Aranya Kaanda
121 - Sri Rama's lament; His meeting with Jatayu
Chhands
Description
Glory to Sri Rama of incomparable beauty, who is absolute as well as qualified and the true impeller of Gunas (Maya) too. His fierce arrows are potent enough to cut off the terrible arms of the ten-headed Ravana. I incessantly adore the all-merciful Sri Rama, the ornament of the earth, who is endowed with a form dark as the rain-cloud, a face resembling the blue lotus and large eyes resembling the red lotus. Possessed of long arms, He rids His devotees of the fear of transmigration. His strength is immeasurable; He is without beginning and unborn, the one (without a second), unmanifest and imperceptible, beyond the reach of the senses, though attainable with the help of the Vedic hymns, the dispeller of pairs of opposites (such as joy and sorrow, birth and death, pleasure and pain etc.,) consciousness personified, the supporter of the earth, death and the delighter of the soul of countless saints and devotees who repeat the sacred Name of Rama. I ever extol Sri Rama, who loves and is loved by those who are free from desire and curbs the host of vicious propensities such as lust and so on. He, whom the Vedas glorify under the name of Brahma, pure (free from the taint of Maya), all-pervading, passionless and unborn, whom the sages attain to through manifold practices such as meditation, discretion, dispassion and Yoga (self-discipline), that fountain of mercy has become manifest as the very incarnation of beauty and enraptures the whole animate and inanimate creation. He is the bee that resides in the lotus of my heart and through every limb of His shines the splendour of many a god of love. He, who is at once inaccessible and easily accessible, who has a guileless disposition and is both partial and impartial and ever placid, whom the Yogis perceive with great effort subduing their senses and mind, that Rama, the abode of Rama (Goddess Laksmi) and the Lord of the three spheres (the entire creation) is ever at the beck and call of His devotees. May He abide in my heart, whose holy praises put a stop to transmigration."