“Meditating on Shri Rama, who has Janaki to His left and Lakshmana to His right, brings all auspiciousness and is your wish-fulfilling tree, O Tulsi.” (Dohavali, 1)

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राम बाम दिसि जानकी लखन दाहिनी ओर
ध्यान सकल कल्यानमय सुरतरु तुलसी तोर

rāma bāma disi jānakī lakhana dāhinī ora
dhyāna sakala kalyānamaya surataru tulasī tora

“Growing up, I heard a lot of praise for saintly people of the Vedic tradition. Particularly those of more recent times, appearing say within the last five hundred years. The spark of the appreciation, if you will, often relates to literature. You see, these saints decided to describe ancient truths, which often come across as esoteric, in a language of the modern day. They could be speaking in the language of a specific region, for instance. In the case of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the explanations are in a language that otherwise has no connection to Vedic culture. In other words, the concepts are new to the people reading; they are hearing about them for the first time.

“Someone like Goswami Tulsidas receives praise for retelling the story of Shri Rama in the Hindi language. His Ramacharitamanasa is like the principal scriptural text within the Hindi category. Can you further elaborate as to what is so special about such a presentation? Why is not the original Sanskrit enough? Why do people feel the need to translate, to repurpose, to present in a different way? What is to be gained? As Shri Krishna Himself once asked Nanda Maharaja, kim phalam. What is the resulting fruit?”

Taking the last question first, the phalam is always the same. The saintly person, who is an ocean of mercy and compassion, wants people to be happy. That is the reason they follow bhakti-yoga, sanatana-dharma, religious life, or whatever you wish to call it. There may be a different cause on the surface, in the external sense, through the narrative of the life experience, but at the foundation is a desire for happiness, pleasure, and bliss. The Sanskrit word is ananda.

कथ्यतां मे पित: कोऽयं सम्भ्रमो व उपागत:
किं फलं कस्य वोद्देश: केन वा साध्यते मख:

kathyatāṁ me pitaḥ ko ’yaṁ
sambhramo va upāgataḥ
kiṁ phalaṁ kasya voddeśaḥ
kena vā sādhyate makhaḥ

“My dear father, I am very respectfully and humbly inquiring. What is this arrangement? Why you are busy in making some sacrificial ceremony, what is the reason, and what is the result? For whose benefit is it and by what means will it be accomplished?” (Shrimad Bhagavatam, 10.24.3)

They want others to experience the same ananda. This is the entire purpose to religion, in the original, truthful, and valid definition. Ordinary happiness and distress come and go. They move through areas like residents leasing units of an apartment building. There is nothing really to be done, as a catalyst. The comparison is to the changing of seasons. We do not have to place a call with an administrator to bring about the end of summer. Winter announces itself whenever it feels like, but the schedule is more or less predictable.

मात्रा-स्पर्शास् तु कौन्तेय
शीतोष्ण-सुख-दुःख-दाः
आगमापायिनो ऽनित्यास्
तांस् तितिक्षस्व भारत

mātrā-sparśās tu kaunteya
śītoṣṇa-sukha-duḥkha-dāḥ
āgamāpāyino ‘nityās
tāṁs titikṣasva bhārata

“O son of Kunti, the nonpermanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of winter and summer seasons. They arise from sense perception, O scion of Bharata, and one must learn to tolerate them without being disturbed.” (Lord Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 2.14)

Saintly people want others to experience ananda which is rooted in transcendence. In other words, the conditions are not the absolute determining factor. This means that the ananda can be reached by a man or a woman. By a child or an adult. By a day laborer or a respected administrator. From the early stages of life to the very last breath. The potential is there, but conditions, which are ever-changing, might create new challenges.

One of those challenges is language. The Vedas are sound in origin. They are hymns in praise of higher powers. These hymns are knowledge. If written down, the corresponding script is Devanagari. The literal translation to this word is “city of the gods.” This means that the script itself is divine in nature. The decoded script, when spoken out loud or repeated within the mind, is known as the language called Sanskrit. This presents a challenge in the modern day, as this language is not used in general conversation.

Moreover, as an experiment, have someone try to at least pronounce the words. Even if the original characters are transliterated in a way that a person of a specific area can at least produce the sounds, the process is exhausting. It would be like taking a sentence in English, removing the spaces in between words, and also reconfiguring some of the letters based on what appears immediately before and after. To pronounce such words would be a chore, and what to speak of trying to understand what is being spoken.

Meanwhile, when Tulsidas takes the same concepts but presents them in Hindi, the bottom falls out of the complexity level. Someone who has never spoken or heard Hindi can at least produce the sounds. They see that the terms are separate and individual. They can be analyzed alone and then taken all together to get a meaning to the verse.

This is a significant milestone to achieve, especially for someone who would otherwise be shut out. The original language presents something like a barrier, based on the degradation in culture over time and the lack of patience to sit without distraction and deliberate fully. Any person can now access the sacred story of Shri Rama, who is an avatara of Vishnu, who is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Any person can access something which took place thousands of years ago but which has timeless relevance.

The first verse from the Dohavali describes a system of meditation. Consider Shri Rama, His wife Sita, and His younger brother Lakshmana. Just meditate on that image. Understand that every kind of auspicious activity recommended for you, by your family, by your friends, by your community, by respected individuals, can be immediately met through this meditation. It is almost like the saint is revealing a hidden secret, a way to find happiness without intense struggle. How can such kindness ever be sufficiently repaid?

In Closing:

From potency of words to say,
How ever sufficiently to repay?

Instead towards Sanskrit to proceed,
Taken from local language indeed.

What the world struggling to find,
Resting comfortably in the mind.

With Sita to left and Lakshmana to right,
With Rama most beautiful sight.

Categories: questions

Tags: dailyprompt, god, hare krishna, hinduism, poem, poems, poetry