Parables of Rama
by Swami Rama Tirtha | 102,836 words
Stories in English used by Swami Rama to illustrate the highest teaching of Vedanta. The most difficult and intricate problems of philosophy and abstract truths, which may very well tax the brains of the most intellectual, are thus made not only simple and easy to understand but also brought home to us in a concrete form in such an interesting and ...
A man was asleep, and in his sleep he found himself detected as a thief; he found himself a beggar; he was in a wretched condition. He prayed in his dream to all sorts of gods to help him, he went to this and that court, he went to this and that lawyer, he went to all his friends and sought their help, but there was no help. He was put in jail and be cried bitterly; for there was no help for him. There came a snake which bit him and he felt excruciating pain, and this pain was so great that it woke him up. He ought to have thanked the snake which bit him in his sleep. Whenever we dream sad and horrible things, whenever we have the night-mare, we are awakened. So the snake in the dream woke him up, and he found himself sitting in bed all right, he found himself surrounded by his family, and he was happy. Now, we say in the dream he was bound, and he sought release, and in the dream the snake came and bit him, and this snake was the same as the other objects in the dream with this difference that this snake woke him up, it startled him. It ate him up. We do not mean that the snake ate the man but that is ate the dreaming ego of the man; the dreaming ego of the man was as the other objects in the dream, and this snake not only destroyed the dreaming ego of the man but it destroyed ail the other objects in the dream viz., the jail, the jailor, the monkey, the soldiers and all the rest. But this serpent was a strange serpent, it did something very*extraordinary, it ate up itself, because when the man woke up, he no longer saw this strange snake. According to Vedanta, all this world that you see is but a mere dream, Maya; and what about yourself who sees the dream. You are the dreaming ego, the dreaming culprit, or the thief etc. and all your friends and the other people are the companions in prison, from whom you seek help and invoke aid, you invoke aid from all gods in heaven and hell, and they cannot release you. You go to your friends to seek aid but there is no peace, no true aid; no true or real joy comes to you until the time comes when you find yourself bitten by a snake. Now what snake is that? The snake of Renunciation. Renunciation appears to be serpent-like and it bites you. The word Renunciation seems awful to you, it stings you as it were. True Renunciation means knowledge, it means Vedanta.
When this true Renunciation comes, what we call Jnana follows. The great saying "I am Brahma, I am Divinity, I am the Lord of lords" is realized.
MORAL: As a man, bitten by a snake in the dream, wakes up and thus gets rid of ail the bondage and miseries of the dream-world, just so a man in the waking state gets rid of all the worldly bondage, troubles, and anxieties when bitten by the snake of true renunciation.