The Recipe for Ruining Relationships – Ramayana Wisdom 1

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Hare Krishna. Judging without understanding, the recipe for ruining relationships. We’ll be discussing this topic as a part of a new series on Ramayan wisdom.
Now, in the Ramayan, there are many fraternal relationships, and one of the sub, the main plot of the Ramayan is the story of Ram centred around especially his exile and the abduction of his wife Sita and her reclaiming. Now, apart from that, there are several subplots, and one poignant, moving subplot is the fratricidal confrontation between the two monkey brothers, Wali and Sugriva. And fratricide is central to the Mahabharata with the two main protagonists, the Pandavas and Kauravas, being hostile due to the unremitting envy that the Kauravas have towards the Pandavas.
In contrast, fratricide is not central to the narrative of the Ramayan. It features much more fraternal devotion as say of the younger brothers Lakshman and Bharat for their eldest brother Ram, or even Kumbhakarna’s martyrdom for the sake of Ramana. Now, amidst these narratives of subplots of fraternal devotion, one subplot that stands out is the subplot of fraternal confrontation, and that is of Wali and Sugriva.
And yet, unlike the Mahabharata, where the fraternal animosity continues till death, in the story of Wali and Sugriva, there is reconciliation just before death. And that reconciliation is as emotionally reverting as it is ethically illuminating. The story of these two brothers lays out mostly at Kishkindha, which in the Ramayana’s geopolitical setup is a kingdom of strategic significance.
It comes in between the kingdom of the humans, which is towards the north, and the kingdom of the demons, which is at its south. So, these two brothers, Wali and Sugriva, like the Pandavas, have dual sires, earthly and heavenly. Their earthly sire is the king of the Vanaras, Riksharaj.
Now, the Vanaras are a race of celestial monkeys, and they have, many of them, have powers, power and intelligence that equals and even exceeds that of humans. So, they are more akin to, at least some of them, their leaders are more akin to gods than humans. And the heavenly pair sires, heavenly fathers of Wali and Sugriva are Indra and Surya respectively.
Now, just as in the cosmic hierarchy, Indra is superior to Surya, similarly here, Indra’s son Wali is superior to Surya’s son Sugriva. And Wali is superior both because he is by age and by strength, he is much more powerful. And just as Surya and Indra live harmoniously in taking care of the cosmic administration, similarly, Sugriva and Wali live harmoniously in taking care of the administration of the Vanara kingdom.
Over time, in accordance with the time-honoured principle of primogeniture, Sugriva, Wali became the, ascended the throne of Kishkindha, and Sugriva became his faithful and competent, faithful and resourceful assistant. Once, there was a formidable demon, Mayavi, who had travelled to various places, challenging opponents and defeating them. And we heard once the strength of the demon of the Vanara Wali and he decided to challenge him.
So, he came to the outskirts of Kishkindha and had bellowing out his challenge, O Wali, you coward, come out and fight with me if you have any guts. Now, Wali was sitting in his throne in his coat and when he heard this thunderous roar, he could not tolerate the insolence of this challenger and immediately sprang up from his throne and marched out and Sugriva followed behind him. Now, Wali, of course, intended to fight honourably in a one-to-one combat, but Sugriva followed him just for additional protection in case the demon had some associates who might try some devious tricks.
But Mayavi did not know the honourable intentions of Wali. So, he thought that, oh, these two, these two brothers, these two formidable monkeys, they’ll both attack me. I can’t fight with both of them.
And being fear struck on seeing this awesome twosome, he just turned around and fled. Now, Wali realised this demon was very insolent and as he observed very powerfully, he felt that he would keep creating disturbances in the neighbourhood unless he was taught a lesson. So, he gave chase and desperate to shake off these two brothers who were pursuing him, Mayavi ducked into a cave, which was actually an entrance to a whole maze of, to a whole network of catacombs and mazes.
Now, as he disappeared deep inside, both Wali and Sugriva stood at the entrance, deliberating what to do. Wali turned towards Sugriva and said, you stay here and guard the door. I am going inside.
In case the demon evades me and comes out somehow, you can deal with him. You can prevent him from escaping. Sugriva begged and he said, no, no, it’s dangerous.
You should not go alone. Let me come with you. Wali said, no, no, you stay here.
Because Wali was the elder brother, Sugriva deferred to him and stood at guard outside. He kept peering inwards, waiting for the demon, but he could hear no sound. After a long time passed, finally, he heard a giant roar, a giant, giant roar, a screaming sound of the demon.
He started to figure out, was this a cry of agony because this demon had been attacked by Wali or was this a cry of victory because he had attacked Wali? And he strained his ears and prayed, trying to catch some sound of Wali, but he heard no sound and the sound of the demon had also stopped. And as Sugriva waited and waited and he could hear no sound from anywhere, that deafening silence got to him. He inferred that somehow in the darkness by his deviousness, the demon had got the better of Wali and Wali had been killed.
So Sugriva felt torn between the desire for avenging his brother’s death and his duty of protecting the citizens of Kishkindha from the terror of this demon. He realised that if the demon came out, Sugriva’s chances of overpowering the demon were slim because Sugriva was powerful, no doubt, but more powerful than Sugriva was Wali and this demon had turned out to be more powerful than Wali because he had overpowered Wali. Sugriva realised that if I am not able to stop him, if he kills me also, then he will break havoc on the whole countryside.
He will have no protectors left. Our whole kingdom will be destroyed. So he thought and looked around and came up with a strategy.
Using all his strength and skill, he went to a giant boulder which is almost like a small hill and he pulled and pushed that boulder with all his strength till it neatly and fully covered the entrance of the cave and now feeling reassured that this demon would not be able to push this stone, push this boulder and thinking that he will be trapped now, trapped forever, Sugriva departed from there. With a heavy heart, he went back to the kingdom where the courtiers and the citizens were waiting anxiously for the news. He told them about the demise of their king and ordered a period of state-wide mourning and after the mourning period got over, the courtiers insisted that you have to ascend the throne now.
The kingdom cannot be without a king. It needs a protector and as at that time, Vali had begotten no heirs. So Vali’s younger brother Sugriva would become the king.
So Sugriva, still grieving the death of his brother, ascended the throne and took on the responsibilities which he had been doing ex officio, which he had been doing out of his office unofficially till then. Now, a few days later, suddenly Vali entered into the court, had eyes large short. What had transpired between was Vali had entered into the cave and after a long exhausting search found the demon and it pounced on him and did the short work of him.
Now the demon in trying to retaliate and get Vali off him to escape, he is grieving in pain and horror. Now Vali, wanting to conserve his energy and too intent on finishing off the job, did not dissipate any energy in roaring himself and that is why Sugriva outside did not hear any sound. Then after that, when Vali eventually, after ascending the demon to the next world, then he departed and came out of the cave or came near the exit of the cave and he found he is completely dark and totally blocked.
He called out, he tried to push, he was immovable. He called out to Sugriva and he heard no sound. An unpleasant suspicion started taking the root in his mind.
Could Sugriva have done this? Could his trusted younger brother have betrayed him and trapped him inside the cave so that he could himself assert the kingdom? He did not like the direction of his thoughts but the evidence seemed unenviable. This raw boulder was so big that no wind or natural force could have moved it and even if some big storm had moved it, how would that boulder have come and exactly positioned itself on the entrance and covered it so precisely. Now, Vali was so exhausted by the search and the fight that he had to stay several days inside the cave, searching for some whatever, whatever glue over there to eat and to live thereby, to recoup his strength and to come up with a strategy for coming out of the cave.
And finally, when he came out of the cave and breathed fresh air and then feeling rejuvenated but still agitated at the thought of the possible betrayal of his brother, he charged towards his kingdom. He paid scant attention to the astonishment of all the citizens when they saw him alive. His thoughts were fixed on his traitorous brother and when he entered into the cave, his eyes were bloodshot and when he saw Sugriva sitting on the royal throne, his rage knew no bounds.
He charged towards Sugriva to pound and pummel him and Sugriva, when he saw Vali alive, was delighted. He thought that his brother had been dead forever, he was so happy. But his joy changed to agony when he saw Vali charging towards him, thinking with lightning speed and Vali, Sugriva understood.
He was also born in a royal family and he was aware of what all political intrigues keep happening in royal circles. So, he immediately got down from his chariot, got on his throne and approached Vali and he started to speak to him, oh I am so happy that you are alive my brother. But Vali was in no mood to hear his suggestion.
Battering Sugriva mercilessly, Sugriva had no desire to retaliate and more than his bones being broken by the blows of Vali, he felt his heart broken by the suspicion, not just the suspicion, but the conviction of his conviction. That means he even saw that Vali had already convicted him. He felt broken.
He had no desire to defend himself and he realised that there was no chance for him to make any reconciliation, to give any clarification. Vali was in no mood for healing. So, deciding that maybe in the future when Vali had cooled down, he would try to clarify and reconcile, he just fled from there.
And Vali, unfortunately, was so angry that he kept chasing, he kept giving chase, chase, chase and Sugriva fled far and wide and wherever he went, Vali kept chasing him. And Sugriva wondered what to do, where to go, how to hide, how to, where could he get a safe haven? And finally, he decided that the only safe haven he would get would be in a place where Vali would not be allowed. And he found out that Vali had once offended the saint Matangarshi.
After killing the demon in a brash show of power, he had whirled the demon around and flung his corpse far away. And as the corpse had been flowing through the sky, the blood from the corpse had fallen in the sacrificial arena of Matangarshi. And Matangarshi had felt irritated because blood falling in the sacrificial arena means that the arena gets desecrated.
And if it is desecrated, then the sacrifice cannot be completed. So, the sacrifice started once again. So, feeling irritated and especially feeling that Vali had become too proud to brandish, to flaunt his strength like this, not considering what trouble it would cause, he cursed him.
He said, you proud king, if you come in the vicinity of my hermitage, and if you are sullied by your presence, then you will fall dead. And it was in this area of the Pampas Sarovar, which is quite close to Kishkind actually, Kishkind only. So, after searching far and wide for a safe haven, Sugriva found it in the vicinity of Kishkind in the Pampas Sarovar area, which was where Matangarshi’s hermitage was.
And there, Sugriva lived in a state of uneasy peace, still fearing that Vali may send some assassins to do the job that he himself was not allowed to do in that area. And it was in this state of uneasy peace and unremitting fear that Sugriva was living when he met Lord Ram. So, when Ram came there, and now Sugriva had realised that there is no chance of reconciliation because Vali was not ready to hear at all.
And Vali, of course, he had no interest in reconciliation. He was so convinced that he himself, that he was right. Now, we could say, we can say actually, both brothers arrived at mistaken inferences.
Now, Sugriva thought that Vali had been killed when Vali had not actually been killed. And similarly, Vali thought that Sugriva had betrayed him when Vali and Sugriva had not actually betrayed him. So, now we could say that both inferences were right based on whatever information was available for them.
Now, for Sugriva not to not hear any sound, it was reasonable to conclude that Mayavi has killed Vali. And for Vali to find the boulder there and then to see Sugriva sitting on the throne, it was reasonable to confirm or to infer that Sugriva had betrayed him and usurped him. But the difference is that Sugriva had little, if any, opportunity under the circumstances to seek any clarification.
Now, risking the demon coming out was too risky, not just for his life, but for the peace of even the nearby kingdom. Whereas, now Vali had abundant opportunity to get clarification. He could have given Sugriva at least once a patient hearing or at least he could have heard open-mindedly from the other courtiers and tried to understand Sugriva’s side of the story.
But unfortunately, he never did that. And he succumbed to one of the basic human errors. It is the error of, it is what psychologists call the attribution error.
Attribution means, attribution error means we observe a certain behaviour and after observing that behaviour, we try to infer its cause. So, we attribute certain behaviours to certain causes. Now, in this attribution, based on the evidence that we have, when we try to assign some cause to that behaviour, we can often come to a wrong inference.
We can attribute the behaviour to something which is not the cause. So, for example, what do you mean by attribution error? We may see somebody eating too much and we say this person is a glutton. So, this overeating is the evidence of the gluttony of that person.
Now, if we ourselves start gobbling food like that sometime and we see ourselves gobbling, do we say that I am a glutton? No. We say, I am very hungry. I am very hungry.
Now, couldn’t it be that that person was also very hungry? It is possible. But often, when we see some behaviour, based on our preconceptions about that person in that situation, we just assume a particular cause and in general, we give the benefit of doubt to ourselves, but we don’t so often give the benefit of doubt to others. Now, when this happens, when we don’t give the benefit of doubt to others, then we often commit misunderstandings.
We misjudge the situation. So, here what happened is that Wally succumbed to this error of attribution error because of his hasty, because of his haste and overconfidence. That is what is often called attribution error.
Haste means we want to see a situation and we want to arrive at a quick understanding. We want to quickly understand this to you. Snap judgments, as they say.
And further, we want to arrive at, this is not only quickly, but we feel that our reading of the situation is clear. Our understanding of the person is also correct. And that’s why we can feel, we can see that, okay, my understanding must be correct.
So, Wally, because of his power, because of his position as the king, because of his power as a formidable warrior, he had a lot of ego, a lot of overconfidence. He had a substantial amount of ego. And because of that, he was overconfident.
So, when he saw Sudhriva sitting on the throne, he was thinking that this must be, this must be, this is because he has betrayed me. And by this hasty judgement, he actually, what, he ended up with a nasty misjudgment. And his judging without understanding transformed a lifelong fraternal friendship, fraternal devotion into a lifelong fraternal confrontation.
In fact, this confrontation actually went on and it ended only in death, which is unfortunate. Now, moving forward, when Ram heard the whole story about how Wally had disposed Sudhriva, Ram had promised that, let’s form an alliance, I will help you. And then it’s a long story.
But essentially, Ram shot an arrow which pierced through the chest of Wally while Wally was fighting with, while Wally was towering over Sudhriva afternoon when they had been fighting, when Wally had knocked down Sudhriva. So, now, first there was abortive attempt and then the second attempt succeeded. Now, of course, at this point, the question whether Ram’s shooting an arrow at Wally, when Wally was fighting with somebody else, whether such a shooting is fair, that’s a natural question coming, whether this is moral, immoral, that’s a question will come up.
And actually, that question came to Wally himself. And Wally, in fact, went to the soil, he was so convinced about the guilt of Sudhriva that he said, oh, Ram, it is probably because of the bad assumption of Sudhriva that you also lost your sense of ethics. And that’s why you have done this Giriraj Act.
So, Ram provided a series of counter-arguments, which essentially centred on one point that Wally was an aggressor, or had been unfairly and brutally aggressive towards his brother. He had dispossessed Sudhriva of all his kingdom. He had exiled Sudhriva, he had taken away, plundered away all his property and exiled Sudhriva.
He had made several attempts to assassinate Sudhriva and he had even taken away Sudhriva’s wife. After Sudhriva had fled from the kingdom, Wally took Sudhriva’s wife as his own wife. So, Roma became another of the co-wives of Tara, who was Wally’s male wife.
And for an elder brother to take a younger brother’s wife as his own wife, when that younger brother is still alive, that is grievously sinful. It’s almost like incest. And Ram said that, after giving an elaborate reasoning like this, Ram essentially said that, you know, for all these heinous forms of aggravation, there is no punishment lesser than a capital punishment that will be suitable.
Now, at this point, we may not be in this argument, that means, if we don’t, the point is we have to look at the context. Now, we are just observers. Wally was the victim of a perceived injustice.
And yet, Wally accepted Ram’s reasoning. So, if a plaintiff in a case, after hearing from the defendant, gets such a clarification that a plaintiff feels that I don’t want to continue this case, then others don’t have to poke their nose into that thing that still there is some injustice happening. And in fact, this is a whole subject which can become a topic for a separate class only, entirely about the ethics of Ram’s actions.
But suffice it to say that, Wally was satisfied. And then, we’ll return to our theme. When Wally accused Ram about his immorality, Ram gave the answer.
And Ram was so confident about the rightness of his course of action that he told Wally, Wally, if you still think that what I’ve done is wrong, then tell me right, tell me just now. And I will remove the arrow from your body. And I can arrange to have your strength and your life restored to its past glory at this very moment.
Just tell me. And Wally heard these words. He pondered the analysis that Ram had given about Wally’s actions.
And he realised the truth of those words. He found Ram’s words mortifying and at the same time liberating. And he turned towards Ram and said, your words have awakened me.
He said, I also had a knowing feeling that maybe I had treated a superior wrongly. For a long time, I’ve been feeling like that. But my pride did not allow me to admit it.
You alone corrected me. Correct it. So today, you have liberated me from my misconception and saved me from being further sins to my brother, to persecuting my brother even further.
And he told Ram that, actually, one will get many lives. Soul is eternal and one can get many lives. But to get a death in your presence is extremely rare.
So I do not want to continue life. I want to die in your presence. Please bless me thus.
And Ram smiled. By this time, when the news of Wally’s fall had spread like wildfire, had spread like a viral news in the whole of Kishkindha, and his wife and son, Tara and Angad were charging on him, fell at the friend’s feet, crying in tears, holding on to him. Wally turned towards Tara and he said that, you had warned me not to go against Ram.
You told me to make up with Sugreeva. Unfortunately, I did not pay your words. And that’s why I am suffering today.
He said that, after you mourn for me, stay under the shelter of Sugreeva. And he turned towards Angad and he said, we are no grudges towards Sugreeva because he’s not responsible for my death. It is my own mistakes that are responsible.
Then he turned towards Sugreeva and he said, Sugreeva, brother, I have wronged you terribly. Please forgive me. And please don’t hold any malice towards my wife and my son because they did not party to my injustices to you.
And then Wally took out a jewellery necklace which he had been wearing all along. This necklace had been given by Indira to him and it had a special meridiction that whoever would wear this necklace would not die, no matter what happened. So that was the reason.
Because of the presence of the necklace, Wally had not died for such a long time, even after Ram’s arrow had pierced his body. Now, what father would not want to give a necklace to his son? So just as Wally’s father Indira had given a necklace to him, Wally could have been entirely justified in giving this necklace to his son, Angad. But he realised that he had wronged Sugreeva greatly and knowing that he had to make amends not just by words, but also through his actions.
He took out the necklace and gave it to Sugreeva. And the moment that necklace left Sugreeva, left Wally’s hands, Wally’s soul left his body and Sugreeva saw Wally become permanently motionless and silent. Now, as he had heard Wally’s heart-wrenching confession and request for forgiveness, Sugreeva’s heart broke.
And he had been grieving alas, alas, how unfortunate. As he remembers Wally speaking, he was remembering how this was the brother he had known, he had loved and he had missed for so long and now he is going to miss forever. And he felt that I am in the cause of my brother’s death.
Alas, I have been guilty of patricide. The only way I can atone for this is by entering into my brother’s funeral fire and dying with him. And wherever he goes, there I will serve him and try to make amends for my wrong.
He started grieving so much, so intensely that both Ram and Lakshman consoled him, telling him words of consolation and then words of wisdom and reminding him that a great duty awaited him now. Now that the great king had departed, he had to take care of the citizens, he had to take care of the funeral and most importantly, he had to right now take care of the funeral of Wally. So he started giving orders to arrange for a royal funeral for Wally.
And then he announced the beginning of a second statewide mourning for Wally. The first had been when earlier he had been thought he had been dead. So now this is not a story with a happy ending exactly.
It is further, it is also not a story, it is a story that defies the conventional good versus evil stereotypes. Why? Because it is not that one of the brothers is completely evil and the other is completely good. So Wally was in his own way virtuous.
His pride made him unable to admit his lapse in judgement, but overall Wally was a virtuous person. And similarly, Sugriva and Wally s virtue came back to the fore when his pride had been pierced by the arrow of Ram which had caused him to fall wounded and wasted on the ground and his presumptions had been pierced by Ram s arrow like words. And at that time he completely shifted that and he reconciled with his brother.
So Wally was also a virtuous person, but he was impelled towards a vicious action because of being gripped by a disastrous misjudgment. Some people try to portray Sugriva also as a power hungry person who schemed to usurp his brother and take over the kingdom. But Sugriva s genuine grief at the death of Wally and his willingness, his eagerness, his readiness to enter into Wally s funeral pyre that indicates that he was no power hungry schemer.
So both of them were sincere godly people, but unfortunately they had their hearts and lives bound together by paternal affection. And yet these two were ripped apart by one misunderstanding, one hasty misjudgment. This is how relationships can be ripped apart.
Now when Wally judged Sugriva without understanding that judging without understanding became the recipe for ruining their relationships. We can also see in our lives that we often our relationships with others get strained and sometimes they get ruptured also. And though we by the attribution error often tend to apportion more blame to others for that relationship problem than to ourselves, but we can also see also that if we can honestly introspect and also humbly enquire from others whether we committed the error of judging without blundering, judging without understanding.
So it is actually the story of Wally and Sugriva s unhappy story. But then the unhappiness was substantially reduced by the intervention both martial and verbal of Lord Ram who was able to bring, who brought about a pre-mortem, just before death, a pre-mortem reconciliation which brought the relationship to a peaceful end. Similarly, we can also try to evaluate whether we might be wrong and we can try to bring about a reconciliation.
So firstly, we can try to avoid judging without understanding and if at all we have become guilty of hasty judgments, then we can adopt the three-point formula for rectification that we can see was adopted that can be inferred from Wally s actions. That three-point formula is acknowledge, apologise and amend. Acknowledge means when, sometimes when others, someone tells us our fault, we just become into a defensive mode, defensive denial mode.
We don t accept but when Ram spoke, Wally s list of misdeeds, Wally accepted that, accepted that. That is, he acknowledged his fault and then he apologised just as words of accusation can hurt and break hearts. Similarly, words of apology can heal hearts.
And Wally did not stop with just apologising with words. He amended through actions. Just as he gave his necklace to Sugreeva, similarly, we can also through actions decide.
We can, as is appropriate, through our actions, we can try to make amends for any error in judgement that we have done. And for Wally, it took death to seek amends, to make up in his relationship. Hopefully, if we meditate on his story and learn from it, then we can make amends without having to go through such a jolting experience in our life.
Thank you. Hare Krishna.