The Significance Of Rama

In many ways,

Rama is representative or we can even say an embodiment of what this culture stands for.

This is a culture where we don't count the value of accumulations one has,

We don't count one's achievements in the world,

Nor do we count one's victories in war.

But the most important dimension is,

How profound is the freedom that one has achieved within themselves?

What is your level of mukti in your life?

How profound is your freedom from variety of things that a human being can be afflicted with?

If you look at Rama's life,

I want you to understand,

When Rama in Ayodhya,

Well,

Some things went wrong and went to the forest and his wife kidnapped by the Sri Lankan people.

Not LTT,

Well before that.

And when he started moving south,

When he crossed the boundaries or the borders of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka,

We called him Rama.

The moment he entered Tamil Nadu,

We called him Raman.

So when I say Rama,

Don't get confused.

In south,

He is not Ram,

He is Rama.

So if you look at Rama's life,

He lost his kingdom.

His kingdom was taken away,

Though he was rightfully coronated as a king.

His wife was taken away.

Later in his life,

His children were taken away.

Normally for most human beings,

If any one of these things happen,

They will be broken for life.

But here is a man,

Though all these things happened,

And he stood up to do the karma that he has to do.

Even to the extent of fighting battles,

But never conquered by angst or animosity or anger.

It is for this reason that we are bowing down to him.

He is not a super success.

It's a series of disasters.

In spite of this disastrous life,

The negativity cannot conquer him.

He is free from these things.

It is this one quality for which we are bowing down to him,

Because in this culture,

Our ultimate goal is not God,

Our ultimate goal is not heaven,

Our ultimate goal is mukti or moksha.

Liberation or freedom is the highest goal in our lives.

This is the significance of who we are in this culture.

Everywhere else,

People want to go to heaven.

But we know,

Even if we go to heaven,

We will get bored after some time.

Hello?

Even in heaven,

We can get bored.

So we foresaw those possibilities and see the ultimate thing is liberation,

To be free in every possible way.

And anyway,

There is no proof with any of you that you are not already in heaven and making a mess out of it.

First of all,

Anybody who talks about a better place elsewhere than where we are right now,

It is a crime.

So this is why Rama's life is most significant.

The world throws many things at you.

Entire life is full of disasters coming his way,

One after another,

But he is not ruled by those disasters.

Those outside situations does not decide who he is,

He decides who he is.

This is the essence of being an ultimate human being,

That the outside will not decide who you are,

You decide who you are.

This is a privilege,

This is a privilege only according to human beings.

There are many other creatures.

Today they say there are over trillion different kinds of life on this planet.

Not million,

Trillion.

Of all these creatures,

From the smallest to the biggest,

For them,

They live according to the dictates of their instinct.

Instincts of survival rule them.

This is the reason why there are wonderful tigers,

There are lions in Gujarat,

There are elephants in the south,

But we did not call a lion,

A lion being,

A tiger,

A tiger being,

An elephant,

An elephant being,

Only you.

We refer to you as human being because you are supposed to know how to be.

Don't congratulate yourself too soon.

You are supposed to know how to be.

That means you can decide how to be.

We cannot decide what the world will do to us,

But we can decide what we do within ourselves.

So this is what being means,

That you know how to be.

Rama is a hundred percent representative of this dimension.

He knows how to be.

Kingdom taken away,

Wife taken away.

Well,

I was in Andhra Pradesh in a small town called Nellore with our present vice president on stage with me on that day.

A little girl,

A fourteen-year-old girl stands up and asks me,

Sadhguru,

They say Rama walked all the way from Ayodhya to Sri Lanka.

Is such a thing possible?

Or this is all just a story?

Is it really practical for a man to walk from Ayodhya to Sri Lanka?

I said,

See,

You are just a fourteen-year-old girl right now.

You will grow up and one day you will find a man for yourself.

Do you want that kind of a man?

Suppose you are lost,

He will walk all the way and look for you.

Or do you want a man who will say,

Okay,

She is gone,

Let me find some local solution for myself?

What kind of man do you want?

She says,

I would like a man who walks all the way.

I said,

That's what he did.

He is a king,

He would have found a local solution.

But no,

His wife is so dear to him that he walks all the way,

Fights a battle,

Gets her back.

Well,

There are arguments these days.

But this man is a male chauvinist.

Because of his pride or his kingdom or whatever nonsense,

He again sent her back to the jungle.

This argument came up here in Gujarat in one of your universities,

When I was part of the Youth and Truth movement.

So I asked him a simple question.

We are going through various situations in our country.

Though this is a nation of great possibilities,

We have still kept it as a nation of great problems.

Though at one time we were the most prosperous nation on the planet,

Today we are coming up now,

But still a large segment of population is in poverty.

When it is like this,

Would you like a king or a leader of this nation,

Who will place the well-being of his citizens and nation above his family and dear ones in his life?

Or would you like somebody who will do everything for the family and forgets about the nation?

They said,

That is not it.

Why should he send his wife?

You must understand,

When they say a dobi was speaking about his wife or the queen,

A queen is not just a wife.

She is… she has a place in the kingdom.

She is not just another woman.

A queen is like a mother to that kingdom.

Now,

It is not in the story it may say,

Dobi was speaking about it.

A dobi speaking means it is general gossip in the town.

Everybody is speaking about it.

They are wondering,

How can she be our queen mother?

Now,

You have a choice,

To hell with the citizens,

I'll keep my wife,

Or for the sake of my citizenry,

I will sacrifice somebody for whose sake I fought a war.

A terrible war,

A risky war,

Because you didn't have an army to fight a war.

You just went to your… with your brother to fight a war.

All this you did for that woman.

But now,

For the sake of the nation and the sake of citizens,

You sacrifice her.

And when she is fully pregnant,

For a king,

Children are very important because that is the continuum.

Not knowing whether it's a boy or a girl or boys or girls,

No sonogram in those days.

And she goes to the jungle and delivers two boys and he does not know.

For a king,

This is the biggest disaster.

He does not know that he has sons.

And not only that,

The situation evolves in such a way that he ends up fighting those children.

The worst thing that you could do in your life is,

Knowingly or unknowingly you kill your own children.

This would be the most horrible thing that you could have done in your life.

He almost did it,

But still remained without angst,

Animosity or anger,

Doing what is needed.

Though it causes much pain in your heart,

You don't make this pain the basis of what you do with the rest of the world.

This is what he represents.

This is what should become the ideal of this nation and the world,

That if you poke me,

I will poke you.

Then everybody will be poked because inevitably something will poke you.

When you walk through this life,

There are a lot of poking people.

But as you raise in your stature,

If you become the poking kind,

Then everybody will be poked.

So his life is not history,

It is a lesson for the future of this nation and for this world.

Thank you very much for having me here.