Spiritual Living 2

Spiritual Living 2

There is a big celebration during which all four brothers get married, not just Rama. After all the celebrating is over, Vishwamitra heads home, and a huge procession, with Dasarathra, his queens, and family (who all came to the weddings), with Rama, Lakshmana, Sita, servants, soldiers, a baseball team, and others head back to Ayodya.

Along the way the great sage Parasharama shows up, who everyone is afraid of because he wiped out the all the warriors— the entire Kshatriya (warrior) caste in the world 20+ times just because one of them insulted his father! (Talk about holding a grudge.) Parasharama challenges Rama, saying Rama couldn’t have bent the bow of Shiva. “Here is Vishnu’s bow, let’s see you do it again,” he challenges, handing the bow to Rama.

Rama strings it as easily as slipping on sandals, aims it at Prarasharama and says, “Ho-Ho, the shoes on the other foot now!” Parasharama gives up his tapas (extra-good karma), and disappears into the sunset, having fulfilled his job of returning Vishnu’s bow to Vishnu!

Rama, Sita, Lakshmana, the King, queens, and everyone go back to Ayodya. Calendar pages blow away as years go by while everything is pretty-gosh-awful-good. After a while, the king has a feeling to pass the reigns of the kingdom on to Rama; everyone loves Rama and the king is thinking about retiring. Since everyone is looking forward to having Rama as king, all of Dasaratha’s Advisors tell the king to go ahead and install Rama on the throne.

Dasaratha tells Rama to go prepare, to do the religious strictures to prepare to be crowned, which includes prayers and fasting all night.

So Rama goes and does as he is told. But while Rama is busy with this purification process, one of the servants goes to one of the other queens, Kaikeyi, the mother of Bharata, and convinces her that Bharata should be king instead of Rama. The servant reminds Kaikeyi of some boons (“Get-out-of-jail-or-whatever-you-want-when-you-want-it” coupons) the king gave her in the past for saving his life on a battlefield once. The thing with boons is, you have to give the receiver of the boons (boon-holder) whatever they want!

After the servant convinces Kaikeyi, she sets the King up when he comes to her—up until now, she has been his favorite wife. Reminding Dasaratha of her boons, she tells the king she wants to collect on them now, and this is how she wants it: Instead of Rama becoming king, her son Bharata (who is away visiting an uncle) shall be crowned king, and 2), Rama is to be exiled to the forest for 14 years to make sure he doesn’t challenge Bharata’s crown. Bharata has no knowledge of this and when he returns will have nothing to do with this.

Dasaratha has no option but to go along with this.

Rama is very even about the whole thing. From his side, he doesn’t care if he becomes king or gets sent to the forest, as long as he is honoring his father and doing as his father asks.

Sita chooses to go with Rama as does Lakshmana. Within days Dasaratha passes away out of grief from losing and shaming Rama.

Bharata refuses to take the throne but agrees to govern in Rama’s name from a neighboring city, if Rama gives him his sandals, saying, “I will do everything in your name, using your sandals to represent you.”

So Rama, Lakshmana and Sita go into the forest where they live quite happily, having only a few adventures for most of the 14 years.

Of course, Rama being Rama, offers and protects all the ashrams in the forest while he is there. Towards the end of the 14 years a Rakshasa (demon) woman shows up, has a love-at-first-sight-experience with Rama, falling head over heals in love with him. She thinks he is just adorable; tells Rama that she loves him so much that she will kill Sita so that she can have him.

Lakshmana cuts off her nose, disfiguring her and sends her away. For some reason, she takes that as an insult, pouting, whining, throwing tantrums. She causes a big stink and gets some of her relatives who are nearby, 14,000 of them, to go kill Rama. He wipes them all out in an afternoon.

Not content to cause the death of 14,000 of her family and friends, the pouting, disfigured Rakshasa woman then goes and tells Ravana, the king of all Rakshasas (“I just wanted revenge,” she told reporters later.) Ravana, you’ll remember, is the cause of all the distress in the world, chasing the gods out of heaven, and causing Vishnu to be born as a man—Rama— just to kill him. Not knowing about this, Ravana decides the best way to get back at Rama is to kidnap his wife Sita, who is really beautiful anda solid “10”, and get her to marry him, Ravana. Yup, that’ll do it, thinks Ravana.

So he devises a plan to kidnap Sita, which he does with the help of Marichi, the guy who was hit in the chest and went flying 400 miles when Rama was just a boy of 16, who gets killed in the process.

After chasing Marichi (shaped as a beautiful, rainbow-colored deer) and killing him, Rama returns to his hut to find Sita missing, gets very upset, yells at Lakshmana who was supposed to guard her, then forgives him. Not knowing what happened, Rama asks the forest, and all the plants and trees point in a particular direction. Using that as a guide, Rama heads off in the same direction Ravana took Sita and gives chase. Since Ravana is in a flying car and Rama is on foot, it takes about a year for Rama to find and rescue Sita.

During that year, Rama teams up with Sugriva, helping him become King of the monkeys. In return, Sugriva agrees to use his army to help find and rescue Sita. Sugriva’s Prime Minister is Hanuman, a great devotee of Rama and a major hero in the story, doing many miraculous and magical things in the process of helping Rama find and rescue Sita.

In fact, it is Hanuman who actually finds Sita is by leaping / flying hundreds of miles across the ocean to Sri Lanka, the home of Ravana. After finding Sita, Hanuman, assuming the shape of a small, miniature monkey, tells Sita that Rama is looking for her and gives her Rama’s ring, which Rama entrusted to him, expecting Hanuman to be the one to find Sita.

Sita is relieved and excited, and Hanuman heads back to tell Rama where Sita is being kept so Rama can come back and defeat Ravana.

In case you’re wondering, Sita never gives in to Ravana. He pleads with her, offers her jewels, the #1 wife spot of all his wives, then threatens her, hiding her away with terrible (and terrifying) guards as her only companions. So Hanuman learns then as do we all, that Sita has never succumbed to Ravana’s advances and that she is still chaste and pure, even though she is living in the house belonging to an enemy.

Hanuman flies back to the other monkeys waiting across the sea , and they all go get Rama and Lakshmana. They come back to the ocean, build a magical bridge in seven days that is a mile wide and hundreds of miles long to get to Sri Lanka, where Ravana is. A few Rakshasas leave Ravana and join Rama. Next is the fight scene: huge battles between the Rakshasas on one side, and monkeys, bears, Rama, Lakshmana on the other. The battle last for many days.

At one point Rama loses consciousness. Everyone freaks on his side. Hanuman is told that there is an herb that will revive Rama, but it only grows on a certain mountain. Hanuman leaps across the ocean to find the mountain, can’t figure out which herb it is, doesn’t want to make a mistake, picks up the whole mountain and brings it back to where Rama is. Then Vibishana, one of the Rakshasas who joined Rama and is the one who knew the remedy, picks the herb and uses it.

Hanuman picks up the mountain, leaps back across the sea with it, and returns it to its proper spot. He does the same thing a few days later when Rama is again knocked out: leaps over the ocean, grabs the mountain and brings it back, saving Rama.