The Advaitic Meaning In The Ramayana (Vali)

The spiritual essence in man can kill and destroy Ravan, the ten headed monstrosity of extroversions. It can do it with the army of monkeys. An educated man reading this should know what the monkeys refer to, The monkey has two qualities - 'Asthiratwa' and 'Chandhalatwa' - instability and restlessness. The thoughts in the human mind have these two qualities. They cannot remain sthira stable. The monkey cannot remain on one branch, it jumps from one branch to another and from tree to tree. If it gets tired and sits on a tree, it will still be restless, and scratch all over. Thus, it cannot keep quiet even for a minute. So too, our thoughts. They can never remain quiet, but keep jumping from topic to topic.

The army of thoughts is to be controlled. But, at this moment, Vali- who stands for lust controls them. This has to be destroyed. And how? It can be only done from behind, and not from the front. It is like a person wanting to curb his desire for alcohol. He cannot do it by sitting before the bottle; for the moment he does this, not only is half his strength gone, but the pull of the bottle is three times as strong. Hence every time it is your lust that wins, and not you. So, if ever you want to conquer this lust, you have to shoot it from behind the tree.

Vali had such great power, that any time an enemy approached him, half the strength of the enemy would drain away and Vali would become three times stronger. So, Rama had to kill him from behind. To whom should he then give the kingship of the monkey-clan - the thoughts? To whom better than Sugreeva? Greeva means reins, "Sugreeva" means well-reined, i.e well-controlled. When the thoughts are under one's control, the army is then available to cross the frontiers and reach Lanka to kill the ten headed monster and bring back Sita.

To Be Continued

Swami Chinmayananda

Swami Chinmayananda's lectures were an outpour of wisdom. He introduced the Geetha Gnana Yagna. He wrote a lot of books on spirituality, commentaries to Vedantic texts, children books etc. He then started spreading His teachings globally.