“Whenever, O descendant of Bharata,
righteousness declines and unrighteousness prevails, I manifest myself. For the
protection of the righteous and the destruction of the wicked, and for the
establishment of religion, I come into being from age to age.”1
“God,
in His infinite love wants to make you happy and healthy. For this reason you call Him Father, Mother,
Friend. Yet we find it impossible to go
to Him. But He has such infinite love
that he comes to us; yet, just as a blind man cannot see the forms about him,
so we do not see God. He has come to us
in the form of our mothers and fathers, in the form of our teachers, in the
form of our Sastras, but especially in the form of Avataras.”2
Swami Vivekananda
considers incarnations to be nara-deva, human-beings having divine
characteristics and status. “The theory of incarnation is the first link in the
chain of ideas leading to the recognition of oneness of God and man.”3 According to the
Hindu belief, God, out of his infinite mercy,
has incarnated nine times, in the form of: Matsya, Kurma, Varaha, Narasimha,
Vamana, Parashurama, Ramachandra, Krishna and Buddha. Kalki, the tenth incarnation, is yet to
come. While these are the commonly cited
ten incarnations of God, there are also certain variations. In one of his hymns, the famous poet-saint Jayadeva substitutes Balarama for Krishna, since according to him
and the Vaisnava traditions, Krishna is God Himself, who takes various forms
according to the times and needs.
Swami Abhedananda, in his
hymn to Sri Ramakrishnaavatara Stotram, extends the avatara list to
include both Balarama and Krishna, as well as the later prophets like Chaitanya,
Shankaracharya, Muhammad and Jesus Christ.
Moreover, Abhedananda states that all these were incarnations of Ramakrishna, this was in tune with his
spiritual experience and in accordance with Gauri Pandit's statement that: 'You
are He, from a part of whom the Incarnations come down to the world from age to
age to do good to humanity.'4
Although some of the
incarnations, in either of the list are mythological, their stories are symbolic
and convey some deep psychological and spiritual message. In this article, we shall try and study the lessons conveyed by the stories of the avataras
in the light of Ramakrishna's the life and teachings.
Matsyavatara
It is narrated in several
Puranas that God incarnated for the first time in the form of a matsya,
fish as there was a great deluge at that time and that form suited him best. Once while Brahma was reciting the Vedas…
Hayagriva, an asura, stole the Vedas from the side of Brahma and with them
went… to the bottom of the ocean.5
According to Swami Ramakrishnananda, the deluge was a punishment to the
whole population for having become perverse. Only the sage Manu and his family were spared.6
Vivekananda says about Ramakrishna's advent: 'But in the
past, no new moon-night of sorrow veiled this holy land with such a dense
darkness as at present. That night is
all but gone, it being now at the fag end of its last quarter. However, the last fall of the country has
been, as it were, to the bottom of ocean, whereas, by comparison, all previous falls
have been but into the hoof-marks of a
cow.'7 Ramakrishna incarnated during a deluge of darkness in order to
dispel it.
Coming back to the story, a
small fish approached Sage Manu and sought
his protection. Manu kept it in its kamandalu, water
pot. The next day, it had grown so large
as to occupy the whole kamandalu.
Manu, therefore, put it into a larger pot. The fish, however, went on growing rapidly and Manu too went on transferring it to larger
containers till, finally, he released it into the ocean. The huge fish then revealed its Divine Nature and warned of the imminent
deluge. It advised Manu to built a boat, put into it pairs of all the various living
species, fasten the boat to the horn of the fish and board it with his family.
Manu and the pairs of living plants,
birds, animals and the like were thus saved. After the waters had subsided, he came
out and populated the earth. God, in his
fish incarnation, also recovered the Vedas.
In other incarnations, as we
shall see, the gods prayed to Bhagavan Vishnu for help and protection, only
then did he incarnate. In this incarnation, no one had prayed, but his
compassion made him take the form of a tiny fish. There is a great lesson
behind this story: God can indeed make himself a humble supplicant and test
us. One is reminded of Sri Ramakrishna’s
extrordinary humility. Whenever he met anyone for the first time, it
was he who first bowed, even before the other had the chance to do so.
Interestingly, Ramakrishna too once protected a fish that was swimming round
his feet, seeking his protection as it were, as he was wading through a flooded
lane in Kamarpukar. Ramakrishna slowly guided the fish to a big pond and thus
protected it.
We cannot say whether
God incarnated this time at the earnest prayers
of the gods or the devotees. But it is
sure that the decline of righteousness and the unprecedented rise of evil
forces of lust and greed in the present would have destroyed religion. That
same God incarnated as Ramakrishna, who is
veda murti, the embodiment of the
Vedas. Vivekananda said: “Without studying Ramakrishna Paramahamsa first, one
can never understand the real import of the Veads, the Vedanta, of the Bhagavata
and the other Puranas… He was the living commentary to the Vedas and to their
aim.” This time too, Bhagavan as Ramakrishna
has rescued the Vedas and saved religion.
Kurmavatara
The story of the God’s incarnation as a kurma,
tortoise, is elaborate and symbolically significant. While in the Matsyavatara there was no clear demarcation
between the demons and gods, the vicious and the virtuous, the story of Kurmavatara
begins with the recognition of good and evil at various levels. As it generally
happens, evil prevails upon good. The gods were defeated by the demons and consequently
decided to seek the divine nectar for immortality and invincibility. Sometimes
defeat is a blessing in disguise that leads to greater good. Bhagavan as Kurmavatara, therefore,
encouraged them to churn the ocean and obtain nectar therefrom. Gods and demons are not only external
realities, the two tendencies―divine and demonic―are always present within,
producing a constant tug of war within the ocean of the human mind. Like the ocean the human mind too is a
storehouse of many gems, even nectar, as well as dangerous creatures and
poison. Ramakrishna used to sing a song
in which mind is described as an ocean of beauty, rup-sagar, diving into
which one may get the jewel of divine love.
The churning of ocean as
described in the mythological story symbolically represents the process of
diving within one's own heart, till one reaches the level of immortality
represented by amrita, ambrosia. However, this churning can only be done with
the help of the rod of ego. After all, the
ego is the only stable element amidst the ever-changing good and evil tendencies
of the mind. This ego ought to be based
on the Divine. Ramakrishna has
repeatedly advised that the ego must be united with God, so that it becomes `ripe’
and no more remains `unripe’ ego that we usually have. Even then, there is every possibility of ego
becoming inflated. In the story this is
represented by the Kurmavtara supporting the churning rod on its back and prevented its
rising by sitting on it in the form of an eagle.
Swami Virajananda, in his
hymn to Sri Ramakrishna, has eulogized him as `dambhi-darpa-daranam; destroyer
of the pride of the haughty.’9
Indeed, on more than one occasion, Ramakrishna crushed the ego of those who
came to him. The most striking example is
that of Mahendranath Gupta, 'M', whose pride was destroyed for ever by a few telling rebukes
from Ramakrishna during one of M's earlier visits to Dakshineswar.
The story of the churning of
ocean by the gods and demons does not come to an end by obtaining the nectar of
immortality. God had to incarnation again as Mohini, a strikingly
beautiful woman, to prevent the demons from drinking that nectar. Ramakrishna
too, in various ways, subdued the evil tendencies of his disciples.
Varahavatara
That the ego can cause havoc is evident from the
story in the next two incarnations of God. Vishnu’s door keepers, Jay and Vijay,
belonged to God's inner circle. Out of
pride they insulted the sages Sanaka and others and were cursed by
them to be born as demons. They were born as Hiarnayaksha and Hiranyakapishu, and God
had to assume the form of a varaha, boar, and nara-simha,
a man-lion, to destroy liberate them from the curse.
In these legends also there
is a great lesson for all the spiritual
aspirants. However advanced one may be in spiritual life―even to
the extent of becoming a member of the inner circle of Vishnu―one may still have a fall. Eternal vigilance is the price one pays as
long as one does not merge into the absolute non-dual reality.
Jaya and Vijaya in their
incarnations as demons had the erroneous notion that Bhagavan Vishnu resides
only in Vaikuntha, his divine abode. They
did not know that he is all-pervading. o
teach them a lesson, Bhagavan came out of the nose of Brahma as a boar and out of a pillar as a man-lion. Ramakrishna also repeatedly emphasized the all-pervasiveness
of the one Reality. He would actually see God existing within and without everything; he saw God even
in inanimate objects.
These stories highlight the
idea that good and bad, dharma and adharma are not two water-tight
entities. Jaya and Vijaya, though
righteous, were transformed into unrighteous demons. In the same vein, Ramakrishna
has advised us to transcend both good and evil, dharma and adharma. Remove the thorn of avidya with the help of the thorn of vidya, knowledge, and then throw both away.
These episodes have one more
objective: to show that God can be reached
through the path
of dvesh bhakti, devotion
manifest as enmity. According to the Bhagavata,
this is a faster way to reach God, though only a rare few are competent to
follow it. So far as Ramakrishna is
concerned, he never advocated this type of bhakti. He only taught and
recommended the conventional five modes of bhakti with special emphasis on apatya
bhava, considering God as father or still better, as mother.
'Hiranya' means gold and is
intimately associated with greed and consequent delusion, anger and pride. Ramakrishna,
totally renounced gold kanchan, gold; he thus killed both Hiaranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu
symbolically.
As the story goes, Hiranyaksha
stole the earth. Bhagavan assumed the form of a boar to search
for the missing earth as this was the best-suited body, which has a strong sense of smell to search for the
earth. The boar is considered a symbol
of yajna, and the various parts of its
body are equated with the various aspects of yajnas.
Yajna is a very important charasteritic
of Hindu religious practice. Various types of yajnas have been described
in various Hindu scriptures, including the Bhagavadgita. The essential part of
yajna is 'giving'. The whole of Creation,
according to Hinduism, is based on the wheel of yajna, in which every sacrificial
act is interconnected with the other in
a relationship of giving. According to
the Gita, one who does not contribute his or her part in this cycle of giving,
and yet wants to enjoy, is a thief. Hiranyaksha wanted to enjoy the earth all by himself, by sheer
animal force. Hence, Bhagavan incarnated
as yajna-rupa-varaha, yajna in the form of a boar, so that the cosmic
order could be re-established. In the present era, a similar situation has
arisen: everyone wants to acquire goods without giving and contributing in the
cosmic cycle. Ramakrishna has,
therefore, taught a novel yajna: shiv-jnana-jiva-seva, service to man as God. The spirit of yajna has been beautifully
summarized by Swami Vivekananda: 'In the
world take always the position of the giver. Give everything and look for no
return. Give love, give help, give service, give any little thing you can, but
keep out barter. Make no conditions, and none will be imposed. Let us give
out of our own bounty, just as God gives to us.'10
Narsimha
Hiranyakshipu is considered the adi-daitya, the first
and foremost among the demons. The word
for demon is `asura’―one who considers himself `asu’ or body. In other words, the primary characteristic of
demon-hood is considering oneself a physical entity, having dehatma-buddhi,
body-consciousness. The rest of the demonical qualities, as described in the sixteenth
chapter of the Gita, arise out of this primary error: 'Hiranayakashipu
represents the highest development of egoism. The first personal pronoun “I”
was developed in him as far as it can be developed. He was so very powerful that he brought the whole universe
under his control; but his egotism blinded
him in regard to the fact that it was finite and perishable, and an ego that is
finite, compared to the ego of the Lord, must be infinitesimally insignificant'.11
Hiranyakashipu an enemy of his son Prahlada, who was a great devotee of Vishnu. Bhagavan incarnated as a man-lion to fulfill the boon that Brahma had granted the demon.
The lion is the best among animals and a symbol of courage and
power. Vivekananda once meditated upon the heart of a lion. In Sanskrit
and Hindi the words nara-simha and nara-kesari are used to
refer to the best among men. Ramakrishna too was
very careful to his keep word and always fulfil promises. He was indeed nara-simha, best among
men. However, whereas Vishnu's
incarnation as Narasimha was full
of anger, Ramakrishna hardly ever became
angry, and even if he did, it was short-lived. Certainly, he was as
affectionate towards the devotees as Narasimha
was towards Prahlad.
After killing
Hiaranyakashipu, Narasimha asked Prahlad for a boon. Prahlad prayed only
for pure devotion. Ramakrishna was the
strongest advocate of pure, desireless devotion. He used to pray, 'Mother, give me pure devotion'.
After killing
Hiranyakashipu, Nariasimha asked Prahlad
to rule his father's kingdom. Ramakrishna
had many illustrious householder disciples. Nag Mahashaya and Mahendra Nath
Gupta wanted to renounce the world, but Ramakrishna asked them to continue to live in
the world as an example for other householders.
Likewise, Prahlad ruled the kingdom wisely and during his reign the gods
and demons lived peacefully. But during
the reign of his son, Virochana the gods gradually regained their independence;
then, Virochana’s son, Bali drove away
gods from heaven, thus disturbing the cosmic balance.
One thing is common in both
gods and demons: both seek enjoyment, though it is usually the demons who resort
to unrighteous means to obtain it. One
is surprised to find that even Indra, king
of the god, is found
at times to employ unfair means to
fulfill his desires and is consequently cursed for his behaviour. Yet, he is wise enough to take shelter in the
Supreme Being whenever in trouble. This
reminds us of Mathuranath Biswas,
who at times resorted to unlawful
means; yet Ramakrishna protected him
because he had great devotion to him.
Vamana-avatara
Vamana is another of
Bhagavan's incarnations, in this case as the dwarf son of Aditi, the mother of
gods. Aditi lived a life of intense
self-control and penance before she gave birth the divine child. The pious parents of Ramakrishna too led a
life of devotion and self-control, truthfulness and austerity. That is why Ramakrishna
was born to them.
Vamana went to the demon
king Bali and asked for a portion of that he could with only three steps. In the meantime, the guru of the demons
Shukracharya recognized Vamana as the Supreme Being and asked Bali not to grant
the boon. Shukracharya was a calculating person who did not want his disciple Bali not to keep his promise. Ramakrishna was against such calculating intelligence.
According to him, such calculating persons cannot be spiritual. In the Gospel
of Ramakrishna, we find him once listening to the story of Devi
Chaudharani. The author Bankim
Chandra gave calculating advice, mixing righteousness and self-interest
that Ramakrishna disliked. King
Bali rejects even his guru’s advice and sticks to his promise, due to which, he
ultimately wins the favour of Vamana. He holds on to the two values of truth and
charity, which were extolled by Ramakrishna as well.
Vivekananda goes to the
extent of stating that one should always give, even if one is sometimes cheated.
King Bali too was not afraid of being cheated by the Divine Dwarf. He gave himself fully; he even his
head―representing the ego―the last thing one can renounce. Ramakrishna used to say that all problems
subside when ego dies.
As the story goes, as soon
as Bali vowed to give Vamana the land measuring
three steps, the latter assumed a
massive form and with two steps measured
the earth and the heaven; the third step he graciously kept on Bali’s
head. Here we find Vamana assuming a
massive form, which reminds us of the Upanishadic statement that Brahman is smaller
than the smallest and greater than the greatest.
Lord incarnates in different
forms, sometimes such deceptive forms that one is bound to get misguided. King Bali too, was misguided on seeing the
Dwarf and indeed was amused when He asked for land measuring three steps. The Lord disguised himself this time too, as
a poor, illiterate Brahmin named Sri Ramakrishna and many people did not
recognize him. Some were there like
Ashwini Kumar Dutta, who, though did not recognize his divinity, for the first
time accepted his divinity when they saw his massive spiritual dimension which
were concealed initially.
Prashurama
With the Parashurama
incarnation, Indian Puranas become realistic, in the sense that there are no more gods and
demons fighting each other; instead there
are caste divisions with general tensions
between the two upper castes―brahmana and kshatriya.
Parashurama was born with aggressive kshatriya characteristics in a
Brahmin family, and Vishwamitra was born with brahmana traits in a King’s
family.
Parashurama's life can be
divided into two parts: first, he is a
fierce warrior who destroys the wicked kshatriyas twenty-one times; second, he
leads a retired and secluded life, though
still proud of his valorous deeds. This
pride is humbled by Rama, the next incarnation of Vishnu. Some consider Parashurama
only a partial incarnation of God― amshavatara.
It is very difficult to find
any similarity or draw parallels between the lives and personalities of Parashurama and Ramakrishna, except that both
were brahmanas by birth. Ramakrishna was extremely mild, with no trace of
violence, and was the very embodiment of humility. If, however, we consider the
evil-minded kshatriyas as symbolic of evil tendencies, Ramakrishna was at war
against them. But, while Parashurama killed the evil ones twenty one times, Ramakrishna could destroy each one of
his inner foes―greed, lust and the like―with a single blow, as it were. As to pride, he had none of it; Ramakrishna
was a perfect specimen of fully evolved brahmana-hood.
Rama
The next two incarnations have influenced the Indian
culture the most: Rama and Krishna. The stories of these two incarnations are too
well known to be elaborated here. Vivekananda, in one of his hymns, in praise
of Ramakrishna, has clearly stated that
he who was Rama and he who was Krishna
is now born as Ramakrishna:
The
One born as Rama of incomparable greatness in all the three worlds; the very
life of Janaka’s daughter; who, though himself beyond the world, lo, did not
give up doing, good to it; the current of whose love flowed ever unchecked down
even to a Chandala; and whose body of supreme knowledge was enveloped by
devotion in the form of Sita; the One
born as Krishna too, who sang the song (the Gita) sweet and tranquil, yet deep
as the roar of a lion, suppressing the great cataclysmic tumult raised in the
battlefield and destroying the innate and deep-seated darkness of ignorance―that
ever-renowned Divine Personality is now born as Ramakrishna.12
About the special
characteristics of Rama, Vivekananda
said: 'Coming down to later times, there
have been great world-moving sages, great Incarnations … and those that are
worshipped most in India are Rama and Krishna.
Rama, the ancient idol of the heroic ages, the embodiment of truth, of
morality, the ideal son, the ideal husband, the ideal father, and above all,
the ideal king, this Rama has been presented before us by the great sage
Valmiki.'13
According
to Ramakrishna, Rama was a perfect jnani:
I
realize that wherever I live I am always in the Ayodhya of Rama. This whole
world is Rama’s Ayohdhya. After receiving instructions from His teacher, Rama
said that He would renounce the world.
Dasharatha sent the sage Vashishtha to Rama to dissuade Him. Vashistha found Him filled with intense
renunciation. He said to Rama: `First of
all, reason with me, Rama; then You may leave the world. May I ask You if this world is outside
God? If that is so, then You may give it
up.’ Rama found that it is God alone who
has become the universe and all its living beings. Everything in the world appears real on
account of God’s reality behind it.
Thereupon Rama became silent.14
Ramakrishna used to give the
example of Rama to encourage householders to live in the world without
attachment.
If Rama befriended the
tribal Nishadaraja Guha―the ferry man who
took him across the Ganga―created an alliance with the monkey king Sugriva and
ate the fruits offered to him by Shabari of low birth, Ramakrishna accepted many of the lower castes as well. He received his first alms from Dhani, who was from a blacksmith's family,
blessed the sweeper Rasik, and accepted the servant boy Latu as his disciple.
Rama went to forest and
lived there under trying situations for fourteen long years, just to keep the word
given to Kaikeyi by King Dasharatha, Rama’s father. Similarly, Ramakrishna considered the observance
of truth as the special austerity of the present Kali Yuga. He was so perfectly established in truth that
never did he deviate from it in his whole life.
Like Rama, Ramakrishna was
also an ideal son, an ideal husband, and an ideal Guru. For the sake of his old mother living at the Dakhsineswar
temple, he gave up the idea of shifting to Vrindaban and of living with Gangamayi,
a highly evolved saint. As an ideal
husband, Ramakrishna took special care of his wife, Holy Mother Sarada Devi. He deposited some money out of
his salary as priest in order to provide Sarada Devi with a future means of
subsistence. He diligently trained her
not only in secular matters but in spiritual as well. She used to say that Ramakrishna never hurt
her even with a flower. That Ramakrishna was an ideal guru is well known. He would assess the temperament of each
individual disciple and train him or her accordingly.
Ramakrishna’s family deity
was Rama. His father, Kshudiram had obtained a Shalagram Shila, a stone emblem
of Rama. The names of all the male members of his family contained the name of Rama.
And during his period of spiritual practice, Ramakrishna had worshipped and
established relations with Rama in two devotional moods: dasya and vatsalya―as
a servant and as a parent.
Krishna
Krishna’s life and
personality have two distinct aspects, one lived and manifested at Vrindavan,
and the other at Mathura and Dwaraka―the gopijanavallabha and the gitacharya
aspects respectively. Swami Ramakrishnananda
has named the former as the 'pastoral' and the latter as the 'kingmaker'. Vivekananda
too has recognized and pointed out their relative significance.
About the first facet
Vivekananda says, 'The highest thing we can get out of him is Gopijanavallabha,
the Beloved of the Gopis of Vrindavan.'15 'He is the simple Krishna, ever the same
Krishna, who played with the Gopis. Ah,
the most marvelous passage of his life, the most difficult to
understand....that most marvellous expansion of love, allegorised and expressed
in that beautiful play at Vrindavan, which none can understand but he who has
become mad with love, drunk deep of the cup of love. (3.257) 'That', Vivekananda says, 'is the very essence
of the Krishna Incarnation. (3.259).
To the second aspect Swamiji
assigns a lower place: 'To come down to
the lower stratum―Krishna, the preacher of the Gita (3.260). 'He is the most
wonderful Sannyasin, and the most wonderful householder in one;
he had the most wonderful amount of Rajas, power, and was at the same time
living in the midst of the most wonderful renunciation. Krishna can never be understood until you
have studied the Gita, for he was the embodiment of his own teaching (3.256).
This dual expression of
ideal man and God together is present in all incarnations, especially in Rama,
Krishna and Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna used to say that within him there are two
beings: one the bhakta, the devotee, and the other, Bhagavan, God. He was an ideal human being whose life and
character are to be deeply studied and emulated. At the same time, he was a divine being who
can be worshipped and adored. Vivekananda,
therefore, considers him 'nara-deva, god and human in one.
Regarding the Gita, Ramakrishna
used to say if we pronounce the word `'gita’ repeatedly, it sounds
'tagi-tagi-tagi', that is tyagi, which means 'one who has renounced'. Thus, for him, the essence of the Gita is renunciation, in which
he was fully established. In this
respect Ramakrishna was the embodiment
of the Gita, much as Krishna was. Besides, Ramakrishna is also considered to be
the embodiment of the highest divine love as manifest in the gopis of
Vrindavan. Besides, he had at different periods of his life not only the
visions of Rama, Sita, and Krishna, but these divine beings also merged into
him, indicating thereby that he was no other than them.
Krishna is the preacher of
the Gita, which is given the status of an Upanishad. The Gospel of
Ramakrishna is a great scripture as
well, a veritable Upanishad.
The comparative study of the
personalities and teachings of Rama and
Krishna with Ramakrishna is too vast a subject to be covered in this article. Only a basic outline has presented here.
Buddha
Although an opponent of the
Vedic karma-kanda and the founder of a new religion, Buddha has been
accepted as one of the Hindu avataras. Born a
prince, he renounced his kingdom, his young wife, and son in search of Truth, which he attained through
an extraordinary spiritual effort. He is the most human among the avataras, with
exemplary human qualities. He was
intensely sensitive, and the mere site
of suffering in the form of disease, old age, and death awakened him to the
unpleasant reality of the world to such an extent that he did not rest till he
discovered a way out of this suffering; through intense yearning he realized
the Truth.
While the starting point of Ramakrishna’s
spiritual striving was different―he wanted to see the Divine Mother―his
yearning and intensity was as great as that of Buddha. If Buddha was ready to give up his body on
the meditation seat to attain that rare supreme knowledge attainable only in
eons, Ramakrishna too could not brook a moment’s separation from the Divine
Mother, and even attempted to give up his body in search of her.
Among the various
excellences of Buddha, Vivekananda
highlighted a few. He admired Buddha’s wisdom and considered him the sanest
philosopher the world has seen. He also extolled Buddha as a great karma yogi
who worked for work’s sake without any other motive, and as a being full of compassion as well, and ready to lay
down his own life to save a lamb. These
excellent traits are equally found in Ramakrishna, who never indulged in hair-splitting
arguments and went straight to the point.
To Hari―one of his disciples, later known as Swami Turiyananda―who was
studying Vedantic texts, Ramakrishna had
said that the final conclusion of all Vedantic teachings was that 'Brahman is
real and the world unreal', and that to be a true Vedantin one needs only to
put this teaching into practice and not reading scores of books with intricate arguments.
Ramakrishna was also a great
karma yogi who continued to labour for the good of others till the last day of
his life. Buddha accepted the invitation of a low caste person, who offered him
a dish that ultimately led to his death. Ramakrishna, on his death bed, did not
send anyone away who came to him for counsel, even if it meant hastening the end. Vivekananda has, therefore, described Ramakrishna
as karamkalevaram-adbhuta-cheshtam (8.174), one whose body was full of
activity and whose divine exploits were wonderful. Both Buddha and Ramakrishna lived only for
others.
In regard to their teachings
there are some differences between them: whereas Buddha stressed the obvious
truth of suffering, Ramakrishna asserted
the not-so-unobvious truth of the existence of God. Buddha said that suffering can be removed; Ramakrishna
declared that God can be realized. Buddha
taught the eight-fold noble path, Ramakrishna
accepted all paths as true provided that they were followed with sincerity and
yearning for the Divine. From the
historic and spiritual point of view both Buddha and Ramakrishna have initiated
powerful worldwide religious movements of monks, nuns and lay devotees.
Kalki
The tenth avatara, yet to come, is Kalki.
Ramakrishna said: 'God will incarnate Himself as Kalki at the end of
Kaliyuga. He will be born as the son of
a brahmin. Suddenly and unexpectedly a sword and horse will come to him.16 It is said that Kalki will destroy evil people
and after that the Satya Yuga, Age of Truth, will appear once again.
In the context
of the evolution of Hindu avataras, as described in the Puranas,
we see a gradual humanization that reaches a most serene, non-violent and
compassionate expression in Buddha, the ninth incarnation. The description of
Kalki, the tenth, as a warrior avatara does not fit into this evolutionary pattern. And since Vivekananda has said that the Satyayuga has
started with the advent of Ramakrishna, some believe that Ramakrishna himself
is Kalki, and that the description of
sword, horse, and the rest is merely allegorical.
Conclusion
Some scholars are of the
opinion that the concept of the ten Hindu avataras depicts the gradual
evolution of species, beginning from the first creature having a brain, the
fish. One of the important messages
conveyed in this concept is that of the presence of God in all
creatures, whatever be their state of evolution. Among God's human manifestations too there is
a gradation. In Narasimha, the human is
first evolving out of a lion, the best among the beasts. Vamana, the next incarnation, is a human
dwarf. The fully developed Parashurama
follows, and he represents the aggressive primitive human who believed in brute
force and the animal law of `might is right’.
Rama and Krishna, are in comparison, milder and more considerate; nevertheless,
they wage wars and wield weapons to subdue the miscreants. Buddha is an incarnation of compassion and
love, though he did condemn the priestcraft of the brahmanas. In the Ramakrishna incarnation none was
condemned, none left out, and the
weapons used to win over the wicked tendencies of human beings were humility
and love. As an extension of the
Ramakrishna incarnation, his divine consort Sarada Devi, manifested deep love, compassion, patience, and all the
qualities that make an ideal woman, nun, and mother in one. Sarada Devi survived Ramakrishna by thirty-four years and
demonstrated through her life what God incarnated as mother is like; she
manifested the motherhood of God.
In the legends of most of
the inacrnations evil is represented either by a single demon or a group of
demons, who are destroyed by the incarnation.
During Parashurama's time, the kshatriyas represented the evil side. Rama was a kshatriya and killed Ravana, the
unrighteous one, though brahmana by birth.
Interestingly, during the Krishna incarnation evil had become so
pervasive that he had to plot the killing not only of the Kauravas and their
whole army, but also of all allies of the Pandavas, and even of his own clan, the Yadavas.
However, in Ramakrishna incarnation, none is particularly condemned;
all people are taken as manifestations of the Divine and are guided accordingly. What other evidence do we need to consider him
avatara varishta, the supreme incarnation?
References
1. Bhagavadgita
, 4. 7-8.
2. Swami Ramakrishnananda, God and Divine
Incarnations, (Madras: Ramakrishna Math, 1970), 50.
3. The Complete
Works of Swami Vivekananda, 9 vols (Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama, I-8, 1989; 9,
1997), 7.100.
4. Swami
Saradananda, Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master, trans. Swami Jagadananda
(Chennai: Ramakrishna Math, 2004), 594.
5. See
Vettam Mani, Puranic Encyclopedia (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993),
79.
6. See God
and Divine Incarnations,60-1.
7. Sri
Ramakrishna the Great Master, 370).
8. Complete
Works, 7. 483.
9. Swami
Virajananda, 'Ramakrishna Stotra-dashakam', 8.
10. Complete Works, 7.5.
11. God and Divine Incarnations, 109.
12. Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master,367.
13. Complete Works, 3.255.
14. M, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans.
Swami Nikhilananda (Chennai: Ramakrishna Math, 2002), 648.
15. Complete Works, 3.260.
16. Gospel, 461.
