Rama’s Life – A Lesson in Freedom

“Life is neither beautiful nor ugly nor is it love nor hate. It is just that you can be beautiful within yourself or you can be ugly, you can be loving or you cannot be loving.”

—Sadhguru

Rakul Preet Singh: I think anyone talking to you or listening to your speeches or following you feels that life is really simple and beautiful and full of love. Everywhere, things around us exude love; things around us have life. But how difficult is it for people to understand that life is simple, and why do you think the smallest things have been complicated by the human race so much – be it relationships, be it marriages, be it love, be it work? There are just so many superficial things, and people are missing out on small joys of life. They just do not live life the way it is supposed to be. What is it that you would say would be step one for everyone to at least start looking into that direction of feeling that life is beautiful?

Sadhguru: Life is neither beautiful nor ugly nor is it love nor hate. It is just that you can be beautiful within yourself or you can be ugly, you can be loving or you cannot be loving. “Everywhere, love is exuding” – no! This will take you to a La La Land.

Rakul Preet Singh: No, I mean everyone is lovely here; I do not have a problem with anyone, but not everyone is going to look at it that way.

Sadhguru: Now I must tell you something. This happened: a young widow went to the cemetery to visit the grave that she was dedicated to, with her seven-year-old boy. The boy, who was just learning to read and write, ran all over the cemetery, reading all the inscriptions. He came back to his mother after twenty, thirty minutes and said, “Momma, where do they bury all the horrible people?”

It is not true that everyone is beautiful – people can be extremely ugly. If you are beautiful, you can transform even that ugliness to some extent. Will everyone come your way? No, they will not. If they do not come your way, will you become ugly? No. That is the important thing.

When things do not happen your way, are you still capable of being a beautiful human being? That is all you have to fix. If you fix that one thing, everything is fine. When nothing happens your way, are you still a beautiful human being? This is the only thing that this culture has ever worshipped.

You know, Rama is hugely worshipped. He had continuous problems: the worst kind of drama was happening, a completely disastrous life, but he remained balanced. He did his administration and whatever work he had to do with such balance and efficiency that after thousands of years, when we talk about an ideal nation, we say “Rama Rajya.” Whatever happened in his life, if just one of those things happened to someone, most people will crack up. He was facing serial disasters, but still he was doing everything to the best of his ability in the given moment and fulfilling his duties, whatever he had to do.

It is this absolute freedom he had from the drama that was happening around him. This is mukti. As he was alive, he was free – this is jeevan mukti. It is that freedom that we are bowing down to – not his being a king or a god or whatever, but because the man remained free of the extreme drama that was continuously happening around him.

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A version of this article was originally published in Isha Forest Flower March 2018.