Miscellaneous - Religion   

Role of divine grace religion

CHENNAI: Success in any enterprise can be achieved only when human effort is yoked to divine grace. The person must have the necessary capacity to undertake the task and also strive to the best of his ability to accomplish the goal. While all this is within human capacity, the outcome is in God’s hands. This insight is highlighted in the Ramayana through Hanuman’s success in locating Sita in Lanka when he accompanied Angada in the search. Sugirva despatched his army of monkeys in all the directions with the stern warning that they should find Sita within a month’s time.

In their discourse, Damal Sri Ramakrishnan and Srimathi Perundevi Seshadri said it was Providence that brought the monkeys under the leadership of Angada, which had headed south, in the vicinity of the vulture Sampati, when they had out of frustration of not finding Sita’s whereabouts decided to starve themselves to death near a cave. Sampati emerged out of the cave and was pleased to see so many of them. He could feed on them one by one. While he was remarking about his luck, Angada bemoaned their continuing misfortune: Rama’s work had not been accomplished; they had failed to carry out Sugriva’s orders and now to add to their woes they were going to end up as food to a vulture.

Then they started recalling all the incidents in the life of Rama that had brought them there. The moment they mentioned Rama had performed the obsequies for Jatayu after the bird died trying to protect Sita when Ravana abducted Her, Sampati intervened for Jatayu was his dear brother. Angada then narrated Rama’s life again. Sampati told them how his wings were scorched by the sun when he shielded Jatayu from getting burnt when they tested their relative strength. Sampati had fallen on a peak of the Vindhya mountain range and was on the verge of ending his life when Sage Nishakara had given him hope with his foresight that his wings would grow again when he helped Lord Rama’s messengers by telling Sita’s whereabouts. The moment he told them that Sita was in Lanka he got back his wings. Hanuman was then selected to go to Lanka and he succeeded because of his devotion to Rama.

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