The Return of the Avatar

Sītā was gone, returned to the earth, and Rāma reigned on, but the joy had gone out of his reign, and he lived now in a deepening detachment from the world, for the departure of Sītā had loosened the last of his ties to the life he had lived, and he understood, in the quiet of his grief, that his own time in the world was drawing toward its close.

He reigned still, and reigned well, for the dharma of the king held him to his duty as long as the duty remained; and Rāmarājya continued, the golden age of justice and peace, under a king who governed now with a heart turned increasingly away from the world and toward the source from which he too had come.

But the tellers show us a Rāma grown quiet and detached, his great work accomplished, his divine companion departed, his purpose in the world all but fulfilled, waiting, as it were, for the time when he too might lay down the human form he had taken up so long ago and return to his eternal nature.

He established his legacy, for that remained to be done. His sons, Lava and Kusha, the twins born in the forest and raised by Vālmīki, were brought to him and acknowledged and given their place, the heirs of his line, and to them, and to the sons of his brothers, Rāma in time entrusted the kingdoms, dividing the rule among the next generation, settling the succession, ensuring that the order he had established would continue after him.

He gave his final instructions to his brothers, to Bharata and the others who had shared his whole long story, arranging all the affairs of the kingdom and the family, setting everything in order, as one who prepares to depart and wishes to leave nothing unfinished behind him.

And when all was arranged, when his sons were established and his legacy secured and the kingdom set in order, Rāma understood that his time had come, that his avatar was complete, that the purpose for which the Supreme Lord had taken human form and entered the world was accomplished, and that it was time to return.

For he had come into the world, the story has told us from the beginning, to destroy the evil of Rāvaṇa, to restore dharma, to walk the human path and show what the perfect life of dharma looked like in a human being; and all of this was now done. The evil was destroyed; dharma was restored; the perfect example was given; the golden age was established. There remained nothing more for the avatar to accomplish, and so it was time for the Lord to lay down the human form and return to his eternal nature.

And so Rāma made his final departure from the world, and the tellers render it with a great and solemn beauty.

He went, in the fullness of time, to the river Sarayū, the river that flowed past Ayodhyā, the river that had witnessed his whole life, from his birth to this last hour; and there, attended by his people and his kin, in a solemn and sacred passing, Rāma walked into the waters of the Sarayū, entering the river, and in that entering he laid down the human form he had worn for so long, and returned to his eternal and divine nature, to his true being as Lord Nārāyaṇa, the Supreme, from whom he had descended into the world and to whom he now returned.

The avatar was complete; the human life was ended; and the Lord who had walked the earth as Rāma, who had been born and had grown and had loved and had suffered and had triumphed and had grieved, all as truly and as fully as any man, now returned to the source, his work accomplished, his purpose fulfilled, leaving behind him in the world he departed a legacy that would guide humanity for as long as the world endured.

And here the great story ends, and the tellers, before they lay it down, pause to draw its final meaning, and it is fitting that we pause with them, for the whole long tale has been building toward this final reflection.

The journey of Rāma, they tell us, is not a simple fairy tale of good defeating evil, though it contains that; it is something deeper and truer and more useful to us than that. It is a profound exploration of the human condition, of what it means to live a life of dharma in a world that is not simple, where the right path is often hard and dark and costly, where duty and love come into conflict, where the innocent suffer and the faithful are doubted and the good is bought at a terrible price.

Rāma’s life was not an easy triumph but a long ordeal of sacrifice and sorrow: he lost his kingdom, his father, his wife, again and again, and bore each loss with a fidelity to duty that never wavered but never spared him pain. Sītā’s life was a long endurance of suffering unjustly laid upon a faithful soul, borne with a dignity that never broke.

And the story does not pretend that all of this was easy, or that the path of dharma is a smooth road to happiness; it shows us, with unflinching honesty, that the path of dharma is filled with sacrifice and sorrow, that doing one’s duty can cost everything, that the world is not arranged to reward the good with ease.

And yet, the tellers say, this is precisely the story’s gift to us, and its consolation.

For it shows us that the path of dharma, hard as it is, costly as it is, filled with sorrow as it is, is nonetheless the highest and the truest path, the one worth walking whatever it costs; that to carry out our duty with grace and devotion, even through suffering, even at the price of our own happiness, is the highest purpose a human life can serve; that faithfulness held through sorrow, duty done through loss, love kept through separation, are not defeated by the sufferings that attend them but are precisely what give a human life its greatness and its meaning.

Rāma and Sītā suffered greatly, and were faithful greatly, and their greatness lies not in escaping suffering but in the fidelity with which they bore it; and this is the example the story holds up for us, the light it offers for our own walking of the path of truth: that we too will meet suffering and loss and hard choices and unjust burdens, and that our task is not to escape them, which we cannot, but to bear them with grace and devotion and fidelity to what is right, and that in so bearing them we fulfill the highest purpose of a human life.

May this telling, the tellers conclude, bring you closer to the wisdom of the ancient sages who first sang this song, and offer you light for your own walking of the path of dharma; for the story of Rāma is not merely a tale of long ago but a mirror and a guide for every soul that seeks to live rightly in a world where living rightly is hard, and its light, kindled so long ago on the banks of the Sarayū, still burns, and still shows the way, for all who have eyes to see it and hearts to follow where it leads.

Here ends the Sri Rāma Charithram, the story of Rāma, the descent of the Lord, who walked the earth in the form of a man, and bore all that a man can bear, and was faithful to the last, and returned at the end to the source from which he came, leaving behind him the light of dharma to guide the world.