Musings on Desikan's 'araNyA-kAndam'
From the Bhakti List Archives
• December 21, 1996
srimathE lakshmi-nrsumha parabrahmaNe namaha sri vedanta desika gurave namaha Dear 'bhAgavatOttamA-s', Please refer to one of my earlier postings in this series where I briefly defined the "Rt.Hon'ble SAstry Approach". It is so important for our understanding of the 'araNyA-kAndam' that it will bear recapitulation below : ---"Sastry regarded the 'Ramayana' as an extra-ordinary document of "supreme human qualities and emotions" as embodied in the character of Lord Rama. He did not deem the epic as a religious text for the purpose of his commentaries or lectures." Now if we subject Verse #28 (read in conjunction with Verses #23,#25 and #26) of Desikan's 'Raghuveerya gadyam' to the "SAstry-ic" (pun not intended!!) method of analysis we should be able to confidently and logically elucidate the theme of "Love between Man & Woman". Dear 'bhAgavatOttamA-s', amongst all the emotions or qualities ever known to humankind there is nothing so sublime or ennobling as TRUE LOVE. Please note that I do not speak of this emotion in its ordinary or carnal sense or in the pedestrian form in which it is sometimes portrayed in the popular literature, movies or "life-styles" of our secular times. By LOVE I mean that emotion that stirs deeply in the hearts of the mass of ordinary men and women of all this world; that emotion which is known to impel them to acts of courage, generosity, unselfishness, fortitude, hope, goodness and, above all, to that "SPECIAL TENDERNESS TOWARDS EACH OTHER" which all of the Great Lord's creatures are intensely and uniquely capable of. I mean that LOVE which could be said to be the mother of a host of feelings known to man : that which flow between spouses, between mother and infant, between father and son, between grand-children and grand-parents, between two bosom friends, between a good-samaritan and a needy soul....why between a true "bhakthA" and the Lord too ("nAyaka-nAyaki bhAva")!! I mean that LOVE which moves us all to pity at the sight of suffering and pain ... that LOVE which moves us to elation at the sight of a lovely work of art .... that LOVE which persuades us all to keep going on in our petty lives against all odds and all frustrations, in the hope that we will sight, someday, the Meaning of the Lord as revealed by Himself ..... Dear friends, does all what I say above strike you as rather "mushy-mushy" or "hocus-pocus" ? Think again, then !! Please make an effort to search your memories and look closely at your lives and rummage through your hearts, and you will, for sure, come up with a rare moment or two in the past you can remember when, for no particular reason, you felt a great ineffable force throbbing in your veins and, as a result of which, you felt an overwhelming gratitude for just being alive in this world !! In those moments you would have wanted to have nothing else or more in life than to be able to say,"This is it ... this is the moment of Truth and of Bliss !!" That moment is what I call LOVE. That moment of LOVE, dear "bhAgavatOttamA-s', unfortunately, arrives but rarely in our lives -- and as rarely, too, as Lord Rama showed it did even in His own life! It is the same moment for which our "rshi-s and munivar-s" of yore performed severe penances, our "AzhwArs" cried their hearts out for and for which, too, all the Lord's "servants", in the Sri Vaishnava history known to us, yearned and patiently waited their lives. It was, indeed, such a moment of sheer LOVE which the Lord "Rama of Ayodhya" admitted to; which He, alongwith "Sita-pirAtti", greatly enjoyed in the Dandaka woods; and which Swami Desikan describes in that IMMORTAL phrase : "dandakAtapovana jhanghamapArijAtha"!! Now, "bhAgavatOttamA-s", there is nothing in our meek powers that can make such "moments of Grace and Love" come true in our lives, at our own will or pleasure, as it were. But there is however abundant possibility that if certain CONDITIONS and CIRCUMSTANCES are created in the state of our respective existence, or in our "life-styles" (as they call it in these modern times), then, dear "bhAgavatOttamA-s', LOVE might well occur as often as we desire. We cannot by ourselves author such "moments of LOVE" but we can, and should indeed, as ordinary "grihastAs" (householders), strive hard to create in our lives those CONDITIONS necessary and conducive for the occurence of such Grace. Lord Rama, through Verses #23, #25 and #26 of Swami Desikan's "Raghuveeragadyam", clearly but subtly shows us how to construct such "conditions" in our lives so as to be able to competently observe the "grihastAshrama-dharma" (the ordained duties of a householder) which is 'sine qua non' for the ultimate realization of His LOVE, TRUTH and BEAUTY. And that will be the subject of my next posting. srimathE srivan satagopa sri narayana yathidra mahadesikAya namaha sudarshan srimathE lakshmi-nrsumha parabrahmaNE namaha sri vedanta desika guravE namaha
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