Let Sri Rama Be Your Ideal – The Divine Life Society

Sri Swami Sivananda

Taken from Divine Life Magazine 1950

Ideals are remembered and adored for the purpose of adopting them in our life. The Ramanavami celebration or the Vasanta Navaratri every year, is an opportune moment for us to saturate ourselves in the Spirit of Sri Rama. We love and adore the ideals, because we express thereby our yearning to unite with them. In our worship of God, it is implied that we should be virtuous, good and perfect, even as God is. Sri Rama said, “To anyone, who once takes shelter under Me and solicits ‘I am Thine’, I shall give fearlessness from all beings; this is My vow”. One cannot be a devout worshipper of Sri Rama if he is not a devout worshipper of the qualities of Sri Rama. Compassion, gentleness, justice and sagacity found their best abode in Rama. Worship of Rama means resorting to truthfulness, saintliness and divinity.

Rama’s rule was one of the laws of unsurpassed rectitude, which does not pay heed to personal relationships of a brother or a wife. Truth has an iron hand. It establishes impartial oneness of vision. One, who approaches Rama with love, becomes wide in heart, pure in spirit, good in nature, dispassionate in thought, speech and action. A true devotee of Sri Rama is, His representative, His power and knowledge. Rama-Nama burns ignorance, passion and sin. With knowledge or without knowledge, correctly or incorrectly, when the word ‘Rama’ is pronounced, it showers a rain of good on the devotee. ‘Sri Rama Brahma Tarakam’—Sri Rama is Brahman who takes one across Samsara. Rama is one in whom Yogins sport (Ramante), i.e., the Self within. Ramanama is the essence of Sahasranama. Once you take refuge in Him, your welfare becomes His responsibility.

To a devotee, Rama is not simply a good and great person, but God Himself. Rama is the son of Dasharatha the King of Ayodhya, as well as the Divine, omnipresent God, Self, Atma or Brahman. The destruction of the ten-headed Ravana by Rama is the annihilation of the mind with the ten senses. Worship of Rama is the worship of the Virat Purusha Himself. Read the prayers offered by Mandodari and Brahma in the Yuddhakanda of the Valmiki Ramayana. They refer to Rama as the one Creator of the universe, the God of all, the Ruler of all. ‘Tattvato Jnatva’—after knowing Him in truth, one enters into Him.

Devotion to God is not a simple emotion. It is the result of intense Vairagya and Sattvika Bhava. You should possess the good qualities extolled in the Ramayana. Otherwise, emotion may raise you up temporarily to a kind of ecstasy, but you cannot experience Divine consciousness thereby. Devotion is a fruit which ripens gradually through the processes of self-restraint and virtue. There is no Sadhana for Bhagavat-Sakshatkara without intense Vairagya. Only after detachment from the world of things, it is possible to have the attainment of God. Restrain the senses. Do not allow the mind to think of pleasure centres. Try to bear heat and cold, hunger and thirst, when they torment you. Remember God, and forget all pains. Remember that this world is Anityam, Asukham. Remember that the Lord, Sri Rama, fills this universe with His Presence. Let Sri Ramanavami be the inauguration of greater and more persevering effort for spiritual realisation and absolute Perfection. Forget the past as a shadow, and do not dream about the future. Rely on God, surrender yourself unto Him, here and now. He shall lift you up with His saving hands. You will, thereby, achieve the Purushartha; you will be supremely blessed. May the ever-flowing Grace of Sri Ramachandra, the Paramatman, be upon you all.