Valmiki

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

The gods act in history, and Rāma is finally revealed as Viṣṇu

A personal GodInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa does not formulate a theology, but its world is peopled by personal gods who deliberate, ask for help and grant boons: Brahmā grants Rāvaṇa invulnerability against gods and demons, and the gods turn to Viṣṇu so that he may be born as a man and kill him. In the Bālakāṇḍa that incarnation is explicit, and in the Yuddhakāṇḍa, after Sītā's ordeal by fire, Brahmā reveals to Rāma that he is Nārāyaṇa. The divine thus appears as someone who intervenes to restore dharma. The core of the poem, however, tells the life of a prince who suffers, doubts and weeps as a man, and its opening question is not who God is, but whether there exists in the world a fully virtuous man.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The poem shows characters and duties, not a doctrine of the self

Did not address it

The Rāmāyaṇa does not ask who the self is. Its interest lies in what a person does with his position and his word: Rāma accepts exile so that his father may not break a promise, Sītā keeps her fidelity in captivity, Bharata rules in his brother's name with his sandals on the throne. The self that appears in the poem is that of a character tested in duty and in grief, not a substance to be discovered. When later tradition sought to give Rāma's story a doctrine of the Self, it did so in other texts: the Adhyātma Rāmāyaṇa or the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, in which Vālmīki appears only as narrator and the teaching on the Self is given by Vasiṣṭha.

Why do we suffer?

Pain comes when dharma is broken; the poem is born of grief

Social and moral disorderInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa begins with grief: Vālmīki sees a hunter kill one of a pair of cranes and, moved, utters a curse that comes out metrical; he calls it śloka because it was born of śoka, sorrow. The whole poem rests on that emotion. The misfortunes it narrates almost always originate in a breach of order: the promise Kaikeyī extracts from Daśaratha, Sītā's abduction by Rāvaṇa. Daśaratha attributes his own death to an old fault, the accidental killing of an ascetic's son. Rāma, consoling his brother Bharata, adds a sober teaching: all that is accumulated is exhausted, every union ends in separation and every life in death. The remedy is to restore dharma, and Rāma's Ayodhyā is the image of a kingdom where no one weeps.

What happens after death?

Every life ends in death; what matters is keeping one's word

Silence or reserveInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa is full of deaths, funeral rites and heavens, but it develops no doctrine of the beyond. Its most explicit teaching on death is given by Rāma to Bharata, who comes to the forest after their father's death to ask him to return: everything accumulated is exhausted, everything raised falls, every union ends in separation and every life in death; man is not his own master, and grieving for the dead is useless. The consequence is not speculation about the fate of the dead, but a demand on the living: Rāma refuses to return, so that his father's word may not be broken. The poem takes for granted that the virtuous reach heaven, and the last book ends with Rāma entering the river Sarayū and returning to the form of Viṣṇu.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

The ideal is the virtuous man who never strays from dharma

Through virtue and harmonyInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa is not about liberation from the cycle of rebirth, but about how to live rightly. Its opening question, which Vālmīki addresses to Nārada, is whether there exists in the world a man who is virtuous, brave, truthful, firm in his vows, grateful and benevolent to every creature (Bālakāṇḍa 1). Rāma is the answer: he accepts exile so that his father may not break his word, treats allies and enemies with respect, and places his duty as king above his own happiness. What the poem proposes is not to flee the world, but to embody dharma in it, and the reward it promises the virtuous is heaven and fame. In the frame of the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, which tradition has him narrate, the sage Agastya says that knowledge and action lead to the goal like the two wings of a bird.

Is a teacher necessary?

The word is received, learned by heart and sung to others

Community and traditionInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa presents itself as the fruit of a transmission. Vālmīki receives Rāma's story from Nārada, Brahmā commissions him to compose it, and he teaches it to Kuśa and Lava, Sītā's twin sons who grow up in his hermitage, who later recite it before the assembly and before Rāma himself (Bālakāṇḍa 1–4). The poem is also full of teachers: Vasiṣṭha, preceptor of the royal house, and Viśvāmitra, who instructs Rāma in arms and entrusts him with secret knowledge. Knowledge, in this world, passes from mouth to mouth within a community of sages, reciters and disciples. The text does not ask whether one can do without a teacher; what it shows is that what is valuable is learned from another and sung to others.

Is the world real?

The poem celebrates the visible world, but does not ask whether it is real

Did not address it

The Rāmāyaṇa does not raise the question of the world's reality. On the contrary, it is one of the great poems of the visible: it describes in detail forests, rivers, the seasons —the coming of the rains and of autumn in Kiṣkindhā—, cities, palaces and the emotions of its characters, and Indian poetics took it as the model of cultivated poetry precisely for that richness. Its world is a real stage, governed by dharma and by time, in which acts have consequences. The thesis that the world is an appearance is developed by the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha, which tradition has Vālmīki narrate, but there the doctrine is Vasiṣṭha's, not the poet's.

What is love?

Poetry is born of compassion for a wounded crane

Boundless compassionInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa places an act of compassion at the origin of poetry. Vālmīki sees a hunter shoot one of two cranes in love, hears the female's lament and, moved, utters a stanza that becomes the first śloka. The whole epic is thus marked by love and separation: that of Rāma and Sītā, parted by abduction, exile and finally repudiation, and Rāma's grief for his lost wife, which fills entire books. Its hero answers Vālmīki's opening question about a man «benevolent to every creature», and his dealings with allies of other species —the vulture Jaṭāyu, the monkeys, the demon Vibhīṣaṇa— extend that benevolence beyond his own.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

Fate brings the blows; keeping dharma is each person's task

Destiny and responsibilityInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa dramatises the debate between fate and effort at the moment Rāma learns of his exile. Lakṣmaṇa, furious, argues that only the weak submit to fate and proposes seizing the kingdom by force; Rāma replies that what has happened, Kaikeyī's sudden demand, can only be explained by fate (daiva), and that no one can oppose it. Later, consoling Bharata, he adds that man is not his own master and that time drags him hither and thither. But this acceptance exempts him from nothing: what Rāma does control is his conduct, and he chooses to keep his father's word though no one compels him. Circumstances are given; the rectitude with which one responds to them is one's own responsibility.

Why meditate or pray?

Sacrifice, austerity and daily rites order the life of the poem

Ritual and self-cultivationInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa teaches no meditation technique, but its world is organised by religious practice. Daśaratha obtains his sons through a sacrifice; Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa perform the dawn and dusk rites; the forest sages live devoted to austerity (tapas), and Rāma comes to defend their hermitages from the demons who defile their rites. Vālmīki himself appears as an ascetic by the river Tamasā, and the poem ends with Rāma's great horse sacrifice (aśvamedha), during which his sons recite the epic. Practice here is not an inner path to transform consciousness, but the cultivation of order: rite, asceticism and right conduct sustain both the person and the world.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Rāma rejects the reasoning that mocks the Veda and dharma

Scripture and reasoningInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa is not a treatise, but it contains an episode in which it confronts sceptical reason. In the Ayodhyākāṇḍa, the brahmin Jābāli tries to persuade Rāma to return and reign with materialist arguments: ties of kinship are fleeting, there is no other world, offerings to the dead are a waste, and the precepts of the texts were invented by clever men to obtain gifts. Rāma rejects him harshly: whoever abandons truth and dharma for such reasonings is lost, and he will not break his father's word. The poem places authority in the Veda, in dharma and in the promised truth; the reasoning that undermines them is, for it, a straying.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

Rāma's kingdom: wisdom is realised in good government

Order societyInferred from their doctrine

The Rāmāyaṇa is, among other things, a treatise in narrative form on the just king. Rāma places duty above happiness, protects ascetics, keeps his father's word and, once restored to the throne, governs in such a way that his reign becomes proverbial: the poem describes a kingdom without weeping widows, without disease or thieves, where rain falls in its season and no one dies before their time. Tradition calls Rāma maryādā-puruṣottama, the best of men in respecting limits. Withdrawal appears in the poem —the exile, the hermitages, Vālmīki's own hermitage—, but as trial or refuge, not as goal: the ideal is a just order embodied in the ruler.