Ramcharitmanas

Sushena crushed the herb and held it to Lakshmana's nostrils, and he stood up, healed.

In later tellings, especially in the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, this second journey is the more famous one, and the herb is called the Sanjivani, the herb of life.

and the mountain Dranagiri, and more adventures are added along the way.

A demon called Kalanemi, sent by Ravana, who disguised himself as a sage and tried to delay Hanuman with false hospitality, until Hanuman saw through him and killed him, and, on the way back, Rama's own brother Bharata in Ayodhya, who saw a huge shape flying over the city at night and taking it for a demon, shot it down with an arrow, before learning who it was.

Of all the poets who have told the story of Rama since Valmiki, the one who has done most to shape the way Hanuman is loved in northern India today is Tulsidas.

He was born, according to most accounts, in the 16th century in what is now Uttar Pradesh and he spent much of his life in the holy city of Varanasi on the Ganga, He wrote in Awadi, a form of Hindi, the everyday language of the people of the region, rather than in Sanskrit, the language of the learned.

And his great work, the Ramcharitmanas, the Lake of the Deeds of Rama, begun, by tradition, in 1574, retold the whole Ramayana as a work of passionate devotion.

It became one of the most widely read and recited books in India.

If you were to think of wishes that you would want to see for the nonprofit space, for the philanthropy space, what would be one that you would say, hey, I'd love to see this happen in the future for these two spaces?

I think both these spaces exist for, let me just talk in the context of India, because in the Ramcharitmanas, Tulsi Das talks about the world being our home, right? But if I were to just talk about our nation, I don't see philanthropy or nonprofits as different, right? And I think we are very, I would not want this Western driven connotation of a nonprofit and philanthropy.

I think our society is far more integrated.

And for whatever reason, the way this space has been structured over the last few decades, it's created separations that are not needed.

This kind of a man, how are you going to sustain? The ideal you have kept for attaining is not worthy of attaining.

So Mother Parvati looks and says, okay, he may be, she says in this Ramcharitmanas, Vishnu sakal gun dham, Mahadev avagun bhavan.

Vishnu sakal gun dham.

You think that Mahadev, Bhagwan Shiva is a repository of all the avagunas, the wrong characteristics and Bhagwan Vishnu is an abode of all good characteristics.

Don't have this mistaken understanding that Bhagwan Ram was born to kill Ravana.

Bhagawan has better things to do.

It comes in Ramcharitmanas very clearly.

His main purpose of coming here was, there were many who were worshipping him, many rishis who were doing tapas for him, to bless them.

But first, I'm going to need to wash your feet.

This one comes from the Ramcharitmanas, Tulsidas' retelling of the Ramayana.

Ram has just left Ayodhya, sent into exile for 14 years with Sita and his brother Lakshman by his side.

And very early in that long journey, they come to the banks of the Ganga.

That's the second Ramayan we have.

The third Ramayan we have, which is more popular in north of India, is called Ramcharitmanas.

Ramcharitmanas is what I'm taking up today.

I have to connect you to the text first before I come to the actual conversation.

Ramcharitmanas is written by Goswami Tulsidas Ji.

Okay? He was a great saint in the northern of India, Uttar Pradesh, which now has become split into Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

So he was part of Uttar Pradesh.

He used to stay there near Saryu Nadi.

How to find Satsang? Satsang is found only when God's grace is upon it.

Ram Kripa Binnu Sulabhan Soi Two reasons are mentioned in Ramcharitmanas for Satsang.

Satsang is found only when When a person is a pious soul, if he does a lot of pious deeds, he will get satsang.

So this was the path of purusharth.

In episode 41 and earlier, we heard that on these days a portion of food is set aside for the crow.

Today, we ask a question we have not asked: Why the crow? And the tradition answers with one of its most loved stories from the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas.

I want to be clear at the start about what this is.

This is not from the Valmiki Ramayan.

It is from the Ramcharitmanas, the retelling in Awadhi that Tulsidas composed in the 16th century in its last book, the Uttarkand.

It is a work of devotion, and it is dearly loved, but it is a later telling.

So I label this episode Tradition.

Source.