Naam Ramayana 16 – Neither age nor species is a barrier for bhakti

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Nama Ramayan Grudradhipa Samsevita Rama Panchavati Tata Sustita Rama so Grudradhipa Grudradhipa Grudra refers to vulture Grudradhipa refers to the king of vultures this refers to Jatayu Grudradhipa Samsevita Rama Samsevita means he was Lord Ram was served by the king of vulture Jatayu and then it is described Panchavati Tata Sustita Rama Panchavati Tata so on the Panchavati he became situated he made a kutir for himself and he started living over there now here it is described that Lord Ram first was in Chitrakoot Chitrakoot Adriniketana Rama then he entered into Dandakarana Dandakavanna Jinnapavanna Rama and then within the broad Dandaka forest there was a place called Panchavati and there he has become situated so Panchavati is still a geographical place in Nasik and although some skeptics try to reduce the Ramayana and the Mahabharata simply to mythology there is a substantial historical evidence that many of the past times in the Mahabharata and Ramayana did happen and the geography of the country of Bharat Varsha of India is imbued with sacred overtones and that’s why correlating the geography of what is politically known as India with the geography that is described in the epics, it is not an exercise in religious imagination rather it is an exercise in unveiling in discovering in realizing the the immanent sanctity of the holy places in the sacred land of Bharat Varsha so now so is a vulture Jatayu and Dashrath Maharaj were already familiar with each other they were friends Dashrath Maharaj, he was a king but he had, he used to go to forests for hunting and he had befriended Jatayu and Jatayu had almost like a fraternal disposition towards Ram and his family so when Jatayu saw that Ram has come to the forest with his wife Sita and his brother Lakshman he came to know the reason why he was living and he said that I would like to, you have come to my forest so you are like my guest so he considered Ram to be like a son he said I would like to offer you hospitality what can I do for you so Lord Ram was gratified by the courteousness shown by this vulture Jatayu and he told him that I know you are grateful I am grateful for the hospitality that you are offering we don’t need anything right now but my request to you would be to stay if it is possible for you to stay in the vicinity of where we are living so that in case both I and Lakshman have to go away somewhere at the same time then you can protect Sita at that time so that’s what is, that’s how Jatayu took up that service Jatayu as the very name suggests Jatayu Ayu means age Jatayu means one who had who was quite old now we may wonder that did he have this name when he was young also or did he get the name after he got old no that name cannot Jatayu as a name can also be a benediction it is not just one who is old it can also refer to one who will live for a long time it’s like we have the name Chiranjee we have a Ashirvad the benediction that is given in the Vedic culture Chiranjeevi Bhava that live for a long time Chiran for a long long time you may live so like that Jatayu can both be a benediction as well as a description so when he was young it was a benediction that may you live for a long time and when he became elderly then it was a description of his current status as an aged bird although he was aged still he was a heroic fighter and his heroism in fact his martyrdom will be revealed in the Mahabharata later in the Ramayana later so here we see that the lord is reciprocating affectionately with his even a vulture like a Jatayu and he is accepting service for him that actually demonstrates the universality of bhakti even among birds there are said to be birds which are in goodness passion and ignorance and vultures are usually considered to be in ignorance because often their attitude is that they feast on corpses and though they fly high they look down and they look down for corpses so which are not particularly which is not a particularly elevated taste so vultures are often representatives of of very low taste no matter how high they go and in that sense vultures are often spoken of in less than charitable ways but the Ramayana is quite refreshingly ecumenical catholic universalistic in its depiction of Jatayu as having a disposition of service towards lord Ram so in bhakti the dispensation of the body is not as important as the disposition of the heart dispensation of the body means how the body is made whether the body is of a Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra or the body is of even a non-human being and even if that may be a Tamas, what is considered normally a Tamasic non-human being that is a vulture but if that vulture has a spiritual disposition as a devotional disposition then that vulture also becomes glorious and the same way in this world whether a person is physically very attractive or not that often makes a lot of difference in the respect, attention and success that the person achieves but in the spiritual life what matters is the disposition of our heart and we can all cultivate a devotional disposition and attract the lord’s mercy and thus make our heart a place of his eternal residence thus making our