Value Education and Spirituality 28 – Ramayana 10 – Vali 1 – Judging without understanding ruins relationships

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna.
Welcome back to the value education and spirituality series. We are discussing from the Ramayan and we will be discussing about Vali and the theme judging without understanding ruins relationships. So, Vali was the king of the Vanaras and he had a younger brother Sugriva and both of them were much more than brothers.
They were heart to heart friends and they would always go on combats together and they were inseparable practically. Vali was the elder among the two and naturally he ascended the throne and Sugriva was his gallant assistant by his side all the time. Now, one time a demon named Mayavi came to challenge Vali and he came and was roaring outside the kingdom of Kishkindha and Vali when he heard this they decided that they had to silence him.
So, Vali came out and Sugriva also came out behind him. Now, when Mayavi saw two giant Vanaras coming he lost his nerve and he started fleeing and now this Mayavi had committed a lot of atrocities at various places and this was the last latest spur so Vali decided to teach him a lesson and they gave chase and Mayavi ran and ran and Vali and Sugriva gave chase and finally Mayavi disappeared into a cave it was not just one cave but that cave was an entrance to a network of underground passages and now Vali and Sugriva looked at each other Vali said I will go inside but because there is such a network of passages inside over there he may slip out from there he may go in from one side and slip out from the other side we don’t want him to escape so you stay here and be guard and keep guard so now Sugriva said no it’s dark and dangerous and this demon is tricky you should not go alone, I will come with you so Vali said no you stay here just do what I am saying now although they were friends Vali would sometimes assert his authority as the elder brother and as the king and Sugriva reluctantly agreed and he stayed guard and then he was just waiting and waiting and waiting days upon days upon days upon days passed on and there was actually no news no sound at all now it was a whole underground universe we could say and he knew that Vali would be searching but how long could he wait and finally after a long time he heard the loud roar of the demon but he did not hear any sound of Vali and with a sickened heart Sugriva waited and waited and waited and finally he realized he could not hear any further sound after that he realized that with a heavy heart that this demon had actually killed Vali was devastated his beloved brother the king of the Rakshas Vanaras was dead how was he that reeling he thought if this demon is really that powerful that he killed Vali then checking him will be extremely difficult and he may come back again to attack our whole kingdom and we must stop I must stop him I could not protect my brother but I must protect at least the other members of our family other members of our race what should I do he thought and then he decided he looked around he saw a giant boulder and he looked and decided that let me take that boulder and put it on the mouth of this cave by that he will never be able to come in he was phenomenally strong but this boulder was almost like a part of a mountain he had to exert his full energy and he pushed the boulder down and finally and positioned it and it covered the mouth of the cave almost completely and then he felt a little relieved but with a heavy heart with a shrunk face and a lowered head he came back to the kingdom and when he informed now all the Vanaras were waiting they were waiting expecting these two heroic brothers their king and his brother to return victoriously when they saw Sugriva returning the king’s correspondent posed he was horrified and then Sugriva arranged for a period of royal mourning and he had a state funeral done for Vali and then the ministers told that now we need a king and Vali’s son Angada is too small he cannot become the king so it is your responsibility that you have to take up the kingship so Sugriva as a responsibility still his heart was heavy he was grieving for the death of his brother but he took up the kingdom and started taking on the role of a king of the Vanaras sitting on the throne and dispensing justice and doing the administration and after he had been ruling for some time one day suddenly the Vanaras heard some thunderous footsteps and they wondered what had happened and then they saw marching into the court Vali is this a ghost? a ghost can just slide in and this apparition this is no apparition this is banging the foot on the ground as if shaking the foot with every shaking the earth with every footstep when he came in Vali he was already furious and he glared at Sugriva Sugriva when he saw Sugriva sitting on the throne just charged up raising his mace to hit Sugriva Sugriva when he saw Vali was delighted to see his brother alive but when he saw the fury on Vali’s face he immediately understood what had happened and he got off his throne and he went and fell at the feet of Vali and he said I am so delighted to see that you are alive to see that you are alive now Vali was so angry he just hit Sugriva and flung him away you traitor I trusted you like my own other self and you simply wanted to usurp my kingdom and that’s why when you saw that I was in the cave I had told you to be a guard and I was slaving struggling searching for the demon and what did you do you locked me up in the cave with the boulder and you came and while I was serving serving our citizens risking my life to kill this demon you were enjoying the royal luxury you traitor now Sugriva was trying to get a word in please listen but Vali was so angry that he did not even hear one word from Sugriva he said you deserve death but because you have come from the same father as I have come from because you are my brother I spare your life, get out and don’t ever dare to come back or I will kill you all the vanaras were horrified to see this terrible rift happening between the family but Vali was so furious so self righteous he was not ready to hear anyone and Sugriva looked around, everybody was silent and with a heavy heart he bowed down to his brother and he departed now the ministers were caught Vali was a powerful general and he was much more powerful than Sugriva and they knew that if they sided with Sugriva they might become the targets of Vali’s anger they knew how powerful Vali was and they could see how furious he was so most of his generals remained silent however four generals were faithful to Sugriva they also walked away with Sugriva now Vali was he made a common mistake that is there for that happens in human relationship that is judging without understanding now actually from his perspective what he did see his conclusions seemed reasonable I told my brother to be a guard but he was not a guard I was locked over there and then could that boulder have come by chance over there no it could not have come by chance it was such a giant boulder it had to be placed by someone and who but Sugriva knew that I was there and the boulder was there and Sugriva was not there and Vali had to exert himself so much to push the boulder out he said after I killed the demon it took so long so much effort I thought I had been locked in permanently but I was so furious that I just somehow got the strength to push aside the boulder and come out and then when he comes back what does he see, he sees Sugriva on the throne so he puts two and two together and thinks that Sugriva is the person who put the boulder but you know sometimes when we think that we are putting two and two together we are actually putting we are missing a large part of the picture inferring based on what we see now from Sugriva’s point of view his inference was reasonable from Vali’s point of view his inference was reasonable so actually in human relationships we cannot just be logical because human relationships are psychological so from the logical point of view we could say Sugriva was right from the logical point of view we could say Vali was right but we have to go beyond and try to get a complete picture Vali’s mistake was that he observed and he judged he did not give a chance for clarification and what happened because of this Vali and Sugriva were brothers but then they became enemies and actually their enmity ended only with the with the death of Vali so why did all this happen it all happened because Vali judged without understanding now we all have this weakness and we have to be careful this is actually called as erroneous it is called attributional error in psychology attributional error means that we observe a certain behavior and we attribute based on our preconceptions certain intentions certain motivation to that behavior so we observe and we infer and now often when we attribute that attribution can be an error if we think a particular person is lazy that’s what our perception has been and then we see a person sleeping oh it’s a lazy bum so we see a particular behavior and we ascribe a particular character or a particular motivation because of the laziness that person is sleeping now I may sleep also for a long time I may oversleep somebody asks me I was tired now we may see if we see somebody else eating we say this person is over we see somebody eating too much we say this person is a glutton and if I eat the same amount I was hungry so the action is the same but the intention that we ascribe to the action differs why because that intention ascription is done based on our preconceptions and by ascribing intentions to actions we often label people judge people and these labels and judgments can be wrong and those labels and judgments can break relationships they can destroy relationships so we should need to give people the benefit of doubt now when we see somebody doing something which seems objectionable to us rather than using our own intelligence and thinking that I am like God I know everything I know why that person is doing that thing we need to give the person we need to be open minded and give the person a chance for clarification Bali did not give that chance for clarification to Sugriva and that’s how he dug the grave of their friendship and actually eventually he dug his own grave by that and that’s why we have to be very careful not to be judging without understanding and understanding means not just observing but inquiring seeking clarification giving room for people to tell their side of the story and after calmly dispassionately hearing both sides of the story then arriving at a conclusion not just judging based on the heat of the moment and making some decision which turns out to be ruinous so don’t judge without understanding that’s what we learn from Bali’s judgmental behavior towards Sugriva. Thank you Hare Krishna