A Devotee’s View of Hanuman

It is said that the mind sees what it knows. Dharma Raja saw all good people in a gathering, but Duryodhana saw all crooked people in the same group. It is the same about books. The Ramayana was seen as a sacred text by millions all through the ages, but some uninitiated modern minds see lurid things in it.

Traditionally The Ramayana is read at different levels – as a great work of art, as a study of dharma or as a text giving political or philosophical insights. Devotees see some other meanings too. An allegorical interpretation of the Sundara kandam (describing Hanuman’s search for Sita in Lanka) is worth noting.

We know that Hanuman crossed the ocean, found Sita, and gave her the message from Rama. Rama took the vanara army, invaded Lanka, and rescued Sita. As a person of the royal clan, Rama did his dharma to save his abducted wife and punish the offender. But the devotees see the terms like the ocean, conquering the demons, and rescuing Sita in a different light. In devotional literature, the ocean denotes the interminable cycle of births and deaths a jiva undergoes. The jiva (the individual) is said to remain in that cycle until he discovers his real nature. His real nature is not different from the divine. He gets freed from the cycle when he knows this. Due to ignorance of his real nature, a person identifies himself with a body-mind complex. In one of the poems, Shankaracharya compared this ignorance to an ocean because it has so strongly blocked us from knowing reality. Our desires, hatred etc., are the obstacles to be conquered. Hence Shankaracharya compares them with demons. When these are conquered, the jiva is rescued. Sita is the jiva who is rescued. Sri Vedanta Desika, the eminent Vaishnava teacher, improved on this analogy in a beautiful sloka. Sita is the jiva, whose golden deer attracts the mind, symbolizing worldly glitter. That is Maricha, a mirage (the two are cognate words). When worldly attractions attract a person, he is abducted by the mind. The human being has five sense organs and five organs of action. A person who indulges in sensual pleasures is the ten-headed Ravana. The head of these ten organs is the mind. Ravana represents the mind which abducts Sita, the jiva. When the jiva (Sita) is attracted by worldly pleasures (the golden deer), it is held captive in the body-mind complex (Lanka), whose boss is the mind (the ten-headed Ravana). The reason, with all its glitter and shine, captures the jiva.

The jiva lies in a captive state. How can he (Sita) be rescued? A teacher is needed, and the teacher is Hanuman. He conveys the message of the real nature of jiva, that he is not different from the Supreme Reality (Rama) and that the jiva would be united with that. That is the message Hanuman gives to Sita. The killing of Ravana is the killing of the mind (called mano naasha in Vedanta). The jiva is awakened only when the mind becomes silent, and its identification with the body-mind complex is destroyed (the burning of Lanka). The message from Rama to Sita is the message of the Upanishads that a teacher gives to the student.

It is unknown whether Valmiki intended such an allegorical interpretation, but his words are highly suggestive. The first chapter of Sundara kandam is full of symbolism. Valmiki says that Hanuman flew on the path taken by the masters. Hanuman is described as a shakha mriga, a person moving on the branches of Vedas. In most places in the Ramayana, the words used by Valmiki have philosophical connotations. Hence, the devotee is free to use such interpretation to aid his spiritual contemplation.

(Writer is former DGP, Andhra Pradesh)