We all know Lord Rama as God but have you ever seen him as a human being?
Let see how we can take lessons from Lord Rama's life in this Covid pandemic situation.
Have you wondered why we remember somebody, celebrate somebody after a few thousand years, 6-to-7,000 years, why are we still remembering these people? What is their significance? Over a period of time with people's investment of their emotions, slowly a great human being becomes a God which is an unfortunate weakness that people have, any wonderful human being comes we want to make them God, or sons of God, or messengers of God, so that we can nail them on the wall and we can go about our business the way we want.
If you see them as human beings who lived extraordinary lives. Most human beings will have to put their heads down in shame, because if another human being could live like this, why am I like this? This question will naturally come up. So we make them Gods so that we can go about our business just the way, as usual.
Lockdown - Lesson from Lord Rama’s Life
One week of staying home, just one week of a little bit of seclusion. Rama went for fourteen years of vanvaas - Social distancing. There was no epidemic; for political reasons. Everywhere in the popular WhatsApp culture, right now, once again, Laxmanrekha has drawn, like that was drawn for Mata Sita not to cross and she crossed and you all know what a disaster unfolded is gone around. It's very appropriate.
Right now the social distancing is a kind of a "Rekha". Rekha means a line that you should not cross.... whether you cross inadvertently out of ignorance, or by intent, results are the same. This is the nature of existence, whether you do it with evil intent or out of ignorance, if you do a particular act, the results are the same when it comes to the physical world, the inner world is different. So in the material world, the results are the same. For example, Whether you fell off a coconut tree by accident or by intent, the same number of bones will break, unless a coconut also decides to fall after you and breaks your head.
Today we celebrate Rama's life in the form of a festival like Ram Navami. But during his lifetime, his life was a serial disaster. As a young prince, an accomplished young man, a brave warrior marries a very beautiful young woman. But due to political reasons, he had to take this princess, she was not a tribal woman, she was a princess. He had to take her and go into the jungle. It was a tropical jungle. Head to toe there were insect bites and there were lots of challenges.
Today the amount of wildlife has come down otherwise, this is tiger country, this is elephant country and they're not very pleased about you walking around in the jungle. You must be extraordinarily careful and conscious otherwise either you will get crushed, or you will become a wonderful breakfast to somebody. So in these conditions he takes this young wife, and goes and lives there this was not a honeymoon or a picnic, this was a punishment. As if that was not enough, his wife was kidnapped, whatever the reasons, everybody has justifications but it happened.
Well, he was a king, he was not that kind of a man but he was a king. A king means in India, or anywhere for that matter, they were allowed an unlimited number of spouses, kings were like that. So he was not somebody, "if his wife got kidnapped, this one is gone, find somebody," he is not that kind. He loves his wife, he values her, so he pursues her.
From Uttar Pradesh to the southern tip of India, it was not an easy journey! He was Ram in Ayodhya. When he entered Andhra Pradesh he became... Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka he became Rama. He came to Tamil Nadu, they made him Raman. But just two of them - him and his brother, looking for his wife, was not an easy journey. No Google Maps to guide, just by people's guidance you have to go totally, unbroken terrain everywhere. He reached there, and then finally he saw that the man who has kidnapped his wife has a formidable army and is fully organized but they are just two of them.
So, they sought the help of people. They built a small causeway to cross to Sri Lanka and they fought the battles, they won the battle, he got his wife back and went back. Then he went for one year of repentance. So his brother Lakshmana asked, "What are you repenting about? You killed an evil man. What are you repenting about." He said, "Yes, there were many negative qualities about him - his ego, his arrogance, his whatever all those things but he was a devotee. I killed a devotee also. A great devotee of Shiva. I killed a devotee on one level." For that, one year, he went off penance into the Himalayas.
Can you believe it? Being already out in the jungle for fourteen years, not fourteen days like Corona. Corona isolation is fourteen days, and people are fighting and creating a nuisance in the country. Fourteen years of isolation for King. Now he takes one extra year off because he killed a devotee - a man who stole his wife. That's the kind of man he is. As if that was not enough, political situations evolved - when the wife was fully pregnant, he had once again sent her into the jungle once again without him, separation.
For a King, The Queen is pregnant is a very significant thing because having an heir to the kingdom is a very big thing. Don't know whether she has a boy or a girl, or what, no sonogram. He sent her to the jungle. There she delivers twins. Unknowingly, he almost kills them. Gets into a fight with them. If you have to do something really terrible that you will regret forever in your life, knowingly or unknowingly you killed your own children. He almost did it. And his beloved wife for whom he traveled over 3,000 kilometers, fought a battle, and took her back, he never again saw her, she died without seeing him. This was a serial disaster life.
For most human beings if any one of those events that happened to him happens, they will get freaked out. They will become full of anger, hatred, angst, fear, all kinds of negativities, but he maintained absolute balance. He is even today celebrated as one of the best administrators among the kings of this land. So no matter what life did to him, how he was within himself in spite of enormous pain inflicted upon him, he did not reflect that pain on other people. You have caused hurt to me, so I will cause hurt to you, this is not the way. Whatever happens to me, I remain peaceful, in absolute balance, and do the best that I can do.
Being a king or a leader for the nation, a leader who puts his nation above his family is the leader that we want. That's a leader that we want. Not someone who puts his family above the nation. So this is the leadership he showed, he could have easily discarded or not taken into account what comments and commentaries were happening about him and his wife, and has kept his wife with him because she matters to him. No! He sacrificed his family, his unborn children for the sake of the nation. This is the kind of leader that you need for any nation. And it is because of this balance, because of this sense of purpose and duty in his life, that we still celebrate him and worship him.
Also, the one Indian person who served him, one of them went with him. Today he's become a superhero all over the country – Hanuman. Even the President of the United States was carrying a small figurine of Hanuman in his pocket at one time.
We all are just not even on vanavaas, just homestay. Don't act so funny, because you see the birds are happy. All the other creatures are happy. They're always happy because we are keeping social distance, not just today, all the time from all the creatures. Peacocks, snakes, everything else is very happy here, because we've kept a certain distance from them, allowing them to live their life. We've learned to live with them, all kinds of creatures.
But not the case with cities. So on a busy street in Mumbai at 8.30, 9 in the morning if you see a peacock can dance, well, you can't complain that the world is going bad. It's true a lot of people are going to get very upset with this lockdown. Do you know what is happening in the stock market? I know. There is loss and pain there. Yes, a lot of people have lost their wealth, a lot of people could lose their livelihoods. If you don't manage well, it could lead to starvation. All these situations are there. But this is what life is about.
Today from Lord Rama’s Life. Let us take this one quality. When challenging times come, you're not facing the kind of challenges Rama faced in his life. Simple. Maybe fourteen days, maybe twenty-one days, maybe forty-two days, you just have to stay in your own home. You can't complain about this. Nobody is asking you to go and fight a battle. Nobody is asking you to go and live in the jungle without any protection – you just have to stay in your own home. Your problem is not about the situation. Your problem is your mind is in such a state that going to work you're complaining, sitting at home you're complaining. Let's change this.
Now that this is confronting you, let us change this. Don't wait for that day – April 30, May 15 "I'm going to be out." Maybe you will be, maybe you will be not, we don't know yet. We thought we would be but in the last few days, certain people have changed the whole dynamics of the virus in the country, so we do not know whether we will be out on 15 May or not. We will be partially out or fully out or not at all out, we do not know. But, the first thing is, this is one thing you must do, this is one thing you deserve, that your experience of yourself is a wonderful experience.
This must happen. Not because of what you do, not because of what you have, simply because of what you are. This one thing you must do to yourself. If you don't do this to yourself, you may have many things, but you will never be at ease. You don't know what it means to be at ease means you are in disease. You may not have a virus, but you're not in ease means you're in dis-ease. If you're in dis-ease, you may be medically healthy, but you're sick as a life.
Let us use this time that we have. When there are no external demands on you, let us use this time to transform this one person. I am not asking you to transform the world. You can realize at any point your age When you were just sitting in one place and you just burst into ecstasy for no reason. Every cell in your body is dripping with ecstasy. So I kind of thought "What is this?" After some time you will realize, if you don't just mess with your mind, You are ecstatic. Messing with your mind means just this – you have two significant faculties with you, which are unique to a human being, no other creature has this faculty.
This is a very vivid sense of memory and a fantastic sense of imagination. Now sitting at home, these are the two faculties that you are suffering, your memory and your imagination. You suffer things which happened ten years ago. Don't think you're suffering life, you're suffering your own memory. You're suffering things that may happen the day after tomorrow already. You're not suffering life, you're suffering your imagination. So you're suffering significant faculties that you have, which makes you into a unique life on this planet – a very vivid sense of memory and a fantastic sense of imagination. This is what you're suffering. When you suffer your blessings, not curses upon you; when you suffer the highest values invested in you, then, what is left? What is left? This is what is the significance of Rama. Life can be a serial disaster, outwardly; inwardly, you use your intelligence, your memory, and your imagination and above all, this... this privilege that we are the most evolved creatures on this planet, it's not a small privilege.
Number one spot. Being a human being on this planet Earth is, nature has delivered you to number one spot, that's what it means. Peacocks are dancing on the streets of Mumbai. At least within your home, you can do something. Social distancing, because I'm not asking you to do ball dance or tango. You just dance for the joy of it, do whatever the hell you want. But you are a human being, that means, you know how to be. If you knew how to be, you would definitely keep yourself blissful. That's what you should do. Because this is something that you owe to yourself.
This is one thing that must happen. This is your fundamental birthright, that your experience of life on this planet is pleasant. This is what Rama represents and signifies. let's take this up, that it doesn't matter how this corona story will go, how this damn virus will go, we still don't know, because there are so many irresponsible human beings who do absolutely irrelevant and idiotic things. With all of them, we don't know what kind of game the virus will play with us. But what kind of game we play within ourselves, let's fix this today.
