One more thing ! ......
About our Ramayan !!!
Ramayan is an epic that was told and retold a million times.
We do not think for one moment , that we are telling anything that is not already known or that has not been thought of before. We will not be telling something that has not been stated earlier or elsewhere .
It is an epic that has been told over and over again a million times or more. It is an epic that has been thoroughly researched and written about. There can be nothing original that can be added through these pages.
Our attempt is best captured in a oratory painting done by Rt. Honorable Srinivasa Sastri. Speaking about his venture of talks on Ramayana he said " Suppose you go to Marina beach. There is illimitable ocean spread out in front with all its majesty and incomprehensibility of nature. on the shore you may have a poet thinking in rhapsodies of what he sees. You may have a philosopher who will muse and perhaps reconstruct that thought that put together things in space. You may have a pious man thinking about the Great being who made the universe around which whole "Samsara" revolves. At the same time along with these high thinkers there may be boys playing on the beach throwing sand at each other and and into the ocean. Each has his own play with the ocean. .... ".,.
We are probably like those excited children building sand castles throwing sand into the ocean that is Ramayana.
We believe that the epic is to be read with a view to benefit by its teaching , to draw at every turn lessons from it for the the conduct and regulation of ourselves. We may take lessons from the story of Rama or Sita. The objective may be that " Rama did like that I may not do exactly like wise, I may fail miserably, but I must keep that ideal in view. I must not lose sight of what is right and proper as it is exemplified by the epic."
If a person reads the epic in order that his soul may be improved morally or intellectually he would find that - the object is best gained by fixing his attention on the key characters as " human beings that played the parts like human beings in circumstances that assail and confront the human beings at all times" . If at any point or part of the story if one were to think ," he was a God he could do anything" then we miss the point of the epic.
It is no act of impiety to study Ramayana like it is an epic poem concerning human beings.
As part of our effort we continue to add more content from Ramayana. While bringing the content we read books. We have no pretensions. When the wise study big books of this kind, the thoughts that occur to them , the ideas that inspire them are of the most elevated character having their roots in sacred laws thus making them on par with those original thinkers. We will be like some very normal readers who bring their own ignorance to the table. The only claim we make to is in the sincerity of purpose.
As stated in the beginning , a story so widespread and so widely known cannot be retold with any embellishment or with hope of drawing critical attention. But we do say that perhaps Ramayana is not quite as familiar to the younger generations that are coming up as it was to us of the older generation. We through these pages hope to reach them.
About Ramayan itself we subscribe to the philosophy that the man who reads Ramayana thinking that from the beginning that he is dealing with God , will get nothing out of it. One must read the story as a human story, lived among humans beings by a human being , and then see the treasures of wisdom that are there in this epic.
|| om tat sat||
Note: While the entire concept of kasarabada.org was inspired by Kasarabada Kamaraju and Kasarabada Jagadamba , this note on Ramayan pages was inspired by the Rt. Honourable Srinivasa Sastri whose introductory talk at the start of his Ramayan lectures ( 1944) carries much more and remains an inspiration for us !
om tat sat !
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|| Happy Reading ||
om tat sat !!
info@kasarabada.org