How Lord Rama is maryada-purushottama

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
No. I would have guessed you. This is the first question by Valmiki to Narad Rishi.
This is the second verse of the Ramayana 1.1.2 where Valmiki Rishi is asking Narad Muni who is the person who is endowed with glorious qualities and our next several verses he will go out listing the glorious qualities of the person whom he is seeking or the person with glorious qualities that he is seeking. So, normally every scripture has its own distinctive mood and in that distinctive mood is defined the fundamental focus of the whole narrative. So, who is the ideal human being is the defining question of the Valmiki Ramayana and the purpose of this question is at one level to reveal the glorious character of Lord Ram.
Lord Ram is as it said Maryada Purushottama Purusha means human being. Tama is darkness in a philosophical sense the word Tama refers to Tamoguna but in a more general sense the word Tama refers to the entire material existence which is in darkness Tamasoma Jyotirgama that is not referring to rise from the mode of ignorance upwards to the mode of goodness although Krishna does use the word Prakasham as a characteristic of the mode of goodness so Prakasham Jyoti can be said to be similar both refer to light or illumination so Tamasoma Jyotirgama may seem to be referring to rising from the mode of ignorance to the mode of goodness however the same aphorism is also coupled with Hrithyuma that don’t stay in the realm of immortality don’t stay in the realm of mortality go rise to immortality and even in the mode of goodness immortality is not possible so immortality is possible only when we transcend the modes and come to the spiritual level of existence so for that level of existence one does need to come to the to go beyond the modes so Purushottama especially when it is used to refer to the supreme lord the word Tama Tama doesn’t refer to Tamoguna, Tama refers to the whole material existence which is often which is actually filled with its material existence so it is filled with ignorance so Purushottama means transcending or beyond so that Purusha who is beyond the ignorance of material existence that is Purushottama now in this world some people may also have the name Purushottama it is not that they are automatically beyond the darkness of material existence but the idea is by having those names they as well as others can remember lord Purushottama and can also become purified by remembering him and thereby gradually rise to becoming Purushottama so lord Ram is Purushottama but what kind of Purushottama? He is Maryada Purushottama in the Bhagavad Gita in the 15th chapter which is called as Purushottam Yoga so there it talks about how there are two Purushas this concept is talked about first in 13th chapter and it is elaborated later in the 15th chapter so in 13th chapter Krishna talks about how one Purusha is caught in material existence and another Purusha is the observer who is beyond material existence and that is talked about in 13.22 and 23 and then after that in 15.16 Krishna clarifies how that Purushottama and Paramatma are the same and that both of them are actually he himself Uptama Purushatvanya Paramatmetu Dharuta Yolokatre Mavishyodhibhartavya Ishvara Ismarcharmati Doham Akshanadapichottamah Athosloke Vedecham Pratitapurushottama so first Krishna says that there are two kinds of living beings that the conditioned and the liberated that’s 15.16 15.17 says that the Purushottama is beyond both of these and that Purushottama is the maintainer of the world and the Dandapurusha who is beyond all of these and then Krishna says in 18th verse that actually that person who is beyond both is me and I am celebrated as Purushottama so Purushottama refers to the supreme lord who is beyond the conditioned and the liberated and then there is Maryada Purushottama Maryada means limitation restriction now we know that there is no restriction on the lord no one can control the lord Sarveshwareshwara the lord is known as he is the controller of all controllers that’s what Bhaktanath Thakur refers to him in Vaishnava song Bhagavad Gita also refers to Krishna as Deva Deva there are many gods but he is the god of all the gods so how can that person who is the controller of everyone be limited restricted by anything how can that person have any Maryada so the word Maryada generally refers to the limitations the restrictions the boundaries that are set by etiquette, by structure by different kinds of norms in society the lord is beyond all such things he is the supreme lord but when he descends in this world how do we know him, he performs various leelas and the leelas that he performs often feature him though he is the supreme lord the leelas feature him acting as not the supreme lord so therefore the word Maryada Purushottama which is used to refer to the supreme lord refers ultimately to his being the Purushottama who is not bound by any restrictions any boundaries any Maryada but who voluntarily chooses to accept Maryada so that he can set an example for the rest of the society for the rest of humanity for the rest of the universe so that is the distinctiveness of lord Ram that Maryada Purushottama Krishna is known as Leela Purushottama Purushottama now every manifestation of the lord has its own distinctive mood distinctive role distinctive purpose and distinctive rasa distinctive flavor so the rasa that lord Ram demonstrates is of Maryada Maryada the supreme lord how he acts according to rules so that he will be able to demonstrate an example for the rest of society and one of the aspects of his Maryada is that at least as it is revealed in the Valmiki Ramayan is that he does not claim to be god directly so we will see repeatedly in the Valmiki Ramayan that when lord Ram is doing heroic deeds which even the devatas are not capable of such as killing great demons eventually he of course kills Ravana but before that also he kills formidable demons 14000 demons at Janasthan Kharadushan and their associates the army that has been stationed by Ravana over there these are demons which even the demigods have found difficult to suppress so lord Ram does that and yet after doing that while interacting with the sages or even with the devatas he maintains the position of deference deference means respectfulness so even when Ravana is killed in swarga the devatas appear and the devatas say Indra asks what blessing can we give you now actually lord Ram himself is the blessing that the devatas had sought the devatas had been terrorized by the atrocities of Ravana and they along with Brahma had besieged Vishnu for restorative incarnation and incarnation would restore universal order at that time they knew that in response lord Ram had appeared but they also knew the mood of lord Ram which was to act as a Mariyada Purushottam so acting as a Mariyada Purushottam he does not directly demonstrate his divinity even when he performs activities which are directly divine so atleast in the Ramlila that is depicted in Valmiki Ramayana there are no direct prayers offered to lord Ram there are definitely prayers offered to lord Ram by various bhaktas which come in the later retellings of the Ramayana but those retellings are to relish lord Ram’s pastimes as the supreme lord being relished by devotees but the Valmiki Ramayana focuses on how lord Ram is the ideal human being and as the ideal human being he is not directly acting as god and still let’s look at with this background understanding this so Valmiki Rishi doesn’t want to create such a huge distance between the readers and the ideal person who is to be the ideal human being doesn’t want to create such a great distance that the distance may seem unsurpassable so that means of course the activities that lord Ram does are non-limitable not only that they can’t be imitated we can’t dry up the ocean with our eyes we can’t cause the ocean to boil up and come to the point of drying with our eyes but the point is that by showing how this person had extraordinarily wonderful qualities one can feel attracted to love and to try to emulate that model and of course when those same past terms are explained by the devotees then that can inspire us also to feel attracted to this person not only as an ideal human being but also as the supreme lord to whom we would like to give our heart so this works at various levels the interaction between lord Ram and his devotees is as demonstrated in the Ramayana is very endearing and within that endearing reciprocations we will try to look at lord Ram’s wonderful qualities how the qualities which Valmiki Rishi asks about in the start of the Ramayana are demonstrated in the narrative of the Ramayana and the prominent among those qualities will be the quality of how he is Maryada Purushottama