Ganesha Goes to Lunch

“I don’t think there is any water here,” Lakshmana said. “We have been wandering for days. I doubt that the lake we were told about even exists.”

“When adversity finds us, all our wisdom, like grain in a sieve, flies out of our souls, and we are left with the chaff of doubt. Share your thoughts with me, Little Brother.”

“I have been very troubled in my mind, Rama. I can’t shake the thought that when we were exiled by our stepmother, Kaikeyi, so that her son could inherit your throne, we should have fought for your rights. You are the legitimate king.”

“Promises are stepping stones on the path of dharma. It is of such airy threads that honor is made. The universe would not be without laws, Lakshmana. It is laws that sustain the heavenly bodies and our earth. Humans, too, have laws, which we may not break without dire harm to ourselves and others. Without a commitment to dharma, Lakshmana, all our paths are lost, and humanity itself is sacrificed.”

“Humanity! What humanity did Kaikeyi show? She allowed herself to be lured by that demonic woman, Manthara, who moves about the palace all humped over like a malformed lump, a dark shadow, working its poison even during the day.”

“It is the shape and voice of the ego, Lakshmana, which, cut off from the general good, wants gain only for its small and illusory self. Manthara has never forgiven me for shooting a harmless arrow playfully into her hump once when we were both children. And her revenge is merely the trigger for the unraveling of a vast design, to which we ultimately have to surrender.”

“Surrender! We were cowards to simply let her will prevail. If we hadn’t allowed all that madness to happen, then we might still be in our palace in Ayodhya. You would be king and Sita would be queen, instead of Ravana’s prisoner. Our entire lives would have been different. Better. Less full of hardship.”

Lakshmana’s belligerence was new. He had always been soft-spoken and obedient to Rama’s will, knowing that his brother was an incarnation of Vishnu. Rama’s name was on every lip that believed and trusted in God. Lakshmana, too, worshiped and adored his older brother. But fatigue had overwhelmed his brain, roiled and clouded his vision, and made him angry and despairing.

They walked in silence for a while, Lakshmana fuming inwardly at the sight of Rama’s feet, full of dust, cracks, blisters, sores. “Did you never feel anything? Your coronation was the next day, you were happy, you had won Sita of the little feet and delicate ankles. To have the throne snatched from under you! And as if that wasn’t enough, to be exiled for fourteen years!”

“Know, Lakshmana, that we have small minds that cannot see the whole picture, just individual events. Things do not “happen,” they simply are, as the course of events in a book with the past, present, and future all laid out, always happening, always ending and beginning again. Our story is already over, Lakshmana; all our adversity has already passed away. Think of all your past sorrows. Where are they now? If you knew then that they would pass away into oblivion, as you know now that they did, you would have moved through that suffering with equanimity. This is our task here, Lakshmana, not to gain some spurious comfort and happiness, but to move into that Self within us, always present and deathless, that is our true home. Look, Lakshmana.”

Lakshmana had been so preoccupied by the noises in his head that he didn’t see they had arrived at their destination. Just as Rama finished speaking, through a clearing in the forest they came upon the lake that they sought. A chorus of frogs sang loudly. The cool and placid waters, so pellucid that they could see all the way to the pattern of the pebbles at the bottom, shimmered in the sunlight.

Rama and Lakshmana drove their bows into the earth to stand them up against a tree. Rama’s bow encountered a rock in the forest floor, so he pulled it out of the ground, and then a short distance away in the mud, plunged it deep into the earth.

The two took off their quivers and then their clothes, drank their fill of the cool and sweet water, and went in for a swim. Rama dove in first, and in no time swam to the middle of the lake.

As Lakshmana stepped into the lake, he still didn’t understand the convoluted logic of struggle and surrender, free will and destiny. He wished he had as much clarity as Rama did, but then Rama, being Vishnu, was in tune with the intricacies of the universe. Lakshmana said to himself: “I will ask him how one knows when to accept and when to fight.”

As he walked deeper into the waters, he heard Rama’s voice in his head. “When our passions become as still as this lake, when we are detached from Maya, from the illusion of our own lives, we shall hear the voice that tells us when to struggle and when to surrender.”

As Lakshmana submerged his head into the waters, all the turmoil seething in him like cobras stinging his organs, all his questions and quandaries dissolved, and a quiet peace took their place. In that silence was a little kernel that stood apart from and above the joys and sorrows, hopes and travails of his life, a point of utter stillness in which his world, though apparently in shambles, was supremely all right. His being expanded to include a long forgotten joy. And from the eye of that joy, he perceived how everything that had happened was as inevitable as lines and colors in a perfect and complete design.

He looked over at Rama, now seemingly asleep upon the waters, like Vishnu, a smile upon his sacred lips, his brow high and broad above his beloved features. All his love, obscured by the clouds of misfortune, returned as a tide, reversing the ebb within Laksmana’s heart. How dearly he worshiped Rama! How deeply he admired and adored him for being at once human and divine; for his ability to always transcend the fickle circumstances of his life; for the clarity of his vision and the trust he placed in the workings of the universe; for letting vicissitudes move through him, like the wind through a harp.

Lakshmana knew that this was what he himself could become: the very zenith of humanhood, the very flower of the conflicted and marvelous human animal. Rama was what Lakshmana strove to be in the best of times; even in the worst, Rama guided him like a blind man’s staff.

Emerging from the waters, they dried themselves, and put on their clothes. Pulling out his bow from the marsh, Rama noticed that the tip was stained with blood. Rama said, “Look, Lakshmana, I’m afraid I have injured some creature.”

Lakshmana dug into the earth with his hands, and brought out a toad covered with mud and blood, breathing rapidly, the air sac beneath his chin billowing in and out, his large, protruding eyes bulging in pain. The end of Rama’s bow had pierced through his body, and he lay in Lakshmana’s hand, dying.

Stricken with pain at the sight before him, Rama cried to the toad: “Why didn’t you croak? You croak loudly enough when you are in the jaws of a snake.”

“O Lord,” the toad said, “When I am attacked by a snake, I struggle in his mouth, I croak loudly and cry to you, ‘O Rama, save me! Save me, Rama!’ But this time I found that it was Rama himself who was killing me, so what could I do? ”