Ramayana series 3 – Rama-Lakshmana – Does destiny control everything?

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
One of the most interesting and instructive incidents in the Ramayana occurs after Ram has been exiled and he is deliberating the right course of action with his brother Lakshman. Ram and Lakshman are inseparable and whatever Ram does, Lakshman does that.
But at the same time, Lakshman is a person, an individual in his own right and he has his own mind, his own intelligence. And sometimes he just can’t accept what Ram does and he fiercely opposes Ram on some occasions. Although few, the occasions when he does oppose Ram are revealing.
And this particular incident is also instructive because it reflects a timeless tension between human endeavor and destiny. All of us during the course of our life are put into situations where we just seem helpless. We start wondering, is destiny acting against me? Is there something I can do about this or am I just going to be buffeted by destiny? How much free will do we have and how much are things destined in life? This is a question that thinkers have pondered since time immemorial.
And the Ramayana offers us some valuable insights which can be very empowering for us when we have to exercise our free will as well as accept the will of destiny. So when Ram is exiled, his father has to abide by the evil designs of his wife Kaikai because he has given her his words, then Ram immediately agrees. Although it is a devastating reversal for him.
The person who was going to be the next king is suddenly told to go to the forest with carrying nothing with him. It’s like a multi-multi-millionaire suddenly being forced not just to come to the streets but to go into the jungle where one will be at the mercy of merciless predators of the jungle. It’s a devastating reversal but Ram stays calm and he resolves I will go to the forest.
When Lakshman hears this, Lakshman is outraged. He says what nonsense is this? He says that this is unjust. He says you have done no wrong.
Why should you be sent to the forest? Actually being exiled is the punishment reserved for extremely terrible criminals. The worst criminals are sentenced to death and one punishment before execution, lower than execution is the punishment of exile. So Ram was completely innocent of any wrongdoing, was now being exiled, being given the punishment that was reserved for among the worst of criminals.
Lakshman’s blood boiled at this atrocious injustice. He rebelled. Why should you accept this atrocity? He said.
Ram said our father has told us, told me to do this so I will do it. Ram was stoic. Lakshman said the old man, the old king has become blinded by lust for his youngest queen and that is why he is going on a course of action that is grievously immoral.
We have no reason to obey a person who lost his good sense because of desire. So Ram still remained grave and said that it is not for me to question why my father has asked me to do something. My responsibility is simply to obey.
Therefore, I will agree to go. At this point Lakshman was so angry. He said that evil Kaikeyi, she is the cause of this.
He said why did she have to do this to you? At that time Ram says you know how much was the love of Kaikeyi for me? Her love was like the flowing of the pure Ganges water. Lakshman is enraged and says that’s what I can’t understand. How did the Ganga dry overnight? How did her love disappear? So Ram still maintaining his gravity said that’s why when I heard Kaikeyi speak those heartless words, I understood that such a drastic inversion of mood must be the will of destiny.
And knowing that it is the will of destiny, I have accepted it. On hearing this, Lakshman again became enraged. He said only cowards accept injustice as destiny.
He says heroes fight against injustice and create their own destiny. Ram said for me what is important is not what is the will of destiny or what is injustice. For me it is important that I do my duty.
My duty to my father is to obey him. When he told me to ascend the throne, I was ready to obey that instruction. Now when he tells me to leave for the forest, I am ready to do that.
Lakshman is still angry but seeing Ram’s resolve, he not only accepts that resolve but adopts it himself and goes to the forest. Now this tension between Ram and Lakshman echoes something which many thinkers have thought about. Ram’s voice might be seen to be the voice of fatalism wherein people think that everything is destined and nothing is in our control.
In Sanskrit, the school of thought is called as Daivavada that everything is determined by destiny. The modern system of thought is exactly the opposite. It is called as Karmavada that everything is determined by our karma.
If we just work hard enough or work smart enough, then we can achieve anything and everything. There is no such thing as destiny which is already ordained. Our destiny is determined by our own actions.
This is the idea of Karmavada. Now if you consider a pendulum, its steady position is in the center but sometimes it may go to one extreme and sometimes to the other extreme. So similarly, for the pendulum of human conceptions, one extreme is Karmavada where we think everything is in our hands and the other extreme is Daivavada where we think nothing is in our hands.
Ram actually may seem to be advocating Daivavada that oh it is the will of destiny so I’ll accept it but Ram is not doing that. Why not? Because we see that Ram, that same Ram taking assertive even aggressive responsibility when another atrocity happens. Later in the Ramayana, Ram’s queen consort Sita is abducted by the vicious demon Ravana.
Ram does not consider oh this abduction is the will of destiny so I’ll accept it. No, he endeavors vigorously searching far and wide to first locate Sita and then fights a huge war to punish the demon who has abducted Sita and to reunite with her. So why doesn’t Ram consider at that time that oh if it is the will of destiny that Sita be abducted then I accept it.
No, he doesn’t do that because his understanding is duty centered not destiny centered. In every situation we need to consider what our duty is and we need to focus on doing that duty. So when Ram was seeing himself as the son of Dashrath and he considered my duty is to obey my father and so he went to the forest.
But when Ram was playing the role of the husband of Sita and he considered his duty is that she is my wife, I have to protect her and whatever it takes to protect her I must do it. So rather than considering the Ramayana to be destiny centered we have to understand it is pragmatic. It focuses on not Daiva but Dharma.
Dharma means what is our duty. Daivavada or fatalism is obviously very negative. To say that everything is destined is to abdicate all human responsibility.
That is not what Ram does when Sita is abducted. At the same time Karmavada which is the modern idea which is that everything is in our hands is also wrong because there are many situations in life when no matter what we do we can’t change the reality. Suppose somebody wants to be athlete and they meet with the accident and their leg gets fractured and there’s no way they can get prosthetic limb which will be good enough then they have to give up the dream of being athlete.
Of course they may go into Paralympics which is meant for people with physically challenged bodies but they cannot become the athlete like a normal athlete. So sometimes situations come in our life which are just unchangeable and recognizing that there is a reality bigger than ours helps us to ensure that we don’t just vainly beat our head against the wall in trying to take change things that are not changeable. If we are of a short height and we’re constantly lamenting why can’t I grow tall? Why can’t I grow tall? Why can’t I grow tall? We just waste our energy in that.
There are some things which are beyond our control and there are some things which are definitely in our control. So Daivavada holds that nothing is in our control whereas Karmavada holds that everything is in our control. The reality lies in between.
Now how much is in our control and how much is beyond our control varies according to time, place, circumstance and that is where Dharma comes in. Dharma means that we responsibly do our duty no matter what situation we find ourselves in. That we persevere in doing our part, exerting ourselves to the fullest in the area over which we have control and thus we grow spiritually.
We do our duty and by that we grow in our spiritual evolution. To understand how things work out we can consider equation. Karma plus Daiva plus Kala leads to Fala.
Karma is our will, our endeavor. Daiva is destiny, Kala is time and Fala is the fruit. So when Karma, Daiva and Kala come together only then there is Fala, the fruit is there.
So consider an agrarian example. If a farmer wants to get a yield, the farmers flowing the land and sowing the seeds is Karma. Rains coming on time in right quantity is the Daiva and then the passage of adequate amount of time till the harvesting season comes is Kala.
When Karma, Daiva and Kala all three come together in one line then there is the Fala, there is the harvest that the farmer gets. Now if the farmer thinks nothing is in my hands, then even if that which is beyond his control works out right, even if rains come well, but the farmer will not have sown the seeds and all that will grow on the farm will be weeds. So the farmer will miss the opportunity of getting a harvest because of the misconception that nothing is in my hands.
On the other hand if the farmer thinks everything is in my hands, then no matter how well the farmer farms or sows the seeds, flows the land, still if rains don’t come there’ll be no harvest. So we have to acknowledge the role for our effort and acknowledge the scope of destiny and we have to do our best and leave the rest. This is not fatalism, we can call it pragmatism.
Pragmatism means we pragmatically with practical intelligence understand the real situation and act accordingly. So we if we overestimate our capacity to control then we set ourselves for frustration when whatever we have planned doesn’t work out. If we underestimate our capacity for control then we lose the opportunities that might have been ours if we had endeavored enough.
So there is throughout our life a constant dynamic dance going on between our endeavor and destiny. In different situations different amounts of control will be available for us and accordingly we are meant to act. So Ram accepted the order of Dashrath not simply because he considered to be destiny because he was focused on his duty.
My duty is to do the best that I can over the things that I have control over. So Ram considered that Kaikeyi’s mentality was something that he could not control. Kaikeyi’s malevolence was something which is so deeply rooted, firmly rooted in her at that time they could not change that.
So he decided if I want to bring down the temperature of animosity in Ayodhya the best thing I can do is do what is in my control and that is maintain my composure and go away from the sea. As long as he would be there Kaikeyi would still be angry, hateful, malicious and everything would be in a state of turmoil. But if he departed her desire would be fulfilled and things would move on.
So Ram recognized although he is God and ultimately the supreme controller but when he is descending into this world he is acting almost like a human being and he acts as if some things are not in his control. So he focuses on what is in his control and acts accordingly. Similarly if we consider later when Sita is abducted at that time what does Ram consider? That it is my duty to protect her no matter what happens and therefore he is ready to exert himself.
So his capacity to control we could say is limited. He doesn’t have a kingdom, he doesn’t have soldiers, he doesn’t have any resources for searching for her. But he’s determined to because he sees this is my dharma and to fulfill his dharma he is ready to expand his capacity to control.
How does he do that? By forming alliance with Sugriva and then Sugriva’s whole kingdom and his army and his generals come to Ram’s assistance and then he fights a war against Ravana and he gets Sita back. So we need to recognize what is our dharma. In every situation we need to focus on what is our duty.
What am I meant to do? If we go towards the extreme of fatalism thinking that nothing is in our control, everything is destined, then we will become irresponsible. If a king is told by a citizen, oh thieves have robbed me and the king says, oh it is your destiny that you are meant to be robbed and the king will not be doing his dharma, his duty of protecting his citizens. The king has to exert to catch the thieves and restore the property that has been stolen to the rightful owner.
If after the best endeavor of the king still the thieves remain unstressable and the property remains lost, then the king may say it is the will of destiny that this property be lost. So without doing one’s endeavor, if one just resigns or rationalizes one’s inactivity by calling it destiny, that is a responsibility. If a baby is crying and is the mother meant to say, oh the baby is crying because of destiny? Obviously not.
The mother is meant to take care of her baby, pacify her, caress her, fondle her, express her love. That is the dharma of the mother. So basically when factors beyond our control put us in difficult situations, at that time when changing it is beyond our control, that is when we acknowledge the role of destiny.
And even within that, we don’t passively submit to destiny. We think, what is the best thing I can do in this situation? And this is where bhakti wisdom helps us. The bhakti wisdom helps us to understand that destiny is not some arbitrary or cruel faceless force within the universe.
Ultimately destiny is the servant of the supreme. And if we devote ourselves to the supreme by practicing bhakti yoga, then even the things which are beyond our control will work out for our good by the benevolence of the supreme. Destiny in some ways is value neutral.
Destiny is not arbitrary because destiny is simply the sum total of our own actions from the past. Whatever karma we have done before, that karma gets accumulated as our destiny and the reactions to that karma come to us at different phases in our life. So karma is impartial.
Whatever actions we have done, we’ll get those reactions. And destiny is the means by which those reactions come upon us. But although destiny is neutral, Krishna is not just neutral, he’s personal.
Krishna loves us and he wants the best for us. So even if by destiny something unfavorable is going to happen to us, that bad thing may happen, but the supreme lord by his expertise can bring good even out of the bad. Thus, when we find things out of our control, we can let those things go, not in a mood of passive helplessness.
I just can’t do anything about this, so I give up. But rather, we can let go of things in a mood of faithful dependence on our lord. My dear lord, I can’t control this, but you know what is the best for me.
So I let this go and you please bring the good out of this bad and help me understand how this is for my good. And similarly, when we are doing that which is in our control, bhakti wisdom helps us to do it with devotional disposition. That my dear lord, I want to serve you.
In this situation, I will do my best in a mood of service to you. So both, when we take up responsibility, do our duty and control that which is in our control, we do it not in the mood of a controller, but in the mood of a servitor, in a mood of serving our lord. And when we let go of that which is not in our control, that also we do in a mood of service to our lord.
In this way, bhakti enables us to spiritualize both karma and daiva. So karma and daiva are two, karmavada and daivavada are two extreme conceptions, which can be, which are erroneous. But karma and daiva are dynamic factors within our life.
And both karma and daiva can be spiritualized. We do our karma for the service of the lord. And we understand that daiva is controlled ultimately by our lord.
And therefore, we see the action of daiva as ultimately meant for our good. And we faithfully surrender to the lord. In this way, our whole life through its karma and daiva can become a dynamic devotional reciprocation with our lord.
And as whatever life sends our way, we will grow through it towards our lord.