Let Me Tell You A Story…
Understanding the Narrative
Regular readers of my pieces will know that of all the world’s major religious traditions, Hinduism has been the one that I struggled to get my head around the most. Whereas most religions start with a charismatic founder, Hinduism seems to have sort-of evolved, a tradition emerging slowly from an impenetrable cloud of local traditions and practices. If one were to compare it to Camino, whilst many faiths appear to have a definite goal and route (or routes) along which one may travel to reach that Santiago, Rome, Jerusalem or Mecca, Hinduism seems to instead be a dense network of paths through the forest with no obvious end destination.
Indeed, it was this lack of understanding of the Cloud of Unknowing that is Hinduism to me that was one of the main motivating factors behind my recent trip along the Ganges in India. And, as my essay On the Banks of the Ganges explains, it has already yielded some results. I now understand how Hinduism can connect us to the primaeval, to those mist-shrouded times when man first settled into an agrarian lifestyle and worship in a different way. That was helpful but still not everything.
As I travelled around India, despite my best efforts, I was still confused. Varanasi was once called Kashi, the City of Shiva. But why? Who is Shiva and what does he have to do with Varanasi? Surely it should be the City of Ganga — the goddess who is the Ganges personified! But no, it is Shiva’s city and the best I could get is that he holds a trident and that there is a temple on each spike. Wandering along the ghats, I realised that I had heard of Shiva, that I knew he was part of the Hindu Trinity — the Creator, the Sustainer and the Destroyer, Shiva is the latter — and that he is associated with both snakes and cows and that he is often represented by a lingam, a sort of phallic symbol resting in a rather vaginal basin. I knew all of this but did not know why, what or how; I could not assemble these disparate elements into something meaningful.
Shiva though, is not the only mystery.
My friend R often mentions Hindu gods and goddesses. She mentions casually that it was unfair how Rama made banished Sita into the forest for that time after she had been so devoted as if I have a clue what she is on about.
Rama comes up a lot. My mate Abhishek likes to exclaim “Jai Shree Ram!” when excited even though he is a Krishna devotee. “But Ram is Krishna!” he explains. I should have known this. The Hare Krishnas whose temple I sometimes pop into when in London have a mantra that they chant.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare
Ok, all well and good. I know who Krishna is and understand why one might worship him, but who is this Rama and why is he worth a “Hare”? Unsure, I asked R and she pointed me to the Ramayana which she seems to know inside-out despite the fact that she isn’t even Hindu.
Hindu or not, she told me that it doesn’t matter and that the Ramayana can be inspirational to anyone. “I grew up watching the series on the TV, right, so I know the whole story. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have issues with it. I mean, Rama is pretty great and all that, but how he treated Sita was not fair. Him banishing her to the forest was not right; she didn’t deserve that,” was the comment I received.
Which is all well and good except, well, it doesn’t answer who Rama is and, what is more who is Sita too and what has the forest got to do with anything?
I needed some guidance, a spiritual master to illuminate my path.
One can find guidance in the strangest of places and for me, Delhi’s International Airport provided the guru I was seeking. My flight to Ranchi delayed for several hours, I took to mooching around the bookshop where I chanced upon ‘The Forest of Enchantments’ by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni with the following description on the back cover:
“The Ramayana, one of the world’s greatest epics, is also a tragic love story. In this brilliant retelling, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni places Sita at the centre of the novel: this is Sita’s version… Chitra transforms an ancient story into a gripping, contemporary battle of wills. While the Ramayana resonates even today, she makes it more relevant than ever, in the underlying questions in the novel: How should women be treated by their loved ones? What are their rights in a relationship? When does a woman need to stand up and say, ‘Enough!’”
My interest piqued after R’s ramblings, I picked it up and, what it proved to be was the master — or mistress — at whose feet I needed to sit at for a while in order to further my journey of understanding.
The Ramayana is a wonderful story, full of demons and monkey, magic, and battles. Said to be written by the poet Valmiki, sages and princesses populate its pages but the main character is Rama, a mighty king who wins the hand of the beautiful, wise, and strong daughter of the earth Sita by drawing the Pinaka — the legendary bow of the god Shiva — at her svayamvara (a legendary form of marriage ceremony where the bride chooses her husband). Ramayana literally means Rama’s journey, but the re-telling that I read would be better described as a Sitayana, for she takes centre-stage. With my interest in the Divine Feminine and exploration of the female sense of the Divine in various traditions, this was the version I needed to read and, as if my divine plan, had been presented to me. It was a ripping yarn, but what struck me was the complexity of the characters. In the Abrahamic faiths we are presented with a single, perfect God. Rama — who is said to be an incarnation of the god Vishnu (Krishna is another such incarnation, hence “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”) — might be inspirational, but he is far from being without flaws and comes across as very human. But that, in my opinion, only results in making him more relatable, because, unlike Yahweh or Allah, he is like us. Similarly, Sita, his wife, whilst noble and strong and inspirational, also has her weaknesses. It was a moment of petty stubbornness on her part that causes her to be fooled by the demon king Ravana and thus kidnapped by him.
And because the story involves complex, flawed characters like those you meet in everyday life, then we can draw spiritual lessons from them that we might struggle to grasp from worshipping a perfect God. For me, the most earth-shattering moment comes near to the end of the book. At this point Rama has rescued Sita from the clutches of the demon king and has brought her back to his palace at Ayodhya where she sits by his side as his beloved queen. She is pregnant and, at last, he is to become a father and have an heir.
But there are rumblings amongst the populace. She has become pregnant very quickly, conveniently quickly one might say. And Sita is such a beautiful woman, and she was in the demon king’s clutches for a very long time. How could he have kept his hands off her when she was in his power and, well, most men (and we know what men are like…) would have struggled to keep away from her. All we have is her word that she stayed true to her husband; not that you’d blame her for straying but then, she is a queen and, well… whose is that child in her belly really?
Rama is a man who always puts duty foremost and when the rumours are presented to him he makes an awesome decision: to placate society and uphold his honour by punishing his wife for a crime she did not commit:
“‘You know Ram,’ Lakshman said sadly. ‘He’s always believed that the reputation of a king should be above reproach, and even more so the reputation of a queen. It’s what he’s built his whole life around. He can’t change his nature — no more than a leopard can change its spots. Believe me, I’ve tried everything.’”
So, he banishes his beloved wife, perhaps believing the gossip, perhaps not, but, ultimately, knowing that, in the eyes of society, guilty or otherwise, she has lost the trust and respect of the people and so she must suffer to maintain his kingdom and reputation. With a heavy heart, she is sent into the forest to live as an outcast despite having remained pure and true.
No wonder R sympathises with her!
But there is a problem. You see, Rama is Vishnu and Sita is Lakshmi. And Vishnu and Lakshmi, like Krishna and Radha are not separate beings. Instead, he is the Divine Masculine and she the Divine Feminine; they are two halves of one whole, and, without half of his life-force, Rama starts to shrivel up and die, suffering unimaginably like one of Philip Pullman’s humans who have been separated from their daemon. Alarmed, the Brahmins confer and come up with a solution. A statue of Sita is carved and placed at the side of Rama’s throne. Externally, order and balance has been restored; the king is with his queen and all shall be well.
But all is not well. For the statue is not Sita, merely a likeness of her. It may be exceptionally carved, but it has not of her emotions, her complexities, her pain, suffering, joy, hope and love.
And ultimately, it does not arrest Rama’s suffering and spiritual decline.
All my life I have struggled with the commandment about not worshipping false idols. I know — because it is clear — that praying to a statue of the Buddha or bowing before an image of Our Lady, Nanak, Christ, or any other religious figure, is not evil or even harmful, so what can that commandment mean? Some say that these idols are things like money which modern society worships in lieu of God and, yes, I can see the wisdom in that, although one needs to be careful as money is simply an inanimate tool, not an evil in itself. Is the knife to blame for slaughtering the lamb, or the butcher that yields it?
But reading that passage, I got it. Idol worship is harmful when one tries to replace the real with a fake or contrived replica. When one tries to reduce Sita — or Mary, Christ, Nanak, Buddha, whatever — to their beauty, their image, without their complexities, emotions and, most importantly, their love. The statue of Sita is not evil in and of itself and as a symbol of Sita it could be a helpful spiritual aid; the harm comes because the real Sita still exists but is banished because Rama cannot cope with the complexities of her, preferring to bow to the dictates of societal convention rather than the complex reality of his inspirational wife.
The other half of himself.
Spoiler alert: In the end she comes back, she has to, and all truly does become well. It could end no other way.
The lesson of this tale is simple. Stories matter. Hugely. They are how we understand the world, make sense of its complex reality. I never understood that confusing network of Hindu paths because I never knew the stories that act as one’s guide through the forest, as opposed to Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Sikhism where I was aware of the (generally far more singular) narrative.
Humans have told stories from the earliest times. Years ago, I read the epic ‘The Seven Basic Plots’ by Christopher Booker. This book argues that there are only seven stories in the world — overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, tragedy, comedy, and rebirth — and that we retell them in a billion ways daily because they teach us and give our lives meaning. Similarly, those stories are always populated by the same characters — the hero, the wise old man, the anima, etc — who go under a million different names.
And ultimately, those stories convey the same message. The hero begins the narrative as good and strong, full of potential. But he or she is flawed, incomplete somehow. To gain that completion they must go on a journey, assisted, and hindered by the other archetypical characters on their way. Some fail. Those are the tragedies where, due to an unfortunate set of circumstances, things do not end up as God intends and misery results. Think Romeo poisoned in the tomb and Juliet stabbing herself when she sees him. The Divine Plan was togetherness, completion, yet the world thwarted it.
Most though, end in completion. Harry Potter defeats Voldemort, Cinderella marries the prince, the Famous Five solve the mystery and Moses liberates the Israelites and leads them to the Promised Land.
That too is, in my opinion, why pilgrimage is so powerful. We are the central figures in our own narrative, meeting those characters and challenges on the way. And, as we walk, we are guided and inspired by the stories of those who have gone before us. The miraculous discovery of St. James’s tomb in the Field of Stars, the example of St. Dominic of the Way who gave up his worldly life to build a bridge for pilgrims and serve them. The knight who challenged passers-by on the bridge at Hospital de Órbigo. The roosters who came back to life to expose the lies of the innkeeper’s daughter in Santo Domingo de la Calzada. Emilio Estevez’s story of a grumpy American dentist who walks to Santiago in memory of his son who perished on the path in the Pyrenes. The literal truth of these narratives does not matter; the message is all.
So, what have the Hindus taught me? They have reminded me of the importance of the story and that, without knowing the myths and legends, the tradition that you are trying to discover will always be out of reach. Which may be why Christianity is failing so badly in the West. Put simply, many of its narratives — Jacob’s Ladder, the journeyings of Paul, Elijah in the cave and on Mt. Carmel, the exile in Babylon — are unknown to the general population who no longer attend Sunday School or services. And with that ignorance comes an incomprehensibility. The lives of saints like St. Francis, St. Anthony and St. Alban can inspire the imagination. But ignorant of those stories and they just become three bearded men in a painting on the wall. And thus the general public of contemporary Europe are as lost and confused in a church as I was when wandering around Shiva’s temple.
But, just as Rama is not the whole, this too is only half the story, for Sita is just as important as her husband. Yes, you need to listen to and learn the stories, but you also need to tell them. Your walk on the Path is but the beginning. Then you were Rama or Sita. Now, your job is to be Valmiki or even Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and to tell or retell the joy, pain, hope, despair, comedy, and wisdom that you lived back to the people that you meet.
For that is what will create the pilgrims of tomorrow.
Let Me Take You on a Journey… is a rough sequel to this piece.
Written 12–18/04/2024, Smallthorne, UK
Copyright © 2024, Matthew E. Pointon