To understand and appreciate this Lila of Lord Ram we would need to appreciate the values held sacred by the Vedic culture that the Ramayana demonstrates. The Vedic culture considers all relationships and all positions as opportunities for sacred service, service to God and to all his children.

In Vedic culture King to be able to effectively rule the people, the king himself has to be exemplary and that exemplariness has to be a manifest expression in all walks of his life. King and queen used to be an exemplary couple for the citizen, they should be spotless. So spotless that even rumours are not possible about such a person. We have been raised in a culture where what to speak of rumours, even when evidence are there, the administrators, the politicians, the kings don't care and they continue to hold on to their post and to do their irreligious, corrupt and immoral activities. So it's very difficult for us to comprehend this level of morality, we have absolute no experience of such exemplary personalities.

At that time, it was a culture that woman should not spend a night out of the house and this rule had no exceptions, and woman in Ayodhya started doing this with the excuse and reference of mother Sita. So to protect dharma Lord Ram has to take this step and show an example of detachment to protect dharma.

When Lord Rama heard the accusations being leveled against his consort, this situation constituted an ethical crisis. In an ethical crisis, one has two choices, both moral, unlike in a moral crisis, when one has two choices, one moral and the other, immoral. To resolve an ethical crisis, one needs profound wisdom to recognize the higher moral principle and adjust the lower moral principle accordingly. So, through this incident, Lord Rama, who was God incarnate playing the role of an ideal human being, taught us how to wisely resolve ethical crises. As an ideal husband, the Lord was duty-bound to protect his wife. But as the ideal king, he was also duty-bound to exemplify and teach his citizens, whom he loved like his own children, the path to spiritual advancement.

Ordinarily, people are very attached materially to a spouse, children, house, wealth. So, the king is duty-bound to demonstrate to his citizens the principle of detachment so that they become inspired toward detachment and thus make spiritual advancement. That's why Lord Rama considered his duty as an ideal king more important than as the ideal husband and so sacrificed his love for his wife for the sake of his love for his children (citizens).

Some people say that for the sake of His own reputation, He gave up His wife. But at best a reputation can give a person only material pleasure so if material pleasure was all that was His interest and if reputation was all that was His interest then He could always have preserved the reputation by having some other wife, but he never did that.

At the time of their marriage, He had promised Sita that He would take an ekapathni vrta, He would not accept any other wives and His fidelity to Sita is seen through His keeping that vrta and further if we see although when yajnas are to be performed, the husband and wife have to sit together. Now although there was no one who could substitute for Sita unless Lord Ram married and there was pressure on Him that if He had to perform ashwameda and other yagnas, He had to have a queen with Him, so then He made golden image of Sita and that image was what sat with Him. The fact that He went to the extreme of doing that indicates that he was not irresponsible or immoral just concerned about worldly pleasure through reputation or enjoyment. Lord Ram himself was very principled. So what He is exhibiting through sending Sita away from His palace are not irresponsibility or immorality but detachment and exemplary conduct. So detachment means that as far as setting up the dharma is concerned one is not ready to compromise at all. One is ready to sacrifice any pleasure that is required for the setting up of dharma. So this is from Lord Ram's perspective.

So Lord Ram had a conflict in between His duty as a family member, as a husband and duty as a king and He did His duty as a king by exemplifying detachment and He did His duty as a husband by ensuring that Sita cared for although She was not cared for directly in His palace by Him, but She cared in His kingdom through His representatives, sages who were there and elderly hermits that were there in the sage's hermitage.

Now we might argue that actually if Sita had been at fault then all this might have been ok

So you could say what was Sita's fault that She had already gone through the agni pariksha and She had already proven Her chastity, first of all, She had maintained Her chastity despite all the allurements of Ravana. Both Ravana had threatened Her as well as tempted Her. So She maintained her chastity despite it all and then She proved Her chastity by going through the agni pariksha and then even after that She had undergone the mortification of being rejected by Lord Ram?

So now the most agonising and to some extent emotionally difficult to accept this is from Sita's perspective.

So certainly this is very heart rending and firstly we have to understand that in every scripture there is a story line, there is philosophy and there is a rasa. There is an emotional experience that that scripture suppose to offer and that emotional experience is purifying, uplifting and eventually liberating. So in the Ramayan, the primary emotional experience that is offered is called as "Karuna rasa". Karuna rasam is not exactly compassion. we can't have compassion for the Lord or His associates, but the idea is that normally compassion is invoked when we see somebody else suffering. So seeing the Lord suffering and the Lord gracefully accepting that suffering that inspires attraction to the Lord within us and that emotion which arises is purifying.

In Vaishnava acharyas especially in the Sri sampradaya, they have actually taught that Lord Ram's exiling mother Sita was to invoke this karunya rasa, Jiva Goswami also talks about it and from the rasa point of view there is a higher experience also that love in separation is higher than love in union in the sense that the emotions become intensified. They say that "the heart grows fonder in the absence of the beloved". So Lord Ram wanted to give Sita that highest experience of love in separation and for that purpose, this happened.

So overall we can understand this at multiple levels,

At first level from the administrative point of view as a king, Lord Ram had to set the example of complete detachment so that He could exemplify dharmic detachment for His citizens and He did that
On the other hand, Lord Ram as a husband was not irresponsible, He arranged for the care of His pregnant wife.
Then from the still higher perspective of the Ramayan, it exemplifies to us how even the Lord undergoes suffering with grace and inspires us to accept whatever suffering we undergo in our lives because of our past karma to also accept it gracefully.
It also increases emotional attraction towards the Lord in our hearts
And lastly, it enables Sita and Ram to taste the supreme rasa of love in separation which is the highest emotional experience between lovers.

Unfortunately, all of us, for whose sake he did this glorious sacrifice, fail to appreciate him.

Resources

Top Categories

Product

Company