Lakshmana Opens the Night of Opposites
Ayodhya Kanda, Chaupai 92
Doha 92 · Movement 1 of 2
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Grief rises heavily in Guha as he sees Sita and Ram upon the earth. Lakshmana answers in a voice both sweet and steady, carrying the joined flavor of knowledge, dispassion, and devotion. The armed watch beside the sleeping Lord becomes a place of instruction.
No person, he says, is the independent giver of another's joy or sorrow. Each being encounters the fruit of its own action. Union and separation, pleasant and painful experience, friend, foe, and stranger form snares when the mind takes their shifting relations as final truth.
His enumeration widens like circles upon dark water: birth and death, prosperity and adversity, action and time, land, dwelling, wealth, city, family, heaven, and hell. Everything seen, heard, or conceived within worldly traffic has delusion at its root when mistaken for the ultimate. Beneath all movement, paramartha remains untouched.
Beside the river, Lakshmana names the entire web of opposites, then points beyond its trembling strands toward the real.
Read the passage from the Manas
भइ दिनकर कुल बिटप कुठारी। कुमति कीन्ह सब बिस्व दुखारी।। भयउ बिषादु निषादहि भारी। राम सीय महि सयन निहारी।। बोले लखन मधुर मृदु बानी। ग्यान बिराग भगति रस सानी।। काहु न कोउ सुख दुख कर दाता। निज कृत करम भोग सबु भ्राता।। जोग बियोग भोग भल मंदा। हित अनहित मध्यम भ्रम फंदा।। जनमु मरनु जहँ लगि जग जालू। संपती बिपति करमु अरु कालू।। धरनि धामु धनु पुर परिवारू। सरगु नरकु जहँ लगि ब्यवहारू।। देखिअ सुनिअ गुनिअ मन माहीं। मोह मूल परमारथु नाहीं।।
She became an axe to the great tree of the Surya Vamsha. Her wicked counsel brought sorrow to the entire world. Deep grief filled Nishadraj's heart when he beheld Rama and Sita sleeping on the ground. Then Lakshmana spoke in sweet, gentle words steeped in the rasa of jnana, vairagya, and bhakti. No one is the giver of joy or sorrow to another. Each soul reaps only what its own karma has sown, O brother. Union and separation, good fortune and ill, friend and foe and the indifferent. All these are snares of bhrama, of delusion. Birth and death, and all the entanglements of the world, prosperity and adversity, karma and kala. Earth, dwelling, wealth, city, and family, svarga and naraka, wherever worldly dealings extend. Whatever is seen, heard, or pondered within the mind. All of it has moha as its root, and none of it is the paramartha, the ultimate reality.