Rama mandir and 4 kinds of reawakening

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. The inauguration of the Ram temple through the Prana Pratishtha in the historic place of Ayodhya has created an extraordinary awakening within India. Not just among Indians in India, but Indians all over the world and even non-Indians have taken notice, some positively, some many positively, some negatively.
What it signifies primarily is a reawakening. Some skeptical people may say that in India there are so many temples and why do you need one more temple and why make such a you and cry about one particular temple. So I’ll talk about this from four perspectives signified by the acronym CAPS.
So a CAP is what somebody wears on their head and CAPS refers to the multiple ways in which this particular achievement is bringing about a change in the consciousness that’s going to provide shelter, that’s going to provide a crowning symbol that’s going to bring about a transformation. So CAPS is cultural. There is an incredible awakening of bhakti and fervor that has few precedents in recent historical memory or maybe even in distant historical memory.
The extent of celebrations with the chanting of the names of Lord Ram, with kirtans, with people spontaneously crowding not just to Ayodhya to have darshan of Ramlala but also all over the country and indeed beyond the country of India celebrating by lighting candles, lighting lamps is extraordinary. This cultural awakening is actually a reawakening because such bhakti was an integral part of the fabric of India. No other book has influenced the human mind as much as the Ramayana.
No other literature has in fact any parallels in entire world history in terms of one book shaping the lives and minds of over a billion people for millennia. So this is the legacy of Ramayana and that cultural legacy is being celebrated in multifarious ways on the occasion of the construction of the temple and the inauguration of the deity through the Pranapratishtha. Beyond that, A is the architectural reawakening.
India had so many holy places which were marked by beautiful, exquisite magnificent temples. Unfortunately, intolerant invaders targeted these temples and destroyed them so that they could proclaim their religious hegemony. So much of architectural wonder and treasure is forever lost because of that.
While the civilizational wounds caused by the past cannot be corrected and certainly the descendants of those who caused these shouldn’t be targeted in any way. Still, India is the only place in the world where civilizations that existed thousands of years ago is continuing even today with a striking level of continuity. In today’s Egypt, there is practically nothing of the pharaohs.
In today’s Greece, there is nothing of the Greek civilization of the past. There is no agitation to build, say, a temple to Jupiter or Venus over there because those are not deities that are worshipped anyway over there. So, the point is that there is a remarkable civilizational continuity and those places which are of incredibly important historical significance for this historically resilient civilization need to have their glory restored.
So, for example, Ayodhya is the place where Lord Ram appeared millennia ago and a temple over there which was there for thousands of years which was destroyed and now after 500 years of endeavors has now been reconstructed. This signifies a turning point maybe even an epoch-making point in the architectural reawakening of India. Since independence, many extraordinary temples have been built in India and outside India.
Srila Prabhupada was a pioneer in building magnificent temples in India and subsequently many others have built temples all over. The temple in Ayodhya is a temple that has no parallels in terms of its sheer historical significance to heal the wounds of the past and to assert the civilizational confidence through a visible, tangible, remarkable architectural symbol. The third is patriotic.
That rather than seeing this simply as a pursuit of a political agenda or simply a pursuit of an divisive agenda the icon of Lord Ram has the potential to unify everyone. Lord Ram’s pastimes depict how his potential for unity, for bringing about unification expands beyond even human society where monkeys and bears and squirrels and birds like vultures were unified under one banner of service. India is an extraordinarily diverse country not just in terms of religion but even region, even caste, even ethnicity to some extent.
And yet, Lord Ram can and indeed is the great unifier. So the patriotic sentiment that has been triggered among millions and millions of people is a reflection of India’s rising stature on the global geopolitical stage. But it is also a reawakening of the realization that India has a journey in the world to fulfill.
That India, which had survived several hundreds of years of foreign invasion and had not only survived but had still thrived at least financially so that before the British invasion, India had nearly one-fourth of the world’s GDP if we calculate in today’s terms. That India is now reawakening to its own glory. But the glory of India is not fascistic.
It is not an intolerant glory. It arises from an inclusive ethos wherein the prosperity of India is shared with others. So on the occasion of the Republic Day, we can contemplate how the patriotic sentiments that have arisen today are reflected not just in the sense of attraction for our own country but also for what the country represents, for what the country offers, for what the country can be in the future.
The Republic Day of India marks the time when the Indian Constitution was established and India became a republic. So India became free from the yokes of political rule and established a rule according to its own values. The manifestation of those values is still a work in progress and the establishment of the Ram Temple is a significant quantum leap in the unfolding of the values that make Bharat Bharat.
And that brings us to the last part of the acronym caps. S is spirituality. Spiritual reawakening is probably the most important reawakening that is required if all the previous reawakenings are to be sustained and are to lead to a significant transformation.
Sri Prabhupada said that there is no use of crying for world peace unless there is an awakening of divine consciousness within the individual. Lord Ram signifies how even when wars have to be fought with people who are incorrigibly wicked, with people who are not ready to give up their wickedness, even then those wars don’t need to be escalated beyond what is necessary. Ram demonstrated that his purpose was not to destroy the Rakshasa dynasty.
It was only to free that dynasty from the control of a demoniac ruler. Lord Ram did not annex Lanka. Instead, he simply made Lanka a part of he arranged for Lanka to be ruled by another king from the same dynasty.
His purpose was not territorial expansion. His purpose was restoration of social, political and ethical order. When we too can take this example of Lord Ram and raise our consciousness toward the spiritual level thereby we recognize that the establishment of the Ram temple is not meant in a game to give us some brownie points, be they cultural or architectural or patriotic or political but it is meant to inspire us to raise our own consciousness, to purify our own hearts, to inspire us to become instruments in the hands of the divine so that each one of us can fulfill the destiny that God has for us.
The Bhagavad Gita describes that we all can become instruments in the hands of the divine and when we do this then each one of us can find within us talents and abilities that we didn’t know we had and we can attract from outside resources and opportunities that we could only have imagined and thus we all can contribute to playing our part in bringing about the order of virtue. Ram Rajya comes not just by establishing Ram in a temple, it comes by establishing Ram in our hearts and by re-envisioning our own identity as spiritual as beings who are eternally parts of the divine are meant to become instruments in the hands of the divine. It is this awakening that can transform our hearts, our lives and our world.
So to summarize the awakening of the Ram temple, the establishment of the Ram temple is a way by which each one of us can experience an awakening not just at a cultural level where Ram Bhakti is being practiced and memory of Ram is being awakened more and more, not just at an architectural level where the historical wounds of the past and the resecration of the temples are healed by a visible, tangible magnificent symbol of a temple being constructed in a place of incredible historical importance, not just patriotic in terms of recognition of the significant role of sharing and contributing that India Bharat can play in the world of tomorrow but also in terms of spiritual awakening whereby we re-envision ourselves seeing our core identity beyond culture, beyond architecture, beyond patriotism to our souls which are all meant to be parts of the divine and are meant to be part of the divine plan in making our heart, our life and our world better Thank you