PART 1

On Dispassion

This chapter gives us an insight into the dispassion incurred by Rama after his pilgrimage all across his kingdom as a teenager.  It is really remarkable that Rama realised this as a teenager itself.  If you ask FUKUS trained psychiatrist, he would say that Rama went into depression.

Often Rama muttered to himself:

What is the use of wealth and prosperity, what is the use of adversity or of house?  All this is unreal.

Again and again Rama sings to himself:

Alas, we are dissipating our life in various ways instead of striving to reach the supreme.

What is the use of wealth, or of mothers and relations, what is the use of the kingdom, and what is the use of ambition in this world.

It is only a enlightened sage like Visvamitra who marveled that Rama had learnt such wisdom about dispassion at such a young age and said he was ready for enlightenment.

Visvamitra said:

If that be the case, may Rama be requested to come here. His condition is not the result of delusion but full of wisdom and dispassion and it points to enlightenment. 

Valmiki said:

Dashrath asked Rama:

What makes you so sad my son? Dejection is an open invitation to a host of miseries.

Rama said:

Everything in the world is dependent upon the mind, upon one’s mental attitude.  On examination, the mind itself appears to be unreal! But, we are bewitched by it.  We seem to be running after a mirage in the desert to slake our thirst!

..What is this world?  What comes into being, grows and dies?  How does this suffering come to an end? My heart bleeds with sorrow, though I do not shed tears, in deference to the feelings of my friends.

Rama continued:

Equally useless, O sage, is wealth which deludes the ignorant.  Unsteady and fleeting, this wealth gives birth to numerous worries and generates and insatiable craving for more.  Wealth is no respecter of persons: both the good and the wicked can become wealthy.

However, people are good, compassionate and friendly only till their hearts are hardened by the passionate pursuit of wealth. Wealth taints the heart even of the wise scholar, a hero, a man of gratitude and a dexterous and soft-spoken person.  Wealth and happiness do not dwell together.

..Even so is the life-span, O sage.  Its duration is like the water droplet on a leaf.  The life-span is useful only to those who have self-knowledge.

Only he lives who strives to gain self-knowledge, which alone is worth gaining in this world, thereby putting an end to future births; others exist here like donkeys.

To the unwise, knowledge of the scriptures is a burden; to one who is full of desires, even wisdom is a burden; to one who is restless, his own midn is a burden; and to one who has no self-knowledge, the body (the life-span) is a burden.

In this chapter we learn that the story of Rama is the raft by which men will cross the ocean of Samsara (circle of repetition).

Vasistha tells Bharadvaja the secret of liberation of Rama, Laksmana and the other brothers, as also their parents and the members of the royal court and then says:

“My son, if you, too, live like them you will also be freed from sorrow here and now.”

Moksha or Liberation is the total abandonment of all vasana or mental conditioning without the least reserve. Mental Conditioning is of two types – the pure and impure.  The impure is the cause of birth.  The pure liberates from birth.

The impure is the nature of nescience and ego-sense; these are the seeds, as it were for the tree of re-birth.  On the other hand, when these seeds are abandoned, the mental conditioning that merely sustains the body, is of a pure nature.

Rama said:

All the hopes of man in this world are consistently destroyed by Time.  Time alone, o sage, wears everything out in this world; there is nothing in creation which is beyond its reach.  Time alone creates innumerable universes, and in a very short time Time destroys everything.

Just as even the great and mighty mountain is rooted on earth, this mighty Time is also established in the absolute being (Brahman).