SAINT RAMANANDA
There was a saintly man in the Hindu world by the name of Ramananda, of whom, like many other medieval personages, we have little or no record as to his place and date of birth. But his name and fame and following have survived to this day.
Scholars tentatively suggest that he was born sometime in the 14th century. What is known is that he was inspired by the teachings of an earlier saint-scholar by the name of Ramanuja. There is a line of succession in the genealogy of saints in India which consists of the principal gurus of the tradition during a given period of time. By this reckoning, Ramananda figures on the Ramanuja line.
It is said that Ramananda once belonged to a monastic tradition where, as elsewhere, there were strict rules and rituals on meal-taking. At one point he felt such rules made no sense. So he left the group and began his independent spiritual quest. He went to a spot on the bank of the sacred river Ganga in Varanasi. His personality attracted some people others. Thus began the sect known as Ramanandis (Raamaanandees).
A great devotee of Lord Rama (the divine hero of the epic Ramayana), he used to proclaim: “All you need to do is to surrender yourself to Rama and Sita. Everything else is of little value.” His own name means one who derives bliss in Rama. Ramananda was an open critic of casteism. He stressed, like other enlightened souls, and perhaps with as much or as little success, the great truth that we are all equal in the eyes of the Almighty, and that distinctions of caste, color and creed really don’t mean a thing. The multitude worshipped him for such wisdom, while continuing with their age-old practices and prejudices.
Ramananda’s bhakti (pure love of personal God) replaced the abstract metaphysics of earlier gurus. His movement is regarded as one of the forces which led to the worship of the icons of Rama and Krishna in Hindu temples. The power of preachers can be underestimated. Some scholars have said that it was Ramananda’s inspiration that led to the magnificent Hindu temples we find all over India and beyond today. To him is due the worship of Rama, a powerful cultural-religious force all over the Hindu world.
Like Jesus Christ, Ramananda had twelve apostles. These included a barber, a goldsmith, a tanner, a peasant, a Muslim (the great mystic poet Kabir), a prince and also two women. It is said that when Pipa, a prince, came to become one of his disciples, Ramananda was engrossed in a spiritual exercise. When the prince persisted, it upset the guru who asked the intruder to go jump in the well. The prince promptly obeyed, for to act as a guru commands is the highest virtue. But the prince was quickly rescued. Upon hearing this, Ramananda regretted the incident, and accepted Pipa as the twelfth disciple. Ramananda described his disciples as avadhutas: the liberated ones.
Time and reverence have churned many tales about this godly man who inspired people to intense devotion. According to one legend, Ramananda once fought and subdued a lion, and turned it into a vegetarian beast. It has been said that once his barber-disciple was intensely meditating on the Divine (Vishnu) while cutting the hair of the local king. There was the likelihood that this would result in an awkward coiffure for the royal head, or worse still, the absent-minded barber might snip a royal ear. To avert such unhappy occurrences, Lord Vishnu incarnated briefly as a hair-dresser and completed the hair-cutting job to perfection. Nowhere else, in mythology or religious fantasy, has God become a hair-dresser. The story is to remind us that the Divine can manifest itself in any form or person to help the truly devoted ones.
Spurts of Thought 