This is a guest post by Ashwani Srivastava. He writes the Blog “World of Illusions” and tweets as @iAshh
One of the great Indian epics is called “Ramayana” which depicts the duties of relationships, portraying ideal characters. The characters are all fundamental to the consciousness of the world. “Ram” is the good god and “Ravan” is the bad one.
As the epic goes, the golden city of Lanka was built by Ravan’s half-brother and treasurer of god’s wealth keeper who he drove out from Lanka by force, and took over the kingdom of Lanka. He went around the world killing sages and raping women. Why? To establish his dominion – to generate fear. In other words to establish his monopoly. He tried to monopolize outer things as he is insecure from inside. He needed constant validation from the outer world, so do most of the people nowadays.
Ram, by comparison, seems boring – a rule-upholder who never does anything spontaneous or dramatic. He always does the right thing, whether he likes it or not, and does not seem like much fun. Whereas Ravan is the exciting character, he takes what he wants either by invoking any god or by strength. Ravan lives only for himself. His pleasure matters to him the most, same for most of us. Everyone wants from “The World” to fill their inner vacuum by asking or by deceit. They live in the illusion that one day the inner vacuum will fill and they would be satisfied. But no one thinks that Ravan’s tendency (which is most of the people of today’s age) from taking forcefully from this world made him the object of divine wrath.
Ram is content from inside he doesn’t require any validation from “The World”. Ravan was the richest person in that time but epic rejected him. The wisdom of epic doesn’t value someone’s possession, wealth but it values the righteous conduct and love.
Epic calls Ram as “Maryadapurushottam”(The Finest Specimen of a Disciplined Human Being) instead of “King of Ayodhya” and Ravan is called “King of Lanka”. Both words are very significant. Ravan belonged to a place called Lanka. Whereas Ram does not belong to any place, metaphysically. He is someone who has conquered and constrained the self. He doesn’t need any material opulence for his validation.
Image Source : i.imgur.com
