CONTENTS:
- WHO IS LORD RAMACHANDRA
- SRILA PRABHUPADA’S APPRECIATION
- SRILA PRABHUPADA APPRECIATION
1. WHO IS LORD RAMACHANDRA
Who is Lord Ramachandra? Lord Ramachandra is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. The Supreme Personality of Godhead Krishna, He appears and descends in different incarnations and Lord Ramachandra is one of His incarnations. As it has been described in Brahma Samhita, rāmādi-mūrtiṣu kalā-niyamena tiṣṭhan nānāvatāram akarod bhuvaneṣu kintu, kṛṣṇaḥ svayaṁ samabhavat paramaḥ pumān yo govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi [Bs. 5.39] Incarnations like Lord Ramachandra are the expansion of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He expands. The Lord has two types of expansions svamsa and vibhinnamsa and vibhinnamsa means expansions of His parts and parcels like we are also expansions of the Lord but we are His minute parts and parcels but His incarnations have been exemplified. Just consider we see one sun in the sky and the one sun becomes two suns and three suns, twenty and hundred suns maintaining sun itself in totality. The sun itself expanding so incarnations are like that. The Lord expands Himself and the rays are coming out from the sun, the rays are very minute parts of the sun and we are like those rays and the incarnations are like the expansions of the sun. Now the question is why does the Lord expand?
Why does the Lord expand?
The Lord expands Himself as Krishna says in Bhagavad Gita yadā hi dharmasya glānir bhavati bhārata BG 4.7 when there is a decline in religious principles. Dharma means the laws given by the Lord. When we abide by the laws given by the Lord then there is peace and prosperity everywhere. A decline of that law and order, when people don’t abide by the law and order and start to act independently and whimsically then what happens to the society? The total breakage of law and order is called anarchy. Adharma is something like anarchy, no law and order not abiding by the laws given by the Lord, rather they create their own law, here Krishna is saying I descend, I come down to re-establish the dharma or law and order. Then Krishna is saying paritrāṇāya sādhūnāṁ vināśāya ca duṣkṛtām BG 4.8 in order to save the saintly persons sadhus, law abiding individuals. Sadhus are those who are obedient and abide by Krishna’s law and order. Those who don’t abide by the laws and order of the Lord, they are miscreants. In our society see also the government gives the laws and those who follow live peacefully and happily and those who don’t what happens? Police comes catches them and they are judged in the court and then they are punished so Krishna does that in order to deliver the sadhus and annihilate or destroy the miscreants.
Krishna doesn’t have to come to deliver them
In this aspect Prabhupada is saying to punish the miscreants Krishna does not have to come material nature herself can take of this Durga, Kali can take of this and that is what they are doing. We see Kali chopping the heads, who are those people? They are the miscreants. Krishna doesn’t really have to come to annihilate the demons because that can be done by His agents but Krishna comes to deliver the sadhus. Prabhupada is saying not to deliver because the sadhus are delivered. The Vishnuduttas are patrolling all over as we saw Ajamila as he chanted the name of the Lord, also unconsciously and immediately he got protected so those who are devotees of Krishna Vishnu is always protecting them. Krishna doesn’t have to come to deliver them He comes to have a loving exchange with them and that is the real purpose of Krishna coming.
Those who are devotees Krishna gives them an opportunity to directly associate with Him and by doing that Krishna Himself derives pleasure and those devotees also derive pleasure out of that exchange. Do you’ll remember when Brahma went to the milk ocean and prayed to the Lord to come and take care the precarious condition of the earth? What did the Lord say? Tell the demi-gods I am coming and they should take birth in the Yadhu and Vrishni dynasties. Why? Because the Lord was going to appear in the Yadhu dynasty and as His relatives they could associate. Similarly, before Lord Ramachandra appeared, He also instructed that you also appear as monkeys and as monkeys they had the association of the Lord. As monkeys they got the opportunity to serve the Lord in a most wonderful way and also Lord descends in the family of His devotees.
Why does the Lord take birth?
He is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He doesn’t have to take birth but sometimes some devotees want to have the Lord as their child as their son, therefore the Lord fulfils their desires. One of the qualities of the Lord is Bhaktavatsal, He is very fond of His devotees and whatever the devotees want the Lord fulfils everything. The devotees said I want You to be our son and the Lord said fine and so the Lord appeared as their son. Here the Lord appeared in a very special dynasty, in this incarnation as Lord Ramachandra He appeared as a ksatriya, which means the warrior class, the royalty. There are two original royal dynasties one hailing from Sun God and the other from Moon God. Like from the Sun God Himself the line started just as in Bhagavad Gita Krishna begins in fourth chapter
[BG 4.1]
imaṁ vivasvate yogaṁ
proktavān aham avyayam
vivasvān
Who is Vivasvan? He is the Sun God. Vivasvan imparted this knowledge to his son Manu and that is Vaivasvata Manu. In a day of Brahma there are fourteen Manus the present Manu is Vaivasvata Manu. Manu’s son is Iksaku so this line started the Sun dynasty. These are the original ksatriya families. In that respect you can consider the royal family in Japan is considered to be the Sun dynasty, they still maintaining that heritage coming from Sun God and is known as the land of Sun. Krishna appeared in the Moon dynasty soma-vamsa, Chandra-vamsa but Lord Ramachandra appeared in the Sun dynasty. Lord Ramachandra appeared in the Iksaku dynasty and their capital was Ayodhya and that city is still there today. The land is known as Kaushal and the capital is Ayodhya and that Ayodhya was established by Vaivasvata Manu for his son Iksaku and he became the ruler of the entire earth planet. In this line there are very illustrious personalities like Aja, Raghu and Raghu’s son was Dasaratha.
Lord Ramachandra is also known as Raghuveer, the hero of the Raghu dynasty. Dasaratha also ruled the entire earth planet.
Only one king
In those days one king ruled the entire planet, one head, one king, one ruler and he had his subordinate rulers, there were many kings but above all there was only one and he was considered as the ruler of the entire earth planet including the ocean and that system was prevalent until 5000 years ago. As Kaliyuga started the whole structure became divided, the earth planet became divided and now there is no ruler and we have democracy, demon crazy democracy. This is how by the influence of Kali it became degenerated. The real structure was one king above all the other kings as a ruler of the earth planet. We have seen all the other planets have one ruler like Sun planet one person ruling, Moon planet one person, Jupiter planet Brihaspati one person, Venus Sukracharya and in this way we can see different personalities ruling over the different planets and same was the case with earth planet only one ruler and Dasaratha was the ruler at the time and although he was the ruler of the planet he did not have any children, no sons so he consulted with his ministers and they were not elected by popular vote, those ministers were selected by the King according to their merits and they were all brahmanas.
Ministers are all Brahmanas
Ministers are all Brahmanas, advisors and they used to guide the King for example these ministers were expert in astrology and if the King had to go to war with another king they would make astrological calculations and tell the King don’t attack him now rather at such and such time and when the stars and planets will be in your favour then victory will be yours. This is how the King used to be guided by the ministers. They all were Brahmanas, exalted realized souls and Prabhupada also wanted that. Prabhupada once had a meeting with Indira Gandhi and Prabhupada went there with a proposal that the ministers should be Brahmanas not just by birth but by qualification and who are the qualified brahmanas of today? ISKCON devotees. Prabhupada, himself said that there are no brahmanas in India and that is why Prabhupada was importing the brahmanas from America. Trained individuals with proper knowledge and understanding can guide the kings or the rulers properly. Prabhupada proposed that educated brahmanas, one of the qualifications of a brahmana is that they don’t take a salary no money and that state and householders will take care of him.
Real brahmanas will not take salary, only sudras take salary, does a businessman take salary? Does a warrior take salary? Mercenaries take salary. That is another thing that Prabhupada pointed out, somebody told Prabhupada that the military people are ksatriyas, Prabhupada said no at the most they are mercenaries. What is the difference between a ksatriya and mercenary? Ksatriya won’t fight for money whereas the mercenaries fight for money. All these American soldiers if the American government stop paying them will they fight for America? So that shows where they are but the warrior won’t take any money he will be independent so much so that he will go and approach a king and say I like your kingdom give it to me and if he refuses then its fine and whoever wins he will get it and that is a Ksatriya. The brahmanas will give advice and education and teach but in return will not take any salary they will take dakshin donations given to them as recognition of their mercy but they won’t take any salary.
The yagna was performed and…
So Dasaratha went to his ministers and who were they his gurus. Vashist one of the greatest sages the world has ever seen. They advised him to perform a sacrifice for the sake of getting a child so the yagna was performed and from the sacrificial fire the Lord appeared and in this way assured them and then came a personality with a pot of sweet rice and he announced that he was the representative of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, an agent of the Lord, Vishnudutta and gave the pot. King Dasaratha had three wives so he gave one half to the first wife Kausalya, one forth to his second wife Kaikeyi and gave one eighth to his third wife Sumitra and as a result of that Kausalya gave birth to Lord Ramachandra, Sumitra gave birth to Laksman and Kaikeyi gave birth to Bharata and Satrugan. Vasudeva appeared as Lord Ramachandra, Sankarshan appeared as Laksman, Bharat and Satrugan were Pradyumna and Anirudha.
King Dasaratha wanted to coronate Lord Ramachandra as the crown prince
In course of time King Dasaratha wanted to coronate Lord Ramachandra as the crown prince, the successor to the throne so the entire city was in ecstasy except only one person Kaikeyi’s maidservant Manthara. She was not only crooked in her mind but she was also crooked in her body, she had a hunch-back. Kaikeyi was excited, she was very happy that Rama was coroneted because she treated Rama as her own son but Manthara came and started to chastise her, “you are feeling happy do you know what will happen to you?” In this way she started to vitiate her mind and said actually Bharat should be king not Rama. Some background. Dasaratha had no children from the first and second wife he didn’t get the child so then he got married to the third wife Kaikeyi and one of her conditions was that her son become King because there was no other son so naturally her son would become king but she didn’t take that so seriously after she got her son Bharata but because her mind became vitiated her mind started to wonder how can she have Bharata as a king because Rama as the eldest brother is the natural successor to the throne.
Kaikeyi was reminded that when Dasaratha was fighting the demons on behalf of the demi-gods then he got fatally injured and you treated and cured him so he became very pleased with you and asked you to take two boons to ask anything and at that time you refused to take anything because you have given me everything so what is there I can desire? Dasaratha at the time told her if ever you want something from me please let me know I will fulfill it and she said this is the time now to get those two boons. What are those two boons? First boon is that Bharata should become the King and the second one is Rama will be banished to the forest for fourteen years. That is what happened and it was totally unexpected and as a result of that when Rama was leaving for the forest Dasaratha left his body due to the intense separation from Lord Rama. He was running after Rama’s chariot and finally Rama requested him to go back and when he went back then the next morning, they found out that he had left his body. He died from intense separation from Lord Rama. Then for fourteen years Rama stayed in the forest.
2. SRILA PRABHUPADA’S APPRECIATION
This is how the King used to be guided by the ministers. They all were Brahmanas, exalted realized souls and Prabhupada also wanted that. Prabhupada once had a meeting with Indira Gandhi and Prabhupada went there with a proposal that the ministers should be Brahmanas not just by birth but by qualification and who are the qualified brahmanas of today? ISKCON devotees. Prabhupada, himself said that there are no brahmanas in India and that is why Prabhupada was importing the brahmanas from America. Trained individuals with proper knowledge and understanding can guide the kings or the rulers properly. Prabhupada proposed that educated brahmanas, one of the qualifications of a brahmana is that they don’t take a salary no money and that state and householders will take care of him.
3. GURU MAHARAJA’S INSTRUCTIONS
At least we should be fully convinced and take shelter in chanting the holy name of the Lord.
(The content of this E-magazine was based on a lecture given by His Holiness Bhakti Charu Swami in ISKCON New Jersey on 28 March 2015)
(Compiled and Edited by Hemavati Radhika Devi Dasi)