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Ram Navami
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Subject: Ram Navami
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From: manish@cadence.com (Manish Tandon)
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Date: Fri, 7 Apr 1995 19:50:11 GMT
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Apparently-To: alt-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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From news@cadence.com Fri Apr 7 15: 39:43 1995
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Newsgroups: alt.hindu
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Organization: Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
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Sender: news@cadence.com
With Ram navami coming up, here something about a great devotee of Lord Rama,
Goswami Tulasi das.
citrakut ke ghat par bhai santan kee bhir
tulasidas chandan ghisen tilak deu raghubhir
"All the sages have gathered on the bank of (river Sarayu?) Citrakut to see
the supremely auspicious pastime. Tulasi das is making sandalwood pulp and
giving tilak to Lord Rama."
This meeting was actually arranged by Hanuman himself since Tulasidas wanted
to see the Lord personally. But such is the yoga-maya of the Lord that when
He appeared with Lakshaman, Tulasidas could not recognize Him and therefore
after giving him tilak, asked them to say jaya Sri Rama, as he egarly waited
for the Lord to appear!
There are a two incidences from the life of Tulasi das which I find very
inspiring so I thought of sharing them with people here.
1. After Tulasidas completed the translation of Valmiki's Ramayan, there was
great opposition from the caste brahmins who feared losing their monopoly
which they enjoyed with Ramayan only available in Sanskrit. So they told
Tulasidas to throw his Ramcharitra-manas in the river (Ganges?).
Somehow it was decided that the decision should be made by an authority
and who else but Lord Siva was selected for that. So in the city of
Benares (Varanasi), the headquartes of caste brahmins, Tulasidas' Ramayan
was put at the bottom of all the Vedic literature in the temple of Lord
Siva (most probably the Kashi-Vishvanath temple since that's the most
most popular and original) and left overnight.
Lo and behold, the Ramcharitra-manas was found on the top the next morning!
This was accepted as the decision of Siva himself by everyone. Such is the
position of the devotees of the Lord.
2. Valmiki in his Ramayan refers to Lord Rama as a great divine personality
but not as the Supreme Lord. It was Tulasidas who explicitly addressed
Him as Bhagavan, so his work is of great importance.
However even within the Vaisnavas, there have been various communities
and narrow-minded people have created hierarchies of the of the Supreme
Lord and his avatars.
So one such person once said to Tulasidas, "why do worship Rama? You should
worship Krishna. Rama is only one third of Krishna."
To that, Tulasidas replied, "the pastimes of Raghunandana as the King of
Ayodhya itself are so wonderful, now that you have told me He is God, my
love for Him has increased a hundred times"!!
Thus he refuted the futility of such mundane quantification of the Lord,
that Rama is one third of Krishna and Narayana is one tenth of Rama and
so on. The Lord is infinite and so such numbering is all useless. It is
also said that when Tulasidas visited Vrindavana, the Radha-Krishna deities
appeared as Sita-Rama before him.
and here is a beautiful bhajan by Tulasidas [provided by Mukunda-datta
prabhu (mpt@MAIL.UTEXAS.EDU)]
sri ramacandra krpalu bhaja mana, harana bhava-bhaya-dharunam/
navakanja-locana, kanja-mukha karakanja, padakanjarunam//
kandarpa aganita amita chavi, nava-nila-nirada sundaram/
pata pita manahun tadita ruci suci naumi janaka-suta-varam//
bhaja dinabandhu dinesa danava-daitya-vamsa nikandanam/
raghunanda ananda-kanda kosala canda dasaratha-nandanam//
sira-mukuta kundala tilaka caru, udara-anga-vibhusanam/
ajanu-bhuja sara-capa-dhara, sangrama-jita kharadusanam//
iti vadati tulasidasa, sankara-sesa-muni-mana-ranjanam/
mama hrdaya-kanja nivasa kuru, kamadi-khala-dala-ganjanam//
Hari Bol!
manish
