Hope always perseveres for a devotee even when logic or reason falters – Lessons from Ramayana

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hope what happens is hope perseveres even when logic or reason falters. The journey of love is a very is can be a very troubling journey.
Why? Because whatever we do in this world is difficult. Even material relationship to maintain is not easy. Even if two people care for each other still the world comes in the way in so many ways and so many misunderstandings come up and unless people are really serious about the relationship they can’t continue.
So the same applies to our love for the Lord also. We need hope. Sometimes everything can seem so dark and we need to persevere.
I’m doing so many things. I’m trying to serve. I’m trying to purify myself but externally there are problems internally there are impurities.
Why? How should I continue? So we see that Sita had that hope. Now she she had out of great sense of beautifulness gone with Ram to the forest. She didn’t have to the sentence of exile was for Ram not for Sita but she had gone voluntarily and then she had been abducted from there.
So when she had been abducted it seemed almost hopeless. Now how would Ram even know where she has gone? How would Ram find her? How would Ram regain her? And she remained firm. From all logical perspectives you could say that Sita should have given herself to Ram.
Now Ram had failed to protect her and now what could she do? She was in Ravan’s kingdom and Ravan offered her comfort and opulence and she could have submitted but she didn’t. In one sense Sita’s resistance to Ram Sita sorry to Ravan was was not logical. So she said what to speak of offering myself to you.
I will not even live in your palace. As long as my lord is in exile I am also in exile. As long as he is living in a forest I will also live in a forest.
And therefore he put her in Ashokvatika. You see this is the garden. This was Ravan’s favorite park.
And that’s where he was placed. He placed her. So she maintained hope that yes my lord will come.
And that is now Ravan threatened her in various ways and Ravan told her that now because of a curse Ravan couldn’t take her against her will but he told her that I’ll give you one year and if you don’t come to me if you don’t offer yourself to me I am going to enjoy you. If I don’t enjoy you he was Rakshasa if I sometimes use the word carnal desires carnal refers to fleshy desires related to flesh. So we can say carnivorous animal is one who the animals which eat flesh but carnal desires refer to desires of flesh that are sexual desires.
So he said if I can’t enjoy you carnally then I will enjoy you carnivorously. That means he said I will Rakshasa eats even human beings. He is a cannibal.
So he said I will have you cooked for my breakfast. You are so small that you won’t be one meal for me also. I’ll eat you for my breakfast.
So he threatened her. Now there are various forms of death and in today’s world cannibalism is outlawed but you know cannibalism is it’s ghastly to even imagine not only that we are going to die but somebody going to rip out our flesh and eat our flesh. It’s one of the worst deaths that can even be imagined.
So he threatened that but Sita remained firm. We see Sita did not even offer a glance in his direction. Sometimes just eye contact indicates a certain level of interest and reciprocation.
So Sita didn’t even choose to have eye contact with him and then her hope was not lost. Against all odds Hanuman leapt across the ocean faced all dangers and came to her. Her lord had sent a messenger and he had given a message of his love and expression of his love and she sent her love back to him by offering a signet to Hanuman.
So now sometimes we may feel our life is hopeless. There are so many things that are going wrong in our lives. Sometimes we feel that when adversities hit us this problem and that problem then I may feel that at least God should be there with me.
I pray to God and he answers my prayers. But sometimes what happens when not only adversities hit us but our prayers seem to go unanswered and it’s one thing that we pray for something and it doesn’t happen. That is one level of prayers being unanswered.
But it’s even worse when our heart itself feels empty. When we start feeling dry and we start feeling that God is far away from us. So this is like a time of ultimate hopelessness.
We are facing problems in the material world. God doesn’t seem to be a resource to help us to deal with the problems and at least God will be there to solace me. But he doesn’t seem to be there like that also.
Our heart feels dry and empty. So it’s easy to give up hope at that time. There are many different kinds of crisis that the world may give up before us.
But what is extremely unbearable is if there is a crisis of failure externally and then there is a crisis of faith internally. If the two come together how do we move forward? It is extremely difficult. So how do we maintain hope at that time? That’s where reason may not work.
So what works at that? We need to understand that this is the exam time. This is, what do you mean by exam time? That a teacher speaks constantly in the class. This is how this is to be done.
This is how it is to be done. Suddenly the teacher becomes silent. That doesn’t mean that the teacher has rejected the student.
It just means that the student is now being tested by the teacher. So when God seems to have become silent in our heart, that doesn’t mean he has rejected us. That means that all that he has, all that his presence, the sweetness of remembering him, all that we have learned by that, this is the time to apply for us now.
This is the time to apply. And just as a student passes the exam, the teacher comes forward and congratulates and teacher promotes the student. So similarly, if we pass through the phases when God seems far away, then we will discover that God has come nearer to us.
Rather we have gone closer to him. And that increased proximity, increased intimacy will be a lasting gain. So the feeling that God is far away, that is short-lived.
But the eventual closeness with God, that is long-lasting. And that’s why we have to maintain hope. In the Bhakti Rasamana Sindhu, it is said, the devotee says that to the Lord that even if the Lord comes and says, your case is hopeless.
No matter how much you practice bhakti, you are not going to get purified of your conditionings. You are not going to come to me. The devotee says, no, still I will continue my bhakti.
That is the asha baddha. The devotee is bound to have hope. There is always hope for us.
So when we are down to nothing, then God is up to something. He has some plan. We just may not be able to perceive it right now.
But he is there. He is working. And in being reduced to something, we realize how God is everything.
Namo Akinchanavittaya Nivritta Gunavrittaye Atmaramaya Shantaya Kaivalya Pattaya Namaha Kunti Maharani prays, Namo Akinchanavittaya My dear Lord, You are the wealth of those who are wealthless. So yes, sometimes everything else around us seems to be falling apart. That’s what happened to Draupadi.
Nobody else could protect her. That’s what happened to Sita. Nobody could protect her.
But even when Sita was separated from Ram, she was remembering Ram intensely in her heart. And she realized that without Ram, nothing is of value. So that conviction, that realization is precious.
And the Lord gave that realization even to the Gopis. When he went away, the Gopis’ love for the Lord after he went away from them in Kailasa rose to an unprecedented, peerless level. And the Lord said, this was my purpose in going away.