Story of Ramayana - “principles of life"

Ramayana is one story, which every Indian knows young, or old. …Lord Rama has major influence on Indians since centuries. Two major festivals Deepawali and Dussehara are based on Ramayana.   Hundreds of crores of rupees are spent on staging Ramayana in every town or village in India irrespective of the size. Crores of Indians go and watch the same story year after year . Why do we stage Ramayana? There has to be some specific reason to spend so much money.

The story is

Once upon a time there was a king called Dasaratha, who used to rule the province of Ayodhya. Being issueless, he decided to peform a huge sacrifice for begetting a son. As a result of this, he was given a fruit to be given to his wives to bear a son. King Dasaratha divided it equally between Kausalya, the eldest wife, and Kaikeyi, his favourite queen. But both Kausalya and Kaikeyi were fond of the queen Sumitra. So they each gave half of their portions to Sumitra and in turn the queens gave birth to four princes, Kausalya to the eldest Rama, Kaikeyi to the second Bharat, and Sumitra having gotten two shares, to younger Laxman and Shatrughna. All four princes grew up in the tutelage of sages and turned out into fine warriors. Laxman was very attached to Rama since childhood. During their travels with sage Vishwamitra, once they came to Mithila, where king Janaka had pronounced a swayamvar (groom hunt ceremony) for his daughter Sita. Sita was Laxmi incarnate into this world, and was destined to marry Rama. The condition at the swayamvar, was that whoever could lift the heavy bow, which was presented to him by Shiva, could win the hand of Sita in marriage. One by one, the kings who came for the swayamvar failed in their attempts. When Rama went and lifted the bow, it lifted easily. Hence Rama wed Sita in Mithila and they returned to Ayodhya a happy family.

The message is

This actually denotes the first part of the story that Rama was born with silver spoon. I mean it denotes that destiny and luck part that he gets the best possible childhood, best possible education that anybody can dream in this life.

Soon after he left, Ravana who was waiting for this opportunity came disguised as a beggar and asked for a donation from Sita. Sita went inside to get some grains to donate to the beggar. As she stepped outside she told the beggar to come and get it as she could not cross the Laxman Rekha. The beggar acted as if offended and Sita, thus crossed the line to give him alms, and Ravana, against her wishes dragged her into a chariot and took her to his hometown of Lanka against her wishes. As she was going along the way she dropped her jewels so that Rama could trace her route.

Rama and Laxmana, on returning were very depressed on not finding Sita when they returned.  

The message

That’s actually the key part of the Ramayana. In first part Rama was born with the silver spoon and then suddenly the circumstances or fate or luck whatever you call it turned totally against him. This is symbolic that how it happened but suddenly when he was about to become the king, the circumstances forces him to give up everything. He becomes a common man from son of a king. We take it very lightly but think about it - recently Dhiru Bhai Ambani died - imagine that his sons Anil and Mukesh don’t get anything from his big business empire i.e they are forced to leave everything and start life again from the scratch. It keeps on happening in our lives as well that when everything is going smoothly in life suddenly something happens and the circumstances turn against us -  if you are a businessman …you find that without any fault of yours business starts going down or you become bankrupt or when you are leading a comfortable life in service and due to unseen reason you lose the job or you lose a family member due to death or doctor declares that you are having some dreaded disease out of nowhere or suddenly a close friend of your ditches you. I mean there are so many things, which happen in the life of every human being. We call it bad luck or sometimes we say that stars are not in our favor these days and you would identify that when time is not going the way we want it then most of the time it gets worse and worse. During bad times luck actually deserts us and most of the time we go down and down.

The same thing happened with Rama as well.  Nature was playing games with him and if losing the kingdom was bad then losing his wife at the same time could have been the biggest blow. I would say that this is again symbolic and all it denotes is that due to circumstances he was facing the toughest lessons of the life.

Just imagine his situation - he is in exile – his wife has been abducted – he has no resources with him to fight back.

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Final part of story is

They went miles and miles in search of Sita. They reached ultimately to the kingdom of Kishkindha. This was then ruled by the monkey king Bali, who had banished his brother Sugreeva. Rama and Laxmana reached the hill where the banished Sugreeva and his friend Hanuman were living. Hanuman at once fell at the feet of Lord Rama and showed him the jewels, which Sita had thrown at them when on the way to Lanka. Rama helped Sugreeva overthrow his brother Bali out of Kishkindha and become the king. In return, Rama got the entire army of monkeys of Sugreeva including Hanuman to help him out in the search for Sita.

Hanuman, while searching wide and afar, happened to cross over to Lanka across the sea and recognised Sita there. He then passed on the message of having found Sita to Rama. Rama then declared war on Ravana to get Sita back. Vibhishana, who was the brother of Rama, came over to Rama's side and became Rama'a devotee. The monkey army led by Sugreeva and Hanuman formed a huge bridge across from mainland to Lanka. Then Rama got along with his army to Lanka and staged a full-fledged war.
Ravana was defeated in the end and Rama brought back Sita to his home and then in the process their Vanvaas (banishment period) was over and they came back to rule Ayodhya as a righteous king and spread Ram-Rajya (ideal rule) in Ayodhya.

The Message is

 
This is part 3 and the “Central Message “ of Ramayana that when the circumstances went totally against him then he fights from the scratch and acts like a winner is that in everyone’s life nature keeps throwing the challenges. “a situation is a situation – it is up to us to take it as a “challenge” or problem . If you carefully see that normally when a common man faces the situations in life then what he does? Does he fight or start complaining? A common man always looks out for whom to blame for his problems or look towards other to solve his problem or gets depressed. You know what I am talking about – all of us experience such situations and know how we behave. We see such examples everyday all around us. Rama was the real hero – he never complained – he could have asked for the help from his brother Bharta or from King Janka or any other kingdom but he never asked for help from them. Finally he builds the army from the scratch. Have you ever thought that why he build the army of Monkeys. This is again symbolic –in modern day you must have heard that it’s a famous saying that if you pay the peanuts you will only get monkeys. I mean traditionally –monkeys are considered good for nothing and that’s why I say that army of Monkeys is symbolic and all it denotes is that whatever team he could build from scratch at that time was not best of the army at his disposal – still he never complained – went ahead with the positive frame of mind –fighting the biggest battle against the most possible powerful army. He won and that makes him a real hero – its again symbolic that his banwas was over and he comes back and becomes the King – he deserved it and he is worshipped because of the fight against the circumstances.

Think about it and compare the problems you face in life when circumstance turns against us. Message is loud and clear that nature is like that and we must draw our inspiration from Ramayana when we are down and lonely because of whatever reasons in life. Take it as a challenge and you will surely come out of it. How? That what the book is all about and in the following chapters you will see that how you can use Ramayana as your motivation.

All over the world when the life of a successful person is analyzed, there are six areas of life which are considered –namely

• Work

• Family

• Social

• Mental growth

• Physical

• Spiritual
   

Of course not in that order – depending upon person to person the order may vary. A super successful person is the one who is equally successful in all areas of life. How would you rate Rama’s life in all six areas of life before he went into exile?

Work: - He was about to become king and was considered by everyone as the able candidate. One can only dream about such a high level of success.
Family: - It was a perfect family   that anybody can dream of – Father – who loves the son, a perfect mother, too good to be true brothers and a perfect wife
Social: - At very young age he was out in forest protecting the saints from the bad elements of society denote the highest level of social responsibility on behalf of Rama.
Mental Growth: Rama because of a status of a prince received the best possible education at that time.
Physical: - lifting the heavy bow at the swayamvar shows his physical strength.
Spiritual:  He is considered as God and needless to say that the highest goal which a spiritual person can achieve.

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He was the perfect and possibly most successful human being of all time. It’s symbolic and all of us must try to become successful in all six areas of life. As you can see that anybody may point out that his success attributes to the “luck” factor as well. What if he was not born in a royal family? Could he have same kind of success if he was born under adverse circumstance? That’s why from best possible circumstance – the nature pushes him into worst possible circumstance. He falls from the highest level of success to lowest possible failure. He loses the kingdom – which mean professionally he virtually become bankrupt – became a common man. Familywise – family disintegrated, father died and later on the wife abducted, further his brother almost died in the war. Social support was gone overnight –left alone with only a brother supporting him in his tough time. Mentally –he was put under the most stressful conditions. Physically – From the most comfortable life style of a royal background, he lands up in a forest.

All this denotes the law of nature. It’s a famous saying that the God is unfair but the best part is he is unfair to everybody. The message is clear that in this life keeps on throwing good /bad time cycle to everybody. Your response to the bad time decides your success in life. Response of Rama was exemplary and that’s the message of Ramayana.
 
Tough time never lasts, tough people.