiding their efforts to create something immortal.
That point you made about belief in our Gods without verification of historical truths is also an interesting one. I think belief comes at an instinctive level. Wheras the historical verifications are an intellectual pursuit.
Quoting from Tennyson:
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest Life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.
Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:
Thou madest man, he knows not why,
He thinks he was not made to die;
And thou hast made him: thou art just.
Thou seemest human and divine,
The highest, holiest manhood, thou.
Our wills are ours, we know not how;
Our wills are ours, to make them thine.
Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.
We have but faith: we cannot know;
For knowledge is of things we see
And yet we trust it comes from thee,
A beam in darkness: let it grow.
Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul, according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.
Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
I really enjoyed your article!
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-06-04 07:42:34
Thank you for appreciating both the main piece and the discussion with Avi.
Dear Karigar, I was agreeing with the good professor in his belief that Rama exists. I was only taking issue with him on his 'difficulty in believing the possibility of revelations.
No ambiguity there, I thought.
Regards.Partha
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written by narensomu, 2008-06-04 06:34:24
Comedy of errors indeed. :-
Yes, we wont be able to "sue" or "sew" with ease, if we had fingers of the same length.
"Sue "must have come may be because I was reading some other nice things about Ramayana by some scholars?.
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written by narensomu, 2008-06-04 06:29:42
Let us celebrate the significant similarities in the revelations and the colourful differences in the details!
Yes, if all five fingers were the same, would we be able to sue them at all?
What Pradip says about heart and mind is very true.
I have no difficulty in imagning the adorable , chubby elephant sitting and patiently "down loading" info.
What the famous Englisman once saud about "There is more in heaven and Earth than that is dreamt of in your philosophy.."[ Avi or you might knoiw the exact quote]holds and one wants to quote that to people who are limited by their minds and intellect.
Thank you for a wonderful article and the discussion between you and Avi is very interesting too.
Regrads
ns
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written by karigar, 2008-06-03 14:05:09
I enjoyed the write-up.
Especially your lines-
'Let us know the devout from the scoffers and let us join in experiences which we do not need to understand, but only enjoy.'
and the lines that followed it to the end.
I think you have ambiguously appreciated the author's (Dr VVR)supreme ambiguity. (If I may be indulged a loose pun..
Personally, I think when one writes to 'the mainstream' and wants to maintain the posture of 'man of science' while attempting to also share / explain cultural aspects that are beyond science, one is ont rather risky ground. Some find the person wise, while others (of a 'logical' bent) merely self-contradictory...
[There I go..trying to match ambiguity with ambiguity
..Sorry, couldn't help it!] PS- I also enjoyed the exchange between you & Avi Das.
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-06-03 12:47:35
Regards. Partha
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written by Dr. Pradip Gangopadh, 2008-06-03 12:07:20
This is a very edifying article. It is my opinion that Ramayana can be read using the heart and the mind. One who reads Ramayana with the mind is worried about the questions raised by Professor Raman. These are of course legitimate questions at the level of the intellect. Those who read Ramayana at the level of the heart couldn't care less about those questions. Ramayana is simply a vehicle for glorification of Rama.
Regards
Pradip
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written by P. Desikan, 2008-06-03 11:41:33
In the absence of the hardware and software of our ancients, some of us can take in faith, where we cannot prove, and enjoy even what we cannot understand immediately. That alone was my thesis.
The Ramayana epic has a narrative which appears to be part fantasy, yet there is no change of style, mood or orientation in the flow of the narrative. This means that to the author,it was all in the day's routine. A modern fantasizer like Rowlings would be hard put to it if she has to write a novel with 40 to 50 percent of muggle life to be featured in it. I guess she stays completely in the witch world with just her non-typing (say, left) hand connecting to her body outside fantasyland when she pens a Potter novel.
From your depiction of Ganesa, I am able to visualize him on top of a hill, such as the one at Tiruchi, Tamilnadu. Vedavyasa from the clouds rains Mahabharata thoughts into his ample ears and he processes them and 'downloads them as torrents' for the benefit of the devout, who understand its language and contents now.
The blind men and the elephant? Yes, Indeed.
Prof. Raman, listening to their different accounts, puts the patterns into a jigsaw and gets the elephant. He is happy.
Regards. Partha.
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written by Avi Das, 2008-06-03 02:30:08
A very interesting article. There seems to be a few distinct points being discussed here, which I find most interesting.
The existence of Rama
The question of scribing Ramayana by Ganesh
The congruency of religion.
Am taking the liberty to add my own POV on them:
Carlos Castaneda introduced us to the concept of the Nagual and the second attention.
Nagual, is a spiritually uplifted shaman who is capable of leading people to new areas of consciousness. Carlos took the reader through his fascinating journeys in the second attention through his many books. An attention which transported one to a dimension removed from the everyday "known" dimension of reality.
The second attention was a realm/plane separate from current reality, much in the same way the current reality is separated from the dream plane.
As a Nagual, Carlos could cross over from first to second attention at will. It has also been said that the Nagual is all that is, and that it condenses to form what is called the Tonal. The Nagual and the Tonal as dual aspects of reality and being are perceived either through the First Attention, where we experience the Tonal, or the Second Attention where we experience the Nagual. Does this sound like the Bell theorem?
It’s thanks to Carlos, that the concept of second attention was popularized in contemporary consciousness. Could it be when the Ramayana was written, people could exist more fluently between the two attentions (or possibly multiple attentions?), with the happenings in both attention of equal reality to them?
Let’s say there are two characters inside a virtual reality game, with adequate intelligence and possibly adequate consciousness, to not only know about its game environment, but also possibly the environment of its player (which is a realm separate from the virtual game environment of coded software, a realm which inter faces with hardware, a completely different dimension and one beyond the ken and understanding of these virtual characters, and beyond this hardware is the universe of the game player. Our universe). For example’s sake let’s put these characters in a game like ‘Medal of Honor’.
Yet the characters have an awareness of its creator realm and are in communication with the game player. And sometime the player has told them that a World War II actually took place. The characters being able to exist at the attention of the player as well as within their own game, they take in the words. Yet these characters, indeed the whole game universe has been given the ability to evolve, its own story, history, intelligence etc.
Over a period of time, it is found that the fluctuation of attention from the game universe to the player universe is acting as an impediment for the game to progress (for after all the characters have to take themselves seriously). So slowly the bandwidth of this second attention shift keeps decreasing till the point it’s negligible or non existent and the characters are completely immersed within their environment.
They have heard stories of World War II, as it’s embedded in their psyche, but can’t seem to find trace on ground, its coded digital ground. For, how could one go scouring for Normandy among pixels? How would one find geographical evidence in a binary universe?
So some characters declare that World War II is a myth. I guess form the POV of the game characters they are correct. Yet they continue to kill, resurrect, kill in endless cycles, fulfilling the demand of the games script (prakriti?).
Without the ability to communicate with the player universe would it be possible to find hard evidence?
The second point wrt Ganesha’s scribing? This would be picking up on a topic which you and me have already discussed in my other posts.
To what act is the act of scribing being attributed to? The act of penning? So what is the act of penning? The act of physical writing? Or is it the act of remaining connected with the source of inspiration, which flows in another realm? So that one could download the information despite shutting the machine down for diurnal requirements. I think we have Ganesha’s performing the same functions these days as well. We call them torrents downloaders.
Finally the aspect of the convergence of religion. I’d like to think that the story of religion was covered by the ancient tale of the Six blind men of Hindustan. The concept of divinity being so huge and abstract that one could only have a limited perspective of it in this realm. Thus we always had a choice. To compare notes and try and piece together the greater picture. Or fight over parochial perspectives.
I think I over indulged myself. Do excuse the verbiage.
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Regards. Partha