Sadhana in the Ramayana - Swami Sivananda

The Ramayana of Valmiki is a didactic heroic poem which has the avowed purpose of glorifying Dharma and inculcating the truths which open up for man the way to supreme perfection. It is one of the two great epics of India. It represents the true Hindu spirit of unconditional adherence to the law of righteousness and the performance of one’s prescribed duty. To assert the greatness of a life of activity based on the righteousness underlying the law of the Divine Being is one of the main aims of the Ramayana. The life of the ‘ideal man’ described in the Ramayana is an incentive to all men to strive to become embodiments of Dharma. Dharma is the soul of life and a life bereft of Dharma is not worth its name. Sri Rama, the incarnation of God, repre-sents in himself the ideal son, the ideal brother, the ideal husband, the ideal king and the emblem of Divinity on earth. Man is expected to root his virtue in the Divine. Virtue is necessarily grounded in a consciousness of the principle of Divinity; else, it would become a mechanical routine of external acts. The Ramayana sounds the eternal spirit of Bharatavarsha, the spirit of heroically facing the realities of existence, without fighting shy of them, and at the same time blending action with devotion and loyalty with law. Law is eternal, for it is the expression of the system of the universe governed by God. To follow this law is the duty of man. The Ramayana teaches man, by way of example, as to how he can fulfil the demands of law.

The beauty of the Ramayana is really beyond human description, for it is a revelation to a Rishi—not merely an intellectual production of a scholar—whose meaning is ‘integral’, and no one-sided consideration of it can do full justice to it. The entire extent of the life of an Arya is delineated in the Ramayana. Social life and spiritual life are wonderfully harmonized in it. Love and heroism, Ahimsa and Kshatriya-dharma are brought together in it. Bhakti and Yoga, Karma and Jnana are fused into one. Sri Rama is the crowning feature of the Ramayana, whose very name is exalted to the status of a supreme purifier of the mind of man. Rama Nama is a panacea for all diseases, and is as invincible and irresistible as the Rama-Bana.

© "Sadhana" by Swami Sivananda, published by The Divine Life Society, The Sivananda Publication League, Shivanandanagar Post, Tehri-Garhwal District, Uttaranchal, India. Website: www.sivanandaonline.org. Reprinted with permission.

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