By: Smt.Sunanda Ananth
One morning, Nanavalli and his friends all dressed as monkies trouped into Sai Baba’s presence. Nana Saheb and Chandorkar were doing ‘parayan of Sundarkhand. Dada Khelkar raised a question related to Hanuman.
The context relates to Hanuman leaping across the ocean on a mission to gather intelligence regarding Sita, kidnapped by Ravana and held in Lanka.
On hearing this, Dasganu recited a kirthan as follows: ‘Crossing the sea, Raghav’s yeoman/ Leapt to the golden city; yet – wonder!/ His loincloth never slipped.’
Hanuman had taken the aerial route to cross the sea. He did so not in the safety of a closed place but in full exposure to wind-pressure. And he had to contend with an ogress on the way. Never once in all this did his loincloth slip. One can extend the wonder to include other flights of Hanuman: when he flew to the Himalayas to fetch the miracle herb, Sanjeevani, and when he fought aerial duels with Ravana’s son Indrajit and other Lankan warlords. Hanuman’s loincloth, let’s recall, was not secured by any pins or hooks. And yet it stayed in place.
Apart from sounding witty and smart, Dasganu’s epigram encapsulates the essence of Ramayana wisdom. The key word in the epigram is ‘yeoman’. Hanuman did all that he did not as an independent individual, but as ‘Rama’s yeoman’. As Tulasidas puts it, Hanuman was aatur, ever eager for action, but not to implement his own mind. His eagerness was to serve Rama’s kaaj, Rama’s purposes. He had no personal will or agenda. He had surrendered his will to Rama. When you make yourself a mere instrument of God, acting per His Will to His greater glory, there is no chance of failure in your mission. There can be no slippages, major or minor. Your loincloth holds securely.
This is the message of the Gita. Krishna tells the wavering Arjuna to cast away his qualms and firm up to the battle. This was the reply given by Sai Maharaj to Dada Khelkar’s question as to how Hanuman’s loin clothes remained in place.
Baba went on to explain that Arjuna’s despondency in the Gita, owed to the fact that he saw himself as an independent being, confronted by the hard option of killing in battle his dear ones. Krishna corrects this delusion by offering Arjuna a simple way out. Arjuna should fight not for the sake of the Pandavas, but for the sake of God. ‘Be you intent on doing actions for My sake’, the Gita 12:10. Baba called Towser a Christian who was in the gathering at the mosque to recite from the Bible the invocation: ‘In the name of God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost’. This is a guarantee of success. In case you fail, accept such failure as the will of God. The crux of their prayer is: ‘Thy Will be done!’ There is no other right approach to action. As the Bible affirms, ‘Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it’, Psalm 127.
Sai Maharaj asserted that the real, the only doer is God, and the success of a devotee’s mission depends on the extent to which he acts as an instrument of the Divine.
In the Gita 11:35, Krishna reassured Arjuna on the battlefield, ‘These great warriors ranged here have already been slain by me. You rise and reap fame.’ Nearly four million warriors perished on the Kurukshetra field. The five Pandavas survived. In the eighteen days of battle toil, never once did their crowns roll down. Any wonder?
Sai Maharaj reverberated as Lord Krishna.
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