Ramayana’s Universal Message of Inspiration, Interfaith talk at Houston on Ramnavmi 2025

One’s greatness is seen not just in how forcefully they can make the world bend to their will. How forcefully they can get the world to say yes. One’s greatness is also seen in how gracefully they can accept when the world says no.

Because accepting setbacks and failures and reversals and even injustices is an inevitable part of the human experience. So Rama is the supreme but when he appears on the earth, the divine descends in the human level to teach us humans how to face life. And he is loved by everyone as he grows up.

He is powerful, he is handsome, he is compassionate, he is competent. He is every way suited to becoming a king. And at that time, for no fault of his, because of a palace conspiracy, he is exiled to the forest.

The conception of exiling to the forest may be difficult to understand today because there are no forests to exile people to. Hardly any. Probably the nearest you might come today is to deportation.

But even when a person is deported, they have the facility to go back to their own country. But exile means you just become homeless. In the jurisprudence of that time, exile is the worst punishment, just one below execution.

In some ways, exile is actually considered worse than execution. Because when you are exiled, everything that makes your life worth living is taken away from you. And for many people, better you take my life away than take everything away from me.

And he is completely blameless. At that time, Lord Ram could have rebelled. He could have incited a rebellion.

But he did not. He kept always the greater good in mind. And rather than fomenting rebellion in anyone, he can’t ever rebel.

There is a classic conversation between Ram and his younger brother Lakshman about how to face adversity in life. And this conversation actually echoes modern thoughts in many ways. So when Lakshman comes to hear that Ram has been exiled, he is a faithful younger brother.

He says, this is atrocious, this is outrageous. And he says, you should fight against this. Now Ram’s father Dashrath has given a promise to his youngest wife Kaikeyi that I will fulfill two of your wounds.

And she asked that Ram be exiled for 14 years and her younger son, her son, who is the youngest among the four brothers, Bharat, be made the king instead of Ram. Now Lakshman is angry. And he says, how could the king do like this? He is blinded by lust.

He is completely under the spell of infatuation. You have no need to obey. Ram calms him down.

There is a sweet rhyme between the word Ram and calm. Whenever Ram goes, he brings calm. And when he goes inside our heart, then also he brings calm.

Actually there is another rhyme between the English C-A-L-M, calm, and the Sanskrit K-A-M-A, calm. So calm is craving, is unrestrained desire. So as long as there is the Sanskrit calm inside us, the English calm will not be there.

As long as there is craving, we cannot have peace. So when Ram comes, he brings calm, and he removes calm in the form of selfishness, and selfish cravings. Ram calms him down.

He says, I was her father. It is not out of infatuation. It is out of obligation.

Why would Kaikeyi do something like this to you? You have always treated her like a mother. She is so mean to you. Generally when we are angry, anger does two things inside us.

It makes us look for an aggressor, and the other side, it makes us look for a villain. I want someone to hit back another person, and I want someone to hit it. So Ram says, don’t.

Don’t speak ill about Kaikeyi. You know how much she loved me. Her love for me was like an incessant flow of the river Ganga.

Lakshman is still angry, and he tries to weaponize Ram’s metaphor against him. He says, that’s what I can’t understand. How did the Ganga dry up in one night? When did all her love disappear? And then Ram makes the discussion philosophical.

He says, that’s why seeing her inexplicable change in disposition, I concluded that this is the well-known destiny. Lakshman is not yet done. He says, it is only cowards who accept injustice as destiny.

Heroes fight against injustice. So then Ram makes a key point. He says, for me, destiny is not as important as duty.

He says, as a duty to my father, I was ready to ascend the throne. And as a duty to my father, I will now go to the forest. So he accepts, he calms his brother, he calms the citizens.

When something bad has happened to us, it’s very easy not only for us to feel miserable, but to make everyone miserable. And to make everyone angry at whoever we think has caused the misery. And thus we end up making things worse.

So, why do bad things happen to good people is a universal question that everyone faces in life. Through Lord Ram’s example, the Ramayan inspires us to rephrase the question. Rather than asking, why do bad things happen to good people, we are encouraged to ask, when bad things happen to good people, what do good people do? Ram does not have any bad karma from the past.

So whatever philosophical explanations we may have for why bad things happen, none of those apply to Lord Ram. And yet bad things happen to him. So, rephrasing the question, accept that this has happened now.

Now, what can we do about it? Life is unfair. That’s just the unfortunate fact of life. Some of you may notice that I need crutches for walking.

So when I was one, I got polio. It was an accident of fate. And the vaccine I was given had some problems in it.

I’m not anti-vax over here. But anyway, when I was one, I got polio. I don’t remember it.

I was learning to walk. I fell down. And I was about two and a half or three.

That’s my first memory. A distant relative had come to our house and she was consoling my mother saying, it’s so sad your son got polio. And I remember my mother’s voice, very calm, clear, confident.

She said, whatever he lacks physically, God will provide him intellectually. I don’t know why she said that. And somehow that stays with me.

Actually, the intellectually part stays with me. God came later. But I found that, yeah, I could play outdoor games like other kids.

And I could say this is unfair. But then I realized that I did have more intellectual ability than others. I could read things fast.

I could remember things well. I could articulate things clearly. And somewhere in the back of my mind it settled that, yes, life is unfair.

However, in the big picture, life is fairly unfair. Fairly unfair means sometimes we get worse than what we deserve and sometimes we get better than what we deserve. So, Lord Ram accepts the unfairness that has come upon him.

But that, I was talking about the acronym. Do you remember the acronym? Art. So, acceptance is one part of how to deal with life.

The second is our responsibility. Responsibility often requires us to reframe how we are seeing the situation. When Lord Ram is being exiled, his minister says, this is such an outrage, this is such a calamity.

And Ram replies, what is the calamity? For an elder brother, the younger brother is like a son. And which parent does not want to see their son prosper and flourish in their presence? He says, we are all ultimately meant to grow in wisdom. Most people who are householders get the opportunity to associate with sages and saints only in the later stages of their life.

I am so fortunate that in my youth I get to spend time with the sages. And, he says that, while I am in the forest, I have heard, the sages have been terrorized by demons. I can do some service to them also.

So, that brings the second part is responsibility. Taking responsibility versus casting blame. Lord Ram does not blame anyone.

He takes responsibility. This is the situation I am in. What is the good I can do in this situation? This is where, instead of asking, what if this person had not done this? What if this person had not done that? What if I had not done that? Changing the question from what if to what is.

Instead of asking, what if this had happened? What if that had happened? Okay, what is here right now? What is it that I can do right now? So, Lord Ram in the forest took responsibility. Responsibility to do service. He was a warrior.

He was a protector. He decided, while I am in the forest, let me protect the sages from demoniac forces, from dark devilish beings who were persecuting and terrorizing them. In everything that happens in our life, there is something bad and there is something good.

So, taking responsibility does not mean let the burden of the whole world come upon us. Taking responsibility means that this is the situation I am in. How can I make the best of this situation? And Lord Ram enriches himself with wisdom, serves the sages and sets an example of how to gracefully, not just passively accept adversity, but to responsibly do something constructive amid that adversity.

So, for me, my mother did that reframing for me. Instead of worrying about the physical, focus on the intellectual. We all, if my mother was the person who actually inspired devotion to Lord Ram in my heart in my childhood, we would grow up with a beautiful picture of Ram and she would tell me stories of Ramayana.

So, if we have someone in our life who can teach us acceptance, who can teach us responsibility, we are actually very blessed. now, while we are accepting what is unchangeable and taking responsibility for what is changeable for us. First of all, finding what is changeable and then working on what is changeable.

That brings us to the third part. The third part is transcendence. Transcendence is that Lord Ram he has this fascinating duality about his identity.

He is the divine, but he is playing the role of a human being. Especially the original rendition of the Ramayana, which is the Valmiki Ramayana, his divinity is not emphasized much. Because if the fact that he is God is emphasized, then he is God.

He can do anything. What problem does he have? Isn’t it? That can become an excuse for others to not learn from his example. That’s why his divinity to some extent, it is not hidden, but it is not emphasized.

So, transcendence refers to the fact that there is a higher reality beyond the reality that occupies our minds in daily life. And for us to be able to face life’s injustices, to not be crushed by our daily responsibilities, we need to regularly rejuvenate ourselves by linking with that higher reality. Normally, when we start our life, for us the world is very big.

If I am here, the world is very big. And God, even if he exists, he is very small. When I started my spiritual journey, I started sharing with all my relatives about what I had learned about the divine.

And one of my uncles told me, yeah, I believe in God. He is happy there, I am happy here. So initially, however we conceive God, he might seem irrelevant to us.

Not very important. So that’s the initial part. The initial stage is where the world is very big for us and God is very small for us.

But as we grow spiritually, in the bhakti tradition, chanting the names of God, chanting the names of Ram, the names of Krishna, this is one way to infuse our consciousness within the presence of the divine. So as we grow spiritually, the dynamic inwards. The world starts becoming smaller and God starts becoming bigger for us.

And when God becomes the bigger reality, the result of that is life’s ups and downs don’t affect us that much. When the world is very big, world’s ups and downs also become very big. It becomes a giant sine wave.

We get tossed up and down. But when the world itself becomes small, then the ups and downs within the world also become small. And that’s how we can stay more composed, we can stay more connected, we can stay more connected when the world becomes small for us.

So Lord Ram, through his example, he demonstrates how to live in the light of a higher reality. Of course, he himself is the higher reality. But he lives for the principles of dharma and the characters within.

There is Lakshman, there is… In many ways, in the Ramayana, Ram is the supreme hero. But God is not just someone who says, I’ll be the hero and you be my follower, you be my fan. God wants each one of us to discover the heroism within us in a mode of service and contribution.

In Ramayana, actually the most adventurous and beloved section, ironically, is the section where Ram is not present at all. That is called the Sundar Kavant. Where it is Hanuman whose adventures are shown.

Similarly, in the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna is revealed to be God, but Krishna is calling upon Arjuna to become the hero, to take a heroic responsibility. God is great and connecting with him invites us all to embrace the great destiny that God has for each one of us. So Hanuman, Hanuman embodies this transcendence through a two-fold competition.

Hanuman has a mace in his hands and his hands are folded. That is the iconic imagery of Hanuman. Hanuman is considered the greatest devotee of Ram.

By Ram’s inspiration, one who infuses transcendence is said to become like Hanuman. So Hanuman’s folded hands, they represent Bhakti. And the mace in his hands represents Shakti.

So Bhakti is devotion and Shakti is strength. So similarly, one who becomes infused with transcendence, that person has this combination that their eyes are fixed on the Lord. In the service of the Lord, they are not seeking worldly gains, they are not seeking power and fame and all those things which most of us crave for our own pleasure.

Bhakti means the eyes are fixed on the Divine. God is the bigger reality for them. But just because God is the bigger reality does not mean that they dismiss the world as illusion.

The world is also reality. The world is a place where each one of us is meant to become an instrument of God’s will in a mood of service and compassion. And thus, the mace in Hanuman’s hands signifies Shakti, the strength to bring about a positive change in the world.

So, devotion is what brings change in our heart. And the contribution that we make through our God-given talents, that is what brings about a change in the world. So Lord Ram’s example of transcendence is that there is inner change and there is outer change.