Ramayana reflections – Maricha represents worship in fear

[Reflection at Krishna House, Gainesville, USA]

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
discuss future characters of the Ramayan.
Thank you. Death at whose hands or for whose hands, we all are going to die one day. This is one of the hardest truths of life.
The hardest to bear and the hardest to even contemplate. The Gita wisdom tradition explains that we as souls are eternal and so death is only an event that happens to our body, not to our souls. Death is not a termination, but it is a transition.
And what happens after this event of death, where we transit to is determined by how we live and how we leave. It is determined by the consciousness that we cultivate throughout our life and also the consciousness we have at the time of death. The Ramayan depicts various characters dying at different times and how they deal with the trauma of death is instructive for all of us to internalise.
The demon Marichi is a fascinating character who has a change of heart, where from a demon he becomes a sage. And ultimately, he has a moment of test in which whether he passes or fails is a matter of debate among different Ramayan commentators. Marichi appears first in the early part of the Ramayan, where Ram is still young and unmarried and he has gone to the forest with the sage Vishwamitra to protect the sage’s sacrifices from the demons who were desecrating and disrupting the sacrifices.
Marichi is one of the first demons that Ram encounters and Marichi is a demon whom Ram spares. He along with the demoness Tataka and her son Subahu attack Vishwamitra’s sacrifice and Ram along with Lakshman counter the demons. Ram kills Tataka and Subahu but Marichi is spared because he is hit forcefully by Ram with a blunt arrow.
The arrow hits him and hurts him but doesn’t kill him. The arrow flings him to a long distance away where he ends up with the trauma of Ram’s incomparable power impressed forever in his mind. He who was so powerful a demon that he could hurl trees far away with the force of his arms had found himself being hurled far away by the force of Ram’s arrows.
Seeing such incomparable unbearable power, he has a change of heart induced by fear. Recognising that he will never be able to counter the counter the power of Ram, he decides to atone for his past misdeeds and to give up the demonic way of life and become a sage. As a sage, he performs austerities, lives a simple life and and starts chanting mantras and meditating on higher spiritual reality.
He lives in fear of Ram. In fact, so much so that even the syllable Ra when he hears, he thinks that that will be followed by the name Ram which will be followed by the person Ram who may come and kill him. And he lives in constant fear.
The scriptures say that whatever we fear, we draw towards ourselves by the negative energy of fear. Our fears can become like our self-actualising and self-sacrificing prophecies. Of course, our thinking alone doesn’t determine the reality, but our thinking makes us do the actions and sets up the circumstances by which that which we think about happens.
So, that Maricha who lives constantly in fear of Ram’s arrows eventually dies of those arrows despite his efforts and austerities to avoid that fate. Maricha also specialises in shape-changing. Many demons have shape-shifting abilities, but Maricha’s shape-shifting abilities are extraordinary.
When Ravana hears that Sita is incredibly beautiful and he wants Sita for his own enjoyment, he decides not to use his normal way of attacking and seizing Sita because he has heard about the prowess of Ram and that has made him circumspect. So, he goes instead to Maricha and tells him that he should assume the form of an attractive deer and lure Sita away. And thus, he can enable Ravana to abduct the unguarded Sita.
Maricha is horrified to just hear the name of Ram and he is even more horrified when he hears about Ravana’s plan to abduct Sita, Ram’s wife, thereby angering and antagonising Ram. With great fear and vehemence, he desperately cautions Ravana to avoid provoking Ram in any way, saying that Ram’s power is unmatchable and therefore, it is best to leave him alone. Ravana knows and respects Maricha’s assessment and he returns back to Lanka, giving up his plan to abduct Sita.
At this point, Ravana had wanted to abduct Sita primarily because he saw her as a means by which he could get back at Ram. But when he returns, his sister Shurpanakha aggravates him by explicitly first insulting him for not protecting her honour, for not avenging the dishonour that has been inflicted on their family when her nose was cut off by Lakshman at the behest of Ram. But on seeing Ravana unmoved, she provokes him by describing Sita’s devastating beauty and Ravana with his intelligence devastated again goes to Maricha and tells him, you have two choices.
Either you fight for me by going according to my plan or I will kill you. Ravana says, I have not come here to hear your suggestions. I have come here to give you instruction.
Recognising that Ravana is not going to listen, Maricha reluctantly decides to go along with his plan. He reasons, either I will be killed by Ravana if I disobey him or I will be killed by Ram if I obey Ravana and trick Ram. And he thinks that if I die at the hands of Ram, then I will have an auspicious destination because death at the hands of Ram means that one attains elevation, even liberation.
On the other hand, if a demon like Ravana kills me, I don’t know what destination will I go to. So, he assumes the form of a deadly demon. Sorry, he assumes, changes his form from that of a deadly demon who is now living like a sage and he was still a powerful, formidably built sage.
He changes his form to that of a irresistibly attractive deer. And as a deer, he starts playing near Ram’s hermitage, thereby attracting Sita’s attention. And Sita begs to Ram, please get this deer for me.
Ram decides to fulfil her small request and chases after the deer to catch it alive and get it as a pet for Sita. But the deer keeps bounding away, suddenly jumping a huge distance, suddenly disappearing and reappearing in a distance and doing the kind of things which ordinary deer are not capable of. Ram’s suspicion about the identity of this deer increases.
And finally, when the deer has led him far, far into the forest, at that time, Ram decides to shoot the deer. Now, when he is about to shoot the deer, at that time, the deer suddenly does another thing. He has not only changed his form, but now he changes his voice.
And taking the voice of Ram, he calls out, O Lakshman! O Sita! Help! Hearing this, Ram is alarmed. He recognises that this was a conspiracy of the demons to ensure that he has healed Sita unguarded and he bounds back. He has already shot Maricha and Maricha is with the last words of, Hey Sita! Hey! Lakshman! Help! Those words spoken in the voice of Ram, he breathes his last.
And of course, he is looking at Ram and Ram is looking at him while he is dying. And death in the presence of Ram does mean that he gets an auspicious destination. At the same time, it is not that death itself is the important thing.
Or in whose presence one dies, that alone is not the important thing. For whose purpose one dies is also important. Maricha’s calculation that better to die at Ram’s hands than at Ravana’s hands might at one level seem to be a devotional calculation.
But at another level, it is a self-centred calculation. That means, he is not thinking of Ram and Ram’s service per se. He is thinking only of his elevation and his destination.
The great scholar Saint Bhaktivinod Thakur explains that people may approach God at different levels, fear, desire, duty and love. When we approach God out of fear or even out of desire, we are largely self-centred in our approach. That means we are thinking, what can God do for me? If he can do something for me, then that is the primary basis of my relationship with him.
While any connection with God for any purpose is beneficial than a godless life entirely. But still, devotion means that one serves God for his pleasure. Maricha actually thinks only of his own elevation after death.
But he doesn’t think in any way of assisting Ram or serving Ram in his plans. Because of this self-centred calculation, he actually works against Ram and he becomes a key player in the conspiracy by which Ram is separated from Sita. Thus, the Ramayan depicts Maricha as having spiritual knowledge in the sense that he has the knowledge that he has a post-mortem existence and he also has the knowledge that death in the presence of Ram is auspicious.
But because of his self-centredness, he is not able to perceive that God is not a tool for our elevation, rather God is the purpose for our elevation. We want to be elevated so that we can love God, we can serve God, we can absorb ourselves in God and therein lies our greatest fulfilment. But he sees God as a tool for our elevation and he thinks therefore that if I die at Ravana’s hands, that is far more inauspicious than if I die at Ram’s hands.
What could he have done at that time? When Ravana threatened to kill him, if he didn’t obey Ravana, then at that time Maricha might have had to agree. But instead of going along with Ravana’s plan, he could very well have taken shelter of Ram. He could have alerted Ram to the conspiracy that Ravana was planning and thus he could have helped in serving Ram by preventing the abduction of Sita and also he could have got protection for himself.
We see Vibhishan, a younger brother of Ravana, having this intelligence by which he defects over from Ravana’s side to Ram’s side because of Ravana’s unrepentant viciousness. In contrast, Maricha simply obeys Ravana even when Ravana wants to do a vicious action against Ram and thus he ends up dying while furthering Ravana’s plan. Of course, at a transcendental level, we can see that the various characters in the Lord’s pastimes act in particular ways to further the Lord’s pastimes and some of them may act in anti-cosmistic ways.
At the same time, if we want to learn some ethical lessons for making wiser decisions in our own lives, Maricha serves as an excellent example of a person who has spiritual knowledge, even devotional knowledge but doesn’t have a proper understanding of the purpose of that knowledge. Thus, he antagonises the person who is the purpose of that knowledge, who is the purpose of his austerities. Even if he gets elevated, he does not please the Lord.
And Rupa Goswami, in his devotional classic, the Bhaktira Samrasunda explains that devotion is that which is favourably performed, that is performed for the pleasure of the Lord. When the Lord’s pleasure is not the intention, then what is performed is not considered devotion. It is, at least it is not pure devotion.
And even if it leads to some elevation, still that is not the mood that a devotee wants to imbibe. That’s why Maricha is never considered as a model of devotion. A model of devotion is Vibhishan, who has the courage to stand by his principles, even when he knows that he may have to suffer terrible consequences for antagonising Ravana.
If somehow Ravana gets his hands on a person who has betrayed him, as he would see Vibhishan to be, then Ravana would definitely have no mercy on him and would kill him ruthlessly. So, therefore, Vibhishan’s fearlessness and his principle-centredness is heroic, whereas Ravana’s, whereas Maricha’s is considered self-centred. So, when we practise bhakti, our focus should be not so much on how I die, but on how I live.
Not at whose hands I die, but for whose hands I die. For whose hands means that for whose purpose I live, for whose purpose I die. In the Srimad Bhagavatam, it is said that the Lord acts by his own hands and through the hands of his devotees, his representatives, who actually work for him.
So, to live for him and to die for him, that is the purpose and perfection of devotion. And the process of bhakti yoga, when practised, helps us to become centred on the object of our love instead of on ourselves. Not thinking about our own pleasure and or even our own destination, but thinking about our Lord’s purpose and his service.
The example of Jatayu, who is an elderly bird, who dies while trying in vain to protect Ravana from Sita, is an example of martyrdom in devotion that pleases the Lord. Jatayu is offered the sacred water on his behalf by Ram and Ram performs his last rites just as he performed for his own father Dashrath. There is no description of Ram performing any similar rites for Maricha because Maricha worked against him.
So, Vibhishan’s life is considered glorious and Jatayu’s death is considered glorious. Jatayu, although he was killed at the hands of a demon, he died in the hands of the Lord. He died while Ram was holding Jatayu in his own hands and Jatayu’s head was resting on Ram’s lap while Ram was blessing him, while Jatayu was beholding Ram’s form, chanting Ram’s names and Jatayu attained the supreme destination.
In his death and his post-mortem destination, it was supremely auspicious. So, devotion is exemplified in Vibhishan in how to live, risking death for the sake of our Lord and how to die for the sake of our Lord through Jatayu.