Ramayana characters 2 – Kaikeyi 2

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So, we have been discussing about Kaikeyi in the Spotlight on the Ramayana series and we discussed two incidents.
Kaikeyi is being influenced by Mantra and Kaikeyi becoming impervious to the leadings and the persuasions by everybody else. So, blind belief and baseless doubts, those were the two themes that we were discussing. And she had blind belief in Mantra and she had baseless doubts about everyone else.
She felt that as if everybody who tried to beg her or persuade her to give up her plan, her evil scheme, she started seeing every such person as if that person was in cahoots in a conspiracy to dispossess her of what she imagined to be her rights to have Bharat as the king and to be the king’s mother eventually. So, we will discuss two more incidents today and analyse this theme a little bit deeper. Bharat’s return and his discovery of Kaikeyi’s misdeed and the meeting of Kaikeyi with Ram in the forest.
So, after Lord Ram went to the forest, Dashrath Maharaj being heartbroken not just due to separation from Ram but also due to the agony of having himself been because of that separation, couldn’t carry on with his life and he left his body. So, this became a state of emergency for the country because normally when an influential or a powerful person in a position departs, that person has to have a will about who the successor would be and the successor should be there to take over the affairs immediately. But the whole thing that happened so unexpectedly, Lord Ram’s departure for the forest and thereafter Dashrath Maharaj’s departure to the next world that his two sons Ram and Lakshman were in one of forest and Bharat and Kshatraman were elsewhere.
So, in a state of emergency, Vashishtamuni became the temporary in-charge and he had fleet-footed messengers sent to Bharat to inform him to come back immediately. They decided that it would be difficult for Bharat to bear this heartbreaking news alone at a distance and therefore they told him to just convey the message that he was required for an urgent business immediately in Ayodhya. Bharat came back feeling premonitions that some great disaster had befallen Ayodhya and finally after days of travel when he reached into Ayodhya he found that Ayodhya which had been a bustling, cheerful, flourishing city earlier when he had departed had now transmogrified into a ghost town.
There was no fire in the chimneys in the houses, the shops looked run down, in the temple the deities seemed to be uncared for, almost weeping. People paid no attention, people did not go about their duties or went around looking utterly lost, forsaken, distracted to the point of being in immense pain as if not living in this world at all, trying to cope with an unknown sorrow, tinges of terror went up and down Bharat’s spine as he entered into the kingdom. Normally when any of the sons would return after a travel to a distant place, their father Dashrath Maharaj would be there to welcome him and when Bharat saw no Dashrath Maharaj, his father not there to welcome him, his alarm increased.
He went straight to the palace of his mother and he went and offered her respects to her and his mother’s face lit up to see, Oh Bharat, welcome and Bharat in his anxiety he asked, Why was my father not there to welcome me? Is he in your chambers? He knew that his mother was the favourite queen of his father and that’s why he had hoped that along with seeing his mother he would be able to see his father there. The expression on Kaikeyi’s face changed to a cold sense of victory. She says, Oh Bharat, now is the time for you to assume great responsibility.
The great emperor has attained that destination which is inevitable for all created beings in this world and now the responsibility of the ruling the whole kingdom is upon you. When Bharat heard these words, his knees went weak and he crumbled to the ground, a moving mass of agony. He says, No, it’s a crying bitterly.
He said, Who, who will embrace me and put me to the chest and console me and encourage me and guide me. I am so unfortunate that when my father departed from the world, I was not there by his side at the last moments. But surely although I was not there, my father must have remembered me and he must have given some final words of wisdom, of guidance, of instruction to me.
Ram was so fortunate that at least he was there by my father’s side. I will go and find Ram and I will ask him what were the last words that my father spoke to him. Kaikeyi looked at Bharat in the eyes.
She said, I will tell you what the king spoke. His last words were, Oh Ram, Oh Ram, fortunate will be those people who see you return. Alas, I will not be among them.
Confusion added to the turmoil of emotions that were churning the heart of Bharat. In utter bewilderment, he looked at his mother for an explanation. Was Ram not there with my father? Where was he at that time? Where had he gone? Kaikeyi told him, Ram had gone to the forest to be exiled, on exile for 14 years.
And now you have to become the king in the absence of Dashrath and Ram. He felt like the blow of thunderbolts hitting his heart would never end. He said, Ram in exile? Exile is the punishment that is given to the worst of the criminals.
It is the punishment that is only one less than the worst punishment of being hanged or killed or executed. What wrong could my virtuous brother Ram have done that he was sentenced to exile? I cannot believe that Ram could ever do even the slightest wrong to anyone. What to speak of such a grievous wrong that he would have to be exiled? Bharat tried to make sense of all the utter desolate pieces into which his world had been shattered by the news he had heard after coming to Ayodhya.
He looked at his mother begging for an explanation that would help him to bring, to restore sanity into the world that he had known and loved. The world where he, his father, his brothers, all of them were a happy family together. His mother seemed almost incensed, not at all in tune with his feelings.
She said, oh Bharat, there was a conspiracy to deprive you of the kingdom and to hand it over to Ram. Therefore, I took the initiative to save your legacy. So, the legacy that was yours, why? Asking for the two goons that Ram, that the king had long ago given me, was to ask for those two goons.
I asked that Ram be sent to the forest and you be made the prince regent. As Bharat heard this, he looked at his mother in utter disbelief. He said, what possessed you to do such a horrible thing? Do you think that I would ever envy Ram for the kingdom that was his? Leave alone take the kingdom away from him? Never.
As his mind tried to process what had happened and how his mother had done it all and apparently for his sake, just couldn’t take it all. His grief and confusion gave way to rage. He glared at his mother in unbridled fury.
He screamed at her, what have you done? Bharat’s reaction was not at all what Kaikeyi had been expecting. Kaikeyi had started thinking that she was doing whatever she was doing for Bharat’s sake and she had conjured up an image of a Bharat who would approve everything that she had done. And then that conjured image collided with the real Bharat who far from approving anything was expressing the strongest censure for what he had done.
The bubble of her fancy burst and she tried to gather the shards of her dream together as she said, but I was acting only for your well-being. Mantra warned me that I would be dispossessed of the kingdom and that’s why at her bidding, I decided to protect your rights. As Bharat heard Kaikeyi’s pitiful attempts to justify what she had done, his rage gave way to a silent resolve to correct the wrong that she had done.
He resolved then and there that he would never become the king. He would get Ram back into the kingdom and he, keeping his emotions in control, he told Kaikeyi, he said, what you have done has wreaked havoc in our family, in our kingdom and I will never let this happen. You are not my mother, he said.
You can do whatever you like, go wherever you want. I will no longer have anything to do with you. And that silent resolve controlling the battle of various emotions that were in him, heartbreak, anger, confusion, resolve, he walked away.
So, it was here that Kaikeyi realised how she had been misled and thereafter she lamented. Bitterly she lamented. She realised how she had been totally misled and how she had acted so viciously under the influence of her dark doubts and her foolish faith in Mandira.
But now it was all lost. Her husband was dead, gone forever. The gallant lord of the world who had cared for her so much, she had caused by her own evil desires his death and there was nothing that Kaikeyi could do about it.
Nothing but lament, nothing but grieve for the great wrong that she had done. As time passed and Kaikeyi pondered, what was it that had possessed her and what could she do about it? She just fell alone in her isolation, the target of the scorn and the ridicule and the neglect of everyone else. So, in the Ramayan, Kaikeyi is not portrayed as evil but she is portrayed as a good person who becomes misled into evil and through her example, it is demonstrated how we can become completely misdirected, distorted, perverted in our efforts if those efforts are not guided with intelligence and wisdom.
Just because of having some lingering suspicions which she allowed to become inflamed into full-fledged envy and hatred, she had ruined her own family. So, here it is important that when we make judgments about people, we need to be careful to hear what has been said, what has actually happened and to give everybody a fair hearing. Otherwise, we jump to conclusions and those conclusions can be disastrously wrong.
So, what exactly was Kaikeyi’s mistake? Actually, her mistake was twofold. One was she heard mantra submissively. Submissively in a very negative sense because she did not oppose or argue or counter whatever arguments mantra offered.
And secondly, she just heard from one source and closed her mind to whatever anyone else had to say. She just became so locked into the opinion that she had got from mantra that she saw everything and everyone only from that narrow and because of that she doubted everyone else. So, hearing from mantra was the first mistake and not hearing from anyone else was the second mistake.
She surely heard Dashrath Maharaj spoke to her, Sumantra spoke to her, Vashishta spoke to her but she was not really hearing them. Her filters, even her shutters were already on and her communication with them was only one way just to make sure that whatever she wanted was done and to get over whatever obstacles would block her in her evil designs. So, in this way she let herself get cheated.
So, actually as we are practising devotees, we all have faith in Krishna and faith in Krishna is not just a ethereal concept. There is somewhere high in the sky a spiritual world and there is a God who plays flute and we have to go back there. Faith in Krishna is expressed through faith in the various manifestations of Krishna, the scriptures, the devotees, the spiritual master, the holy name, the movement that Krishna’s representatives started and often in this world there are many who spread malicious lies about Krishna and his mission in devotees.
Often if we just hear those things, we will get completely misled because there was one Mantra who affected one Kaikeyi at the time of the Ramayana but today there are many Mantras, many Mantra like people who have their own selfish interests to preserve and with the advent of technology, especially the internet. Now, these Mantras spout out their poison and any of us can become a Kaikeyi who gets filled with needless and baseless doubts about Krishna and his devotees and his mission. So, it would have been best if Kaikeyi just did not hear Mantra but she had excuses.
This Mantra had been her nurse since childhood. We often don’t have any such excuses when we hear from worldly sources but often we also make the second mistake. We just hear from some source and we feel this is true.
What should I do? Maybe I just shouldn’t associate with devotees. I shouldn’t just practise Krishna Consciousness. We may not do this extreme step immediately but the doubt lingers in our heart and the doubt ruins our enthusiasm in Krishna Consciousness.
Faith is internal and that is expressed through enthusiasm externally, through enthusiastic activity, enthusiastic service, enthusiastic chanting but when the faith is weakened internally, naturally the enthusiasm weakens. When the enthusiasm weakens, when we don’t perform devotional service wholeheartedly, we said that when we render service, then Krishna reveals himself by his own free will. We are pleased with the service that we are rendering to him.
We are pleased with the fact that we are trying to move closer to him by rendering service. We are trying to move our face towards Krishna. So when Krishna sees that we are not enthusiastic in serving him, that means we are not turning our face towards him, then he sees that we don’t want his presence in our heart and then he no longer manifests his presence and then the more dryness we experience in our heart, the more we turn towards something to titillate us and the more we give credence to scandalous notions that titillate us at some level while corroding and eroding our faith at a deeper foundational level.
So if at all we have any doubts which somehow come across, then we should go in the association of devotees whom we trust and get those doubts clarified. Things may not be as disastrous in our life if we give some credence to some doubts as they turned out to be for Kekhe and for everyone whom she loved but whom she betrayed because of her misdirected belief. But the end result can be the same.
Actually, Kekhe loved Ram and he loved her just like her own son but she exiled him. Exiled him not just from yodhya but exiled him from her own heart and that is what will happen to us if we are not careful. We will exile the Lord from our heart Krishna of course stays forever in our heart but when we do not want his presence he no longer manifests his presence in our heart and then it’s almost as if we have exiled him from our heart.
In the meanwhile, Bharat did the last rites of his father and then when Vasistha asked him to take over the responsibility of the kingdom, he expressed his utter resolve to correct the wrong that had happened and to get Ram back into the kingdom. So, at that time Kekhe begged to Bharat to be allowed to come with him when he was going to Chitrakoot to persuade Lord Ram to come back. Bharat was still angry with his mother.
In fact, after the last rites had been performed when they were coming back to the palace at that time Shatrughna saw Kekhe and Kekhe had kept out of the way of the two princes but when Shatrughna saw her he charged towards her to catch her. Shatrughna and Bharat had been coming along but Bharat had been delayed by talking to some courtiers and as Kekhe ran into the palace away from Shatrughna, one of the palace attending guards, he caught Kekhe and he dragged her screaming as she was Shatrughna and he says, here is the person who has caused the agony in which our whole kingdom is drowning now. Punish her.
Screeching out for help, Shatrughna grabbed her and started shaking her violently. Kekhe came out and he called out Shatrughna to stop. Shatrughna paid no attention to her.
At that time, at that moment Bharat reached there and Kekhe told Bharat, Bharat stop her. Stop him. Ask him to stop.
So Bharat without even looking at Kekhe, he said to Shatrughna, what you are doing to Kekhe, Mantra, you know, I would have done long ago not just to her but even to Kekhe. Kekhe was shocked to hear her son speaking in this way to her, about her. But he said, but they are both women and if we harm them, then Ram will never forgive us.
So please let her go. So here we see that Bharat had an intense raw anger that was justified but still he was able to subordinate that anger to the principle of love. His love for Ram was greater than his anger or hatred towards Kekhe, Mantra or Kekhe and because that love for Ram was greater and thinking what would please Lord Ram, he decided to let Mantra and Kekhe go.
So when Kekhe asked, begged Bharat to be allowed to go along with him, his anger was still there and he says, you already caused so much suffering. Why do you want to come with us now to cause further suffering in the forest to Ram? Kekhe broke down and says, no. He says, I want to apologise.
I want to beg forgiveness and most of all I want to request him to come back. He says, he will not easily agree but if I am there and because it is my desire that he be exiled, if he sees that it is no longer my desire, then he will be willing to come back. There’s a greater chance that he will come back.
Seeing that his mother was truly contrite, was truly repentant and wanting to make amends, Bharat agreed. They had a road built by which not just the royal family but Vahishtha as well as many of the leading citizens of Ayodhya all went in a massive show of solidarity and strength, eager, desperate, determined to get Lord Ram to come back. When Ram met Bharat, we’ll discuss the story later when we are discussing about Lakshmana but it was a very tearful reunion and when Lord Ram learned about the departure of Narasimha Maharaj, he was anguished.
He did the final rites for his father again in the forest, in the river nearby. After mourning, Bharat begged to Ram to come back but Ram was fixed his resolve to stay in the forest. Kekki finally begged herself, herself, says it was my desire because of which Dashrath Maharaj said that you should go to the forest but I have realised how my desire was so evil and I no longer desire this.
So, please come back to the kingdom. Ram smiled at her in a sad sort of way and he said, you know, whether it was your desire or not, whether your desire is the same or it has changed, for me the instruction of my father is what stands sacred and now that he is not there, how can I let him be dishonoured by not sticking to his word. So, at that time when all of them saw that Lord Ram was determined to stay in the forest, Bharat reluctantly agreed and he took Lord Ram’s Padukas which would be the rulers and Bharat would be their servant and then all the Yudhavasis were parting disappointed.
At that time Kekki once again begged forgiveness from Ram and after she begged forgiveness, Lord Ram said that actually he called Bharat Maharaj, Bharat who had now become king not through official coronation but in terms of effectively having the power of a king and he told her, he told her that please do not treat Kekki as if she had done some evil, please treat her well for she is your mother. Now, this depicts Lord Ram’s forgiveness that the person has caused so much grief to him and his family, the Lord was ready to forgive. Now, of course, at one level we can say that it was through Kekki’s plotting that Lord Ram came to the forest and thereafter the whole Ramayan happened in which the purpose of the Devatas to get Ravana killed became successful and the Ramayan also indicates that actually it is Manthira’s mind which the Gods influenced so that she could come up with arguments and false reasonings which would persuade Kekki to do what she did.
So, we can see these pastimes, this whole pastime and the behaviour of Kekki within that pastime as demonstrative of the unfoldment of the Lord’s plan as per the request of the Devatas and this understanding is no doubt valid. By the same time, we also have to understand that this unfolding the Lord’s plan is the expertise of the Lord, not the willing cooperation of Kekki. Ultimately, everything that happens in the Lord’s pastime, the Lord is so expert that he ensures that it is used to further the unfoldment of his pastimes.
But that doesn’t mean that everybody in the Lord’s pastimes is doing the right thing. Now, Hanuman going across to Leap Lanka furthers the unfoldment of the Ramayan as does Ravana’s kidnapping of Sita which also unfolds the development of the Ramayan. But the two are not the same although both went across the ocean.
Ravana went in defiance of the Lord’s will whereas Hanuman went in pursuance of the Lord’s will. So, Bhakti essentially means Anukulena Krishnanushilanam. So, what Hanuman did is Bhakti, what Ravana did is not Bhakti at all.
It is the opposite of Bhakti. And what about Kekki? Her role is somewhere in between. When she acted in a particular way towards Lord Ram, it was not that she wanted to serve him by having any desire.
She was not concerned that this is what is my way I can serve Ram. She just wanted to have her own desires fulfilled. So, therefore, when we look at Kekki’s character, we learn from her how we need to be extremely careful in our dealings.
This is what we should not do. There is a book Adhyatma Ramayan which is quoted in the Chaitanya Bhagwat while describing how Nityanand Prabhu would perform pastimes of Lord Ramachandra. So, in the Adhyatma Ramayan, all the characters in Ramlila are depicted as if they are devotees.
And the Adhyatma Ramayan is largely based on the model of the Bhagavatam. And therein, that means there are pastimes and there are prayers which the various participants in the pastimes offered to Lord Ram. In Valmiki Ramayan, there are no prayers directly offered to Lord Ram because Valmiki Ramayan is a book that is primarily revealing the answer to Valmiki’s seminal question to Narada Muni about who is the most ideal person with all virtues qualities.
And in answer to that, Narada Muni briefly narrates the life and activities and character and characteristics of Lord Ram. And Valmiki Muni being inspired further by Brahmaji goes into mystic trance. He sees the pastimes of Lord Ram unfolded and then writes them down from the perspective of describing how Lord Ram acted as the ideal person.
So, the thoughts of divinity of Ram are never very far from Valmiki Rishi. He is going as he sings the Ramayan. But still they never find their way explicitly in the text of the Valmiki Ramayan either.
So, we see that Krishna’s greatness, Krishna’s divinity is talked about in the 10th canto of Srimad Bhagavatam. And the Adhyatma Ramayan is similar to Srimad Bhagavatam where there are pastimes and there are prayers offered by the protagonist in the pastimes. The Adhyatma Ramayan is said to be a part of the Mahadeva Purana, one of the Puranas and it gives an explanation of the Lord’s pastimes from the absolutist perspective.
Where all the characters are depicted as if they are devotees playing their particular roles for the community of devotees and people at present in Lord Ram’s pastimes. So, this is one perspective. At the same time, the Ramayan can be understood at multiple levels.
And then we want to analyse and understand who has done what and what is right and what is wrong. Not so that we judge the characters of the Ramayan, but so that we can have a standard by which to judge ourselves, have an example by which we know what we should do and we should not do. Then we need to see the actions of the Ramayan characters from the ethical perspective.
And it is from that perspective that we understand that Lord Ram, when he went to the forest and when he asked for the forgiveness, he asked Kaikeyi to be forgiven and when he told Bharat to treat her kindly, not consider her to be evil, it is Lord Ram is explaining his heart, his compassionate heart as is always there for everyone who tries to serve everyone once. He is expressing that. But at the same time, it is not that mantra, sorry, Kaikeyi has come to this, a more advanced level of consciousness necessary by transformation of the heart.
In transformation, the heart takes time. Until then be as you are, you need to be patient. So that, so we will continue tomorrow and we will