Ramayana Reflection – Why Rama abandoned Sita

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Why did Ram abandon Sita? Suppose a man abandoned his pregnant wife based on some unproven suspicion, we would consider that troubling. And how could millions of people consider such a person an ideal person? The incident in the Ramayana of Ram abandoning Sita is the most challenged and the most challenging incident.
The general reason that is given for this is that because she was being criticised and Ram’s reputation was being spoiled, so for the sake of reputation he abandoned her. But if reputation had been the only cause, then why didn’t he remarry after abandoning Sita? For a king who is overly conscious of appearances, it’s vital to have a trophy queen with oneself. Being a queenless king is hardly a reputation enhancer for anyone.
And Ram was a powerful king of a prosperous kingdom, so he could have married practically any woman of his choice. And yet, he chose never to marry again. Why did he refuse to remarry? Because he wanted to honour the word that he had given to Sita.
Soon after their marriage, Ram had told Sita that he was taking a eka patni vrata, that she would be his only wife. And by honouring that word to Sita, Ram demonstrated that he still considered her so important, that his promise to her was still so important for her that he honoured it. Actually, if he had wanted to remarry, he could have got religious justification for it also.
As a king, he was expected to perform sacrifices, yajnas, for the well-being of his state. And according to tradition, during such sacrifices, the sponsor of the sacrifice was expected to be seated with his wife. So, the king and queen were expected to do these sacrifices together.
The priests who were performing the sacrifices reminded Ram of this requirement and gently exhorted him to marry. Ram respectfully but firmly refused. And to honour the tradition, he had an image of Sita made, a golden image of Sita.
And he had that seated next to her himself and performed the sacrifices. By according this honour to Sita through her image, Ram sent a very powerful message. Message was that he still considered Sita his wife.
And not only did he consider her to be his wife, he considered her to be still pure, so pure that she could participate in rituals that often required exacting standards of purity. And this raises the question, if Ram still loved Sita, considered her his wife, then why did he abandon her? That was because he saw that abandonment as the only way to resolve a troubling ethical dilemma that had confronted him. Whenever we study the epics, we have to, while considering the actions of characters in those epics, consider the cultural context in which they were living.
Divorced from the cultural context, any action can be seriously and grievously misunderstood or misinterpreted. So, now the culture of the Ramayana was a deeply religious and spiritual culture. Such a culture saw a successful life, not just as a life in which one attained lot of material goods in this life, but also as a life in which one attained spiritual growth while going through this life.
Spiritual growth can mean many different things to different people. Within the bhakti traditions context, which is what the Rama tradition is largely about, within that, it is understood that we at our core are spiritual beings, we are souls, and there is a supreme spiritual being, and there is an eternal bond of love between the two. And the purpose of life, the purpose of spiritual growth is to awaken our love for the Supreme Lord.
And this love is awakened through this diligent practise of bhakti yoga. This bhakti yoga involves seeing our relations and possessions as means for sacred service, service to the Supreme and service to all living beings in relationship with the Supreme. Now, one aspect of spiritual growth is the detachment from the material.
So, when we want to focus our consciousness on God, we want to love him, if our thoughts are filled with our loves for the things of this world, we cannot love the Supreme. So, we need to be detached from those things that can impede our spiritual evolution towards the Supreme. And the king has to demonstrate this detachment so that the common citizens will follow the king’s example.
So, Ram, it was his, this duty as a king, wherein he had to exemplify detachment for the good of his citizens, this was his duty as a king. And he had his duty as a husband, that was to protect his wife. And these two duties, the raja dharma and the pati dharma, they conflicted with each other.
And he could, he had the difficult task of trying to resolve this conflict. This was the dilemma that troubled him. So, people, in general, are attracted to material things, they attach to material things.
And they are naturally attracted to those people who have a lot of material comforts, luxuries, those who are materially prosperous. Usually, the king is having phenomenal material prosperity, the wealthiest person in the kingdom. And if such a king, who has the kind of material assets that everyone else dreams about, such a king demonstrates detachment from material things for the purpose of dharma, for the purpose of spiritual growth, then that sends a powerful message to the citizens, to the people in general, that there is something higher than the material.
We are all longing for these material things, this king has these material things and still the king is ready to give them all up. Then whatever he is giving these things all up for, or he is ready to give these things up for, that must be really higher than the material. So, for the king, his duty is not just to administer and provide for the material well-being of the citizens, take care of the administration of the state, but one duty was also to exemplify detachment and dharma by which the citizens feel inspired by the king example to grow spiritually.
So, when Ram, we are discussing this as a backdrop to understand what was the ethical dilemma that Ram faced, the ethical dilemma between his raja dharma and his pati dharma. So, when Ram heard that the citizens were raising questions about Sita s purity, he felt distressed, he felt agonised, he felt mortified. Personally, for himself, he had no doubt about Sita s character.
He knew that Sita had not even an impure desire in her heart. She had not gone with Ravana. Ravana had abducted her against her will and Ravana had been cursed that if he violated a woman forcibly, he would fall dead.
So, that is why he had not violated Sita, but he had tried to gain her consent and he had tried two strategies. He had tried to tempt her and he had tried to threaten her. Tempt her by flaunting his opulence, showing off his phenomenal prosperity in Lanka, it was called the golden city at that time, and by threatening her that he would have her cooked and eaten for breakfast if she did not consent.
And he had a whole team of ferocious looking, ghastly looking, deformed demonesses who would all ultimately threaten Sita. And through it all, Sita had heroically maintained her purity, resisting Ravana s temptations and braving his threats. Knowing that Sita had been pure, still knowing that people would question her purity, so Ram had arranged for Agnipariksha and through that Agnipariksha, Sita had emerged glorious.
Not only had she come out unscathed, but even the gods such as Agni and Brahma, they had praised Sita’s purity. Spotless character! Now, Ram had done all this to demonstrate Sita’s purity for the world and yet people were criticising. And when people were criticising, thus Ram realised that he just had no alternative, except what else could he do to prove Sita’s purity to the world? The gods themselves had demonstrated, a prior sacrifice had demonstrated it.
Now, if he had stayed with Sita, then that would come off as his being overly attached to a wife whom people considered impure. If he went after the people who were accusing her, he could easily do that. He had the king and they were citizens who had no power as compared to him.
But he would come off as so attached as to be vindictive towards them. And thus, he felt that the only way to resolve this dilemma was to send Sita away. His sending Sita away was not a punishment, it was a sacrifice.
It is not because he questioned her purity, but because he realised this was the only way to silence the rumours and the accusations that were going on. The heavy heart that he did it, it was a matter of great distress for him. And Sita, when she came to know about it, she was devastated herself.
But still, she accepted because she understood her lord’s heart. She did not bear lifelong resentment towards Ram. When Ram arranged for Lakshman to send Sita off, to drop her off at in the forest near Valmiki’s hermitage.
Sita thereafter stayed at Valmiki’s hermitage and there were elderly female hermits who took care of her just like her own daughter. She was their own daughter. And when she had children, she did not fill her son’s mind with poison about how bad their father was.
She accepted the role of a single mother that was thrust on her. Of course, she was not a single mother the way there are single mothers now. She did not have to go out and earn a livelihood or alone take care of her children.
But still, she gracefully accepted this as a sacrifice. And in this connection, sometimes people say that Ram banished Sita. Banishment is not the best word to describe what happened.
Banishment is a form of punishment which is just one level below execution. And that was what had happened to Ram when he was sent out. It is without any arrangement for food, clothing, and shelter to go out deep into the forest.
Although Sita had been sent to the forest, he was still in the Valmiki’s ashram which was in Ram’s kingdom. So Ram did not entirely reject, abandon or neglect his duty towards Sita. He considered his Rajdharma to be his more important duty and set an example of detachment.
But because Sita was still overall in the kingdom of Ayodhya, so she was still indirectly under his protection. And both Ram and Sita actually performed their partners in a sacrifice in which they both sacrificed for a higher cause. Now, this mood of sacrifice permeates the entire Ramayana.
It is not just Sita who sacrifices over here. All the characters in the Ramayana, none of them actually fight for their rights. That is not the mood of the epic.
Rather than fighting for one’s rights, demanding one’s rights, the mood is to sacrifice for a higher cause. When Ram was about to be coronated as the heir apparent and thereafter the king, and at that time suddenly he, because of some conspiracy against him, he was not only disinherited but he was exiled. Now, Ram could very well have protested.
What wrong have I done? Why am I being sent into the forest like I was a common criminal? All because of some undocumented promise made by my father to my stepmother. So, wow, unfair all this is. Now, Ram did not protest like this.
He sacrificed his royal comforts and his right as heir for the higher cause of honouring his father’s worth. The same spirit was exhibited by Sita also. Sita, she did not demand that, oh, I was born in royalty.
I was brought up in comfort. How can I go and live in a forest? Actually, Ram told her to live in Ayodhya. But Sita insisted that I will come with you.
She did not demand her right out of comfort. Rather, she sacrificed along with her husband for the sake of service to her husband. This mood of sacrifice is even more in Lakshman.
You could say Ram and Sita were bound in holy matrimony. So, it is expected of the wife to stick by her husband through thick and thin. But Lakshman, as a younger brother, was not necessarily expected to sacrifice to that magnitude for Ram’s sake.
Yet he insisted that he will go with Ram and Sita and he will serve them. And the same mood of sacrifice was exhibited even by Bharat. Bharat could have said that, I did not do anything wrong to get this kingdom.
But I have got the kingdom and I will rule it. No! He tried his best to get Ram back and when Ram did not come back, he got Ram’s paduka, his sandals back and he put them on the throne and he sat below. And he lived in a hut outside Ayodhya in Nandigram.
And he ate very simple fare and lived like a mendicant just the way Ram was living, as an ascetic. So, this is the mood of sacrifice that is there throughout the Ramayana. And in the final, in the act of Ram forsaking Sita, again there is the same mood of sacrifice.
Now, in all these cases, when there is sacrifice done, the characters, they do not see themselves as victims of injustice. They see themselves as users of sacrifice for a higher cause. So, those who portray Sita as a victim of an unjust social order or of a judgemental husband, they misunderstand the glory of Sita in accepting the very heavy cross that had been put on her.
And further, Ram is not a victimiser at all. The best way parallel to understand Ram’s act of sacrifice is actually to compare it with Dashrath’s sacrifice, where Dashrath sent Ram away. Similarly, Ram sent Sita away.
Dashrath had absolutely no desire to send Ram away. It broke his heart. He wanted to give all the best comforts of life to Ram.
Similarly, Ram had no desire to send Sita away. It broke his heart. He wanted to give the best of comforts to his wife, who had accompanied him to the forest for 13 years, living as an ascetic and then living as an abductee for last one year.
And he had to send her away, just as Dashrath sacrificed for a higher cause by sending Ram away. Similarly, Ram sacrificed for a higher cause by sending Sita away. Just as Dashrath sending Ram away was not a punishment at all.
Similarly, Ram sending Sita away was not a punishment at all. It was an act of stoic sacrifice that was performed by both of them. Just as father had to sacrifice by sending son away, husband had to sacrifice by sending wife away.
Now some people portray this as injustice towards women. That for some unfounded suspicion, a woman was cast away. Now if we see, is this what Ram did to Sita? Is this a standard, a benchmark by which all women are to be judged? That is not at all the mood of the Ramayana.
And that we can understand by looking at other incidents of how Ram dealt with everyone, including women. There was Ahalya, because of some accidental incastity, she had been petrified, turned into stone. And did Ram abandon her? Ram actually mercifully liberated her from the curse.
Similarly, Sabari, she was an outcast woman. And did Ram keep a distance from her? No! Ram accepted the fruit that she offered her and thus she became glorified as one who could offer berries to Ram. Tara, the wife of Vali, became a widow when Vali was killed.
And what did Ram do? Ram arranged for Tara to have a respectable position in the Kishkindha royal family. So, we see time and time again that Ram is very accommodating towards everyone, including women. If we consider in light of that cultural context, what Ram did was radically accommodating.
And that same Supreme Lord comes as Lakshmana, as Krishna later. And what does Krishna do? He is even more accommodating. Actually, Krishna, he did exactly the opposite of what Ram did.
How exactly that was opposite? That’s a whole different story, which we will discuss now. So, once when Krishna was in Dwarka, a messenger came on behalf of several kings who had been imprisoned by a demon named Bhaumasur. And when they described the tormented condition, Krishna immediately went and he fought heroically with the demon.
Bhaumasur killed him and released all the kings. During the rescue and release operation, he found many princesses who had been abducted by this demon. Now, this demon had his own peculiar idea of getting religious piety.
So, although he had abducted these princesses, he had not violated them. His plan was that in a macabre act of sacrifice, he was planning to kill all the kings and offer them as sacrifice to a goddess. And then after that, he was going to take these princesses for himself.
So, still, although they had not been physically violated, just because they had been abducted, in the eyes of society, they would be considered fallen. So, when Krishna rescued them, they were grateful to Him for having rescued them, but then they said, please deliver us from the fallen state that we are in. So, Krishna asked them, what do you want exactly? He says, please accept us as your maidservants.
Now, it was their humility that he said, please accept us as your maidservants. So, Krishna, he accepted them not just as maidservants, but made them as queens. And by making them as queens, what did he do? He, far from their status as a fallen condition, he elevated them to the status of being queens in one of the most powerful dynasties of those times.
Now, if you compare the situation between what has happened to Krishna, how Krishna dealt with these princesses and how Ram dealt with Sita. Now, Ram asked Sita to go through a Giri Pariksha. He did not ask these princesses to go through any such pariksha, any such trial by fire or anything like that.
No test to demand their purity, for them to prove their purity. In Ram, he was already married to Sita and thus he had an obligation to her. In contrast, he had no relationship and no real obligation to these princesses, but he accepted an obligation to them.
Ram was not only married to Sita, Sita was also already carrying his children. So, she was pregnant. So, Ram had a further obligation, not only to wife, to also child.
And he had no such obligation to these princesses, still he accepted this obligation. So, why the difference? First of all, the difference itself indicates that the Supreme Lord is not a judgemental Lord who will abandon someone just based on some suspicion. There is something higher going on over here.
So, the Lord’s activities are called as pastimes, Leela. And Leela is often done for multiple purposes. So, in his Leela as Ram, he demonstrates throughout the principle of sacrifice.
And in his Leela as Krishna, here he is demonstrating the principle of mercy. So, different pastimes demonstrate different principles. And rather than thinking that certain details of the pastimes are absolute and they are to be replicated, that is not the mood of the Vedic tradition.
There is the essential mood that is to be understood. And that mood is what is going to serve as inspiration for everyone. Now, if we consider broadly, there is practically no book that has inspired India for millennia as deeply as the Ramayana.
Now, if the Ramayana’s inspiration had been primarily to be judgemental and to reject women just because of some minor suspicion, then that would have been reflected in Indian society. But actually, Indian society has among the strongest family bonds in the world. Today when families are crumbling all over the world, still the family structure is very strong.
And one reason for the strength of the family structure is the culture of selflessness and sacrifice. So, what the Ramayana is meant to teach us is not just judgmentality or rejection based on unfounded suspicion. The essential lesson that permeates the whole epic is the principle of sacrifice.
And it is this sacrifice, this mood of sacrifice that the Ramayana teaches. And that is what has inspired people for millennia. So, when a family has a mood of selflessness and sacrifice, when people are ready to sacrifice for others, then that is what actually strengthens relationships.
And that is how the Ramayana has inspired deeper relationships for millennia. Now, in addition to this ethos of sacrifice, there are other lessons also which are to be taught, which are taught from this past time. And what are the other lessons? Those lessons are twofold.
There are esoteric explanations that are given. One is that, one is based on past life explanations. Long ago, there were some deadly demons who had been harassing the denizens of the universe and they had been attacking the devatas.
So, devatas, after a long fight, got the upper hand and the demons started fleeing. And they came to the hermitage of Bhrigu Muni. Bhrigu Muni was not there at that time.
So, they sought the shelter of his wife, Khyati. In a case of mistaken compassion, Khyati said, I will protect you. And the devatas came and told, led by Indra, they said that these demons are deadly and we cannot let them go scot-free.
They have to be punished. Otherwise, they will break havoc in the universe. So, Khyati said, no! They are under my shelter.
I will protect them. Now, when devatas tried to attack, she used her mystic powers and started threatening the devatas itself. And then, devatas appealed to Vishnu.
And Vishnu realised that Khyati had just become so animated by the idea of misdirected compassion that she could not be pacified. She could not be reasoned with. And reluctantly at that time, in order to ensure that the hard-won battle against the asuras was not lost because of her misplaced compassion, Vishnu used his uttarsana chakra to kill Khyati.
And thereafter, the demons were killed. When Bhrigu Muni came to know about this, he was furious and he told Vishnu, because you have my wife, you have caused me separation from my wife, therefore I curse you that you will be born on earth and you will have to be separated from your wife. So, the enactment of that curse was the backdrop because of which Ram and Sita had to be separated.
Now, of course, Vishnu is supreme and he doesn’t have to accept anyone’s curse. But as a part of his leela, out of deference towards the sage Bhrigu, Ram accepted the curse. And further, Ram also facilitated his own leela through this curse.
How is that? There is the principle of viraha bhakti. Viraha bhakti means devotion in separation. Devotion is intensified when the object of devotion in the Lord is present and devotion is further intensified when the object of devotion is not present.
Now, separation does to devotion what wind does to fire. When wind comes and the fire is big, then the fire spreads more and more. Similarly, separation intensifies devotion.
And in the separation of Ram and Sita, Sita experienced the summit of devotion which is viraha bhakti. If we consider the context of the Ramayana, the Ramayana starts with a question by Valmiki to Narada, who is an ideal person? If we consider a man who abandons his pregnant wife, we would not consider such a person ideal by any means. But a person who is ready to sacrifice for a higher cause throughout his life, even if that sacrifice means separation from his pregnant wife, that person is extraordinary.
And if both husband and wife and the whole family at large is willing to sacrifice for a higher cause, then that sacrificing family can offer endless inspiration for millions for millennia. And that is what the Ramayana does. Thank you.