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SriRangaSri List Archive: Message 00048 Feb 2007

 
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Dear friends,

Although everyone of the 7 great cantos of Srimadh
Valmiki Ramayanam is by itself a masterpiece of
poetry, philosophy and theology, still it is the
"sundara-kaandam" that is considered by scriptural
experts and laity alike to be 'primus inter pares':
the First among Equals.

None of us can have any quarrel with that assessment
since it is in the 'sundara-kaandam' that Valmiki is
at his absolute best while depicting that great and
deepest, most profound and most prevalent of human
emotions -- Despair.

What is Despair? Is it an emotion -- like anger, fear
or jealousy -- that briefly seizes a man in particular
situations and then disappears by itself when the
situation gets corrected? Or is it a more fundamental
human condition? A basic, unalterable infirmity of the
human mind or psyche? An affliction of the soul?

The dictionary meaning of the word Despair is "utter
loss of hope in life". It is from this defintion of
despair that the old commonplace quip came to be
coined: "Where there is Hope there is Life", the
logical corollary of which is, of course, "Where is no
Hope there is only Despair". Given that all mortal
life on earth ultimately meets with its final
crushing, inevitble end, can it not be therefore
asked:

"What is Hope? Is there anything at all like real Hope
in mortal Life?"

Such a question, we find, is the central concern of
the modern school of philosophy called
"Existentialism". It is a profoundly despairing one
and yet such a compelling one too that every man and
woman of the modern post-industrial age has to
confront and must come to terms with in life, no
matter what.

The story of the "sundara-kaandam" in the Srimadh
Valmiki Ramayana, in fact, deals precisely with such a
profoundly Existential question.      

                ******************
                (to be continued)

Regards,
daasan,
Sudarshan MK

Warm Regards,
Sudarshan

" A life is perhaps worth nothing; but nothing certainly is worth as much as 
life". 
(Andre Malraux)


                
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