Hanuman

A small monkey sits by the ocean, having forgotten he can fly. That single image holds the whole mystery of Hanuman, and the whole mystery of every jiva that has ever lost sight of its own divine nature.

He was born to Anjana, an apsara living under a sage's curse in the form of a vanara, and to Kesari, a chieftain among the monkey clans. Yet his true father, in the deepest sense, was Vayu, the wind itself. The story is told this way: when King Dasharatha performed the great fire ceremony to obtain sons, a kite seized a portion of the sacred pudding and dropped it from the sky. Vayu carried the falling morsel into the outstretched hands of Anjana, who was deep in worship on a mountainside. She ate, and in time she gave birth to a child of limitless energy, the son of the wind, lighter than air and stronger than stone.

The child's first act was an act of hunger and wonder. Seeing the rising sun, the infant Hanuman mistook it for a ripe fruit and leapt into the sky to seize it. He soared upward with terrifying speed, crossing the distance between earth and sun as though it were nothing. Indra, alarmed that a baby monkey was about to swallow the source of all light, hurled his vajra. The thunderbolt struck the child on the jaw, and he fell to earth, lifeless. The name Hanuman, some say, comes from this very moment: hanu, the jaw, broken by the king of the devas. Vayu, enraged at the injury to his son, withdrew all breath from the three worlds. Every creature began to suffocate. The devas, desperate, rushed to appease the wind god. Shiva restored the child to life. Then each deva, one after another, poured boons upon the infant: Indra granted immunity to his own thunderbolt, Surya offered a fraction of his brilliance, Varuna gave protection from water, Yama bestowed freedom from death, Brahma conferred immunity from the brahmastra. The child who had been struck down rose up as the most blessed being in creation.

But blessings without humility are dangerous, and the young Hanuman began to use his extraordinary powers as playthings. He disrupted the penances of rishis, scattered their sacred fires, and treated the forest as his personal circus. At last, one of the sages he tormented spoke a curse: you will forget your own powers until the moment another reminds you. From that day forward, the mightiest being in the world lived as an ordinary monkey, unaware of what lay coiled within him.

Years passed. Rama was exiled. Sita was stolen. The vanara army gathered at the southern shore and stared across the ocean toward Lanka, and no one knew how to cross. Angada despaired. The bears sat in silence. Then old Jambavan, who had circled the earth in his youth, turned to the quiet monkey sitting apart from the rest and spoke. He recounted the story of the child who had leapt toward the sun. He named the boons. He said: you are that child. You have the strength to cross this ocean. You have always had it. Rise. In that single moment, the curse broke. Hanuman remembered. He grew to an immense size, his body filling the sky, and he leapt.

The leap to Lanka is the central image of the Sundara Kanda, the most beloved book of the Ramayana. Hanuman crossed a hundred yojanas of open sea, defeating the serpent-mother Surasa by wit rather than force, destroying the shadow-grasping demoness Simhika, and landing on the shores of Ravana's golden city. He shrank himself to the size of a cat and slipped through the streets at night, searching every palace, every garden, every chamber. He did not find Sita in any place of splendor. He found her in the Ashoka grove, seated beneath a simsapa tree, thin and grief-worn, surrounded by rakshasi guards, refusing to enter Ravana's palace, refusing to yield. She had chosen the bare ground and the open sky over the comfort of a captor's hospitality.

Hanuman revealed himself to her. He placed Rama's signet ring before her. She wept. He offered to carry her back across the ocean on his shoulders, but she refused, saying that the rescue must come from Rama himself, for that was dharma. Hanuman bowed to her wisdom. Before leaving, he allowed himself to be captured by Ravana's forces, not from weakness but from purpose. He wished to see the enemy face to face. Brought before the throne of the ten-headed king, Ravana asked him who he was. Hanuman replied with words that have become a mantra of dasya bhakti: Dasoham Kosalendrasya. I am the servant of the Lord of Kosala. Ravana ordered his tail set on fire. Hanuman broke his bonds, expanded his tail to infinite length, and leapt from rooftop to rooftop across the golden city, setting Lanka ablaze. Then he returned across the ocean to Rama, carrying the news that Sita was alive.

Later, during the great war, when Lakshmana lay struck down by the shakti weapon of Indrajit, the physicians declared that only the Sanjeevani herb, growing on a distant peak in the Himalayas, could restore him, and it had to arrive before sunrise or Lakshmana would die. Hanuman flew north through the night sky. When he reached the mountain called Dronagiri, he could not identify the herb among thousands of plants. So he uprooted the entire mountain, held it aloft in one hand, and flew back to the battlefield with the peak trailing clouds behind it. Lakshmana was revived. The mountain was returned. Hanuman said nothing about what it had cost him. He never did.

But it is the pearl necklace episode, recorded in the tika of Nabhadas, that reveals the innermost chamber of Hanuman's devotion. After the war, after the coronation, Sita gifted Hanuman a necklace of priceless gems. Hanuman took each pearl, bit it open, examined it, and tossed it aside. The court was scandalized. Vibhishana asked: why do you destroy these jewels? Hanuman answered: I was looking inside each one for the name of Rama. If the Name is not there, the gem is worthless to me. Vibhishana pressed further: but your own body does not display the Name of Rama either. Should you then discard it as well? At that, Hanuman tore open his chest with his own nails. And there, glowing within the cavity of his heart, the entire court saw Rama and Sita, luminous, seated together, alive. Every cell of his being was inscribed with the Name. The assembly fell silent. There was nothing left to say.

Nabhadas writes in the mool: "In every pore of his being, the name of Shri Rama resounds with delight, ever and always." This is not metaphor. It is the literal description of a being who has so thoroughly dissolved his separate self into the Name that no boundary remains between the devotee and the object of devotion. Hanuman does not practice bhakti. Hanuman is bhakti. He is the treasury, the storehouse, the living proof that total self-surrender is not the extinction of the person but its fulfillment.

The tika also preserves a remarkable teaching about the two forms of Hanuman's seva. In one form, he serves as Anjani-nandana, the mighty son of Anjana, the masculine servant who lifts mountains, crosses oceans, and burns cities for his Lord. In the other, he serves as Charushila, a female companion of Sita, a sakhi who attends the divine mother in her intimate moments with the tenderness and grace that only a woman's friendship can offer. These are not two different beings. They are two faces of the same love. The Ramanandi tradition holds that Hanuman's devotion is so complete, so free of ego, that it can take any form the Beloved requires. Where Rama needs a warrior, Hanuman is a warrior. Where Sita needs a friend, Hanuman is a friend. The servant has no fixed shape. The servant becomes whatever the master's need demands.

Tulsidas, writing centuries later in the Ramcharitmanas, placed these words in Rama's mouth: "I have searched my heart and I find that I am not able to repay you. I cannot even face you, so great is my debt." The Lord of all creation declared Himself a debtor to His own servant. This is the paradox at the core of dasya bhakti. The one who gives everything receives everything. The one who claims nothing owns the only treasure worth having. Rama called Himself the debtor, and Hanuman the wealthy one.

When Rama prepared to leave this world, He offered Hanuman any boon. Hanuman asked for one thing: to remain on earth for as long as the Name of Rama is spoken, so that wherever the Name is chanted, he might be present to hear it and to serve. He did not ask for liberation. He did not ask for a place in Vaikuntha. He asked to stay behind, in the world of dust and suffering, for the sole privilege of hearing his Lord's Name on the lips of ordinary people. He is one of the seven chiranjeevis, the immortals who walk the earth still. The tradition says he is present wherever the Ramayana is recited, sitting quietly in the assembly, listening.

This is why the Hanuman Chalisa, composed by Tulsidas, ends not with a petition for power or protection but with a prayer for love: "May my devotion to the feet of Shri Sita and Shri Rama grow day by day through your blessing." Hanuman is not the destination. He is the path. He is the gate through which the devotee passes to reach the divine couple. He is the proof that the servant of God is the freest being in all creation, freer than the gods who gave him boons, freer than the king who called him wealthy, freer than the sages who cursed and then marveled at him.

A small monkey once sat by the ocean, having forgotten he could fly. Someone spoke a word of truth, and he remembered. He leapt. He has not landed yet.