Post by Jagannāth Miśra Dās on Jul 22, 2023 20:56:53 GMT -6
The Secret Life Of Rāmacandra In Ayodhya.
The hero of the Rāmāyana is often regarded as the “exemplar of social propriety” (maryādā puruṣottam) and Krishna as the exemplar of playfulness (līlā puruṣottam.) British Victorian scholars of the Hindu tradition viewed Rāma as the most palatable alternative to that young reprobate, Krishna, and praised the Rāmāyana for, as F.S. Growse noted approvingly, “it’s absolute avoidance of the slightest approach to any pruriency of idea” which was the Victorian way of saying it did not contain any sex. But if we leave the milieu of urban gaudiya-vaisnava middle class apologetics and the medium of English—a language in which few Indians gave vent to any aspect of their inner lives—we find the boundary between maryādā -puruṣottama and līlā-puruṣottama and their respective divine representatives considerably more permeable. Apart from certain sharply drawn sectarian divisions, and to some extent even within them, the choice of Rāma or Krishna as a personal Deity (istadeva) seems to depend as much on such factors as regional identity, family custom, and choice of guru as on a rigid distinction between the personalities of the two Heroes.
Just as Krishna devotees excerpted from the entire legend of Krishna’s līlā a certain phase of his adolescence and attribute to it not only special charm but the most profound theological significance, so Rāma-rasikas also focus on a single phase of their Lord’s story, the idyllic period when the newly married Rāma and Sītā, having returned from Sītā’s home city of Mithila enjoyed each other’s company amidst the palatial comforts of Ayodhya. Rāma may be an exemplar of decorum, but he is also a prince, and later a king; an enjoyer of earth’s delights. If he is self-controlled and devoted to one wife (eka patni vrata,) he certainly is not, in the popular view, celibate; he is, for most of his saga, a happily married householder in that stage of life in which one is supposed to savour the joys of kāma.
Adherents of the “connoisseur tradition” or rasika sampradaya, viewed Rāma not only as the supreme manifestation of divinity but also as the ultimate embodiment of erotic sentiment, and focused on his passionate union with his eternal feminine energy (śakti) in the form of Sītā. And just as, in Krishna bhakti the earthly locale of Vrindavana was transformed into the transcendent sphere of Goloka (literally,“the world of cattle”) the city of Ayodhya is envisioned as the eternal realm of the supreme godhead, known to other traditions as Isvara, or Parabrahma, who resides eternally in his ultimate form or svarūpa as the sixteen year old Rāmacandra with his paraśakti, or feminine energy, Sītā.
Ayodhya is conceived as a vast and beautiful city, four-square in plan, surrounded by magnificent pleasure parks to which the divine couple often repair for excursions. Every part of the city is filled with pleasure: its streets are flecked with gold dust and its balconies encrusted with luminous gems, perfumed fountains play in its squares, and it is dotted with magnificent gardens in which spring always holds its sway. But the greatest splendour radiates from the city’s centre, at which lies the immense House of Gold (or the Kanak Bhavan,) the palace presented to Sītā on her marriage to Rāma. Like the city, the palace too is four square and many gated, containing a labyrinth of chambers and passages oriented around a central courtyard which contains the most beautiful of all gardens. At the centre of this garden stands a dais in the shape of a thousand petalled lotus, and at the heart of the lotus a gem studded throne-couch. Upon this couch was enacted the supreme mystery: the eternal union of the two divine principles in human form, worshiped and served by their intimate attendants who alone could gain entry to this inner sanctum.
The above description comes from a book prepared by the tradition’s Ācaryā, Ṣrī Agradās, entitled Śree Dhyān Mañjārī (The Handmaid of Meditation) who resided near the modern day Jaipur during the second half of the sixteenth century, and who is regarded by later rasikas as the modern founder of their tradition. Other rasika manuals offer similar detailed instructions for envisioning key players in the nitya-ayodhya-līlā, particularly the young female attendants of Sītā (sakhīs) and their respective maidservants (mañjarīs) as well as the young male companions of Rāma (sakhās.) There exist, for example, treatises that catalogue the seven kinds of female friends of Sītā, ranging from the age of less than six to more than sixteen, and provide each with a list of parents, other relatives, and teachers, along with details as to the place of birth, favourite activities and so forth. Similar catalogues exist for the youthful male comrades of Rāma.
Once established in the emotional mood of the visualized body, the aspirant is ready to begin the most characteristic aspect of rasika devotional practice or sādhanā: the “mental service” (mānasi seva) of Sitā-Rāma according to the sequence of “eight periods of the day.” In his astya-puja-vidhi, one Ācaryā has the day divided into five principle segments during which the scene of divine activity shifts among eight “bowers” (kuñjas) within Ayodhya. In this scenario a sakhi’s day begins with her own elaborate toilette, followed by the singing of gentle songs to awaken the divine couple, who are imagined to be languorously sleeping in an opulent “rest bower.” Once awake, they are seated on low stools and ministered to in various ways: their feet are washed, their teeth are cleaned, their ornaments and garlands are changed, and they are worshiped with incense and lights, before being led to the “refreshment bower” for the first of many light snacks that will be served to them during the day. This is followed by a lengthy trip to the “bathing bower” for dip in the Sarayu, and then by donning fresh clothes, ornaments, unguents, and make-up in the “adornment bower” – all supervised by the ever hovering sakhīs. Once dressed, the divine couple are offered a proper meal in the “breakfast bower” where they are served, serenaded, and fanned by female attendants. After breakfast, the couple again proceed to the Sarayu, where Rāma joins his sakhās and Sītā her sakhīs for boating excursions or “nauka-vilāsa.” This mild exertion is followed by a midday meal in the “refreshment bower” and then a period of rest, during which the most intimate sakhīs remain in attendance on the divine couple, pressing their feet, offering betel preparations, or singing songs to enhance their erotic mood. After a brief repose, the pair is again awakened, worshiped, and escorted to the pleasure parks on the banks of the Sarayu where, suitably dressed and adorned, and to the accompaniment of the singing and dancing of the sakhīs, Rāma engages in a Krishna-style rāsa-līlā, and enjoys a late supper with Sītā, before finally returning to the “sleeping bower” for the night.
The climax of this meditative foreplay is said to be the experience of tat-sukha (literally “that delight”) or in other words, a vicarious tasting of the pleasure shared by the divine couple in their union, as witnessed by the attendant sakhīs and mañjarīs. This dimension of the sādhanā has always been controversial for Rāmanadīs, and no less than Gaudiya Vaisnavas as well. This brief summary of the asta-kāla-ayodha-līlā given above cannot do justice to the painstaking detail in which each period and activity is to be evoked: every article of clothing and jewellery, every morsel of sweetmeat and golden bowl of scented water, adds iconic richness and is to be rehearsed over and over again. One may also observe that Rāma’s faithful male comrades don’t get to spend very much time with their Lord, who passes his days largely surrounded by females. But there are however preceptors of the sakhā-rasa in this tradition who have conceived the division of activities between male and female attendants in a more equitable fashion; and their timetable includes such wholesome masculine diversions as elephant processions down the gilded avenues of Ayodhya, solemn durbars, and hunting excursions in nearby forests, in the course of which Rāma’s comrades of various ages can delight in the intimacy of teasing jokes, songs, and general camaraderie.
But they are also textbooks for a concrete mystical practice, and indeed one which involves rigorous discipline. The sādhakā or practitioner of this meditation programme must rise by 3:00 A.M. bathe, and purify himself through repetition of the Rāma mantra, and begin offering service to the divine pair when they are awakened about 4:00; a service which will continue at prescribed intervals throughout the day and night. The aim of this discipline, which may occupy one’s whole life, is clearly expressed in the writings of the rasikācaryās: what begins as an “imaginative conception” ends in a reality so compelling that the conventional world fades into shadowy insignificance.
As in the Krishna tradition, so in the rasika literature of Rāma we find warnings against the externalization of the meditative practises, for the content of the visualizations could easily provoke the misunderstanding and scorn of the uninitiated. Yet paradoxically, since an underlying assumption is that the events seen in the meditation are real, the most exemplary devotees are often those whose lives reveal a blurring of the boundary that separates this world from the nitya-ayodha, and a spilling over of its līla into the mundane sphere. Such legends confirm the power of the technique and suggest that the devotee’s “acting” is less a mental exercise than a way of life based on a “new kingdom” limitless in extent, and millions of times greater in splendour than any earthly kingdom. Its king is so great that the five elements and time itself stand reverentially before him….while he himself, in the company of countless maidservants and his beloved, remains in the Golden House immersed in dalliance….This imaginary kingdom of the rasikas is the world of Ayodhya, its sovereign is the divine couple Śrī Śrī Sītā-Rāma, and the easy path to reach it is through the technique of visualization.
Some Ayodhya-rasikas claim that their tradition is older than that of Vrindavan, since, as every pious Hindu knows, Rāma carried on his pastimes in the Tretya-yuyga, long before the dulcet notes from Krishna’s flute ever bewitched the ears of the world. If nothing else, the realization that thousands of pious devotees saw nothing wrong in visualizing Rāma and Sītā’s erotic sports should chasten us in our attempts to apply simplistic categories to these Vaisnava traditions: the puritanical Rāmaites here, the sensual Krishnaites there.
The influence of the Rāma-rasika tradition grew steadily during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the movement required a more public profile through an influential commentary on the rāmacaritamānasa composed by Mahanta Rāmacaranadās of Ayodhya in about 1805, which is said to have openly revealed the secrets of erotic devotional-ism (śṛṇgārī bhakti) which Tulsi Dās had diligently concealed in his Manas lake.
Despite the attacks of the Victorians and puritanical gaudiya vaisnava apologetics, the rasika point of view remains much in evidence, especially in Ayodhya, where the majority of important temples are controlled by rasika sects, and where the famous shrine, the Kanak Bhavan temple, represents a full scale realization of the mythical House of Gold, complete with Rāma and Sītā’s opulent bed chamber. It is, of course, difficult to say to what extent the full and arduous rasika meditational regimen is currently put into practice.
It may appear ironic to some that celibate Hindu aesthetics like Agradās, who typically led lives of great austerity, should have indulged in internal fantasies in which they roamed jewel-studded pleasure houses and witnessed (or, in some cases, participated in) the untiring love play of the divine libertine. Talking about other people’s myths is a way to talk about our own, and this being so, we might remind ourselves that the reigning fantasy world of our commercial culture, reconfirmed daily by countless visual cues in television commercials, billboards, and newspaper and magazine advertisements, bears many superficial resemblances to that of the rasikas: a fictive realm in which everyone is young, attractive, and nearly always engaged in erotic play. Yet in two significant respects this untiring re-imaged world of our culture differs strikingly from the world of Ayodhya: for the characters are not divine, and its scenarios are not chosen and generated by ourselves, but revealed by the rasikācaryās who know where the ultimate return lies.
Jaya Śri Śrī Sīta-Rāma.