Vibhishana Counsels the Grieving Rama

Hearing of Lakshmana's death, Vibhishana with his sons, Viradhita with his whole family, and Sugriva and the other Vidyadhara lords with their queens hurry to Ayodhya. With tears in their eyes, folded hands and bowed heads they salute Rama and sit on the ground, and after a moment softly plead that though this grief is hard to overcome, he knows the Jina's word and the nature of the world and should let it go; then they fall silent.

Then Vibhishana, wise in all things, reminds Rama that it is the law since beginningless time that whatever is born must die: death is the companion of birth and cannot be averted, and while there is a remedy for everything else there is none for death. Weeping does not bring back the dead or make them speak, a body born of man and woman bursts like a bubble on water, and even Ahamindras, Indras and Lokapalas, whose lives last for sagaras (oceanic ages) and whom no one can kill, fall from heaven when their span runs out, so what of humans?

Each person worries over his family, he says, as if he himself were ageless and deathless; if only the one we mourn had died while we lived forever there might be cause to weep, but since all share one fate, why weep? Only the Siddhas, having no body, have no death; Time stands over every head with a thunderbolt staff while worldly beings sit unafraid, even Indras, Dharanendras and Chakravartis die, nowhere in the netherworld, on earth or in heaven is free of death, and at the end of the sixth age even the mountains of Bharata-kshetra will be swept away in the great dissolution.

Even the Tirthankaras, with the adamantine vajra-vrishabha-naracha frame and perfectly proportioned bodies, worshipped by gods and men and conquered by none, leave their bodies behind to dwell in the realm of the Siddhas, so how could anyone else's body last? The bodies of gods, humans, animals and hell-beings are as hollow as a banana stem; the soul tends the body while Time carries it off as Garuda drags a snake from its hole, and while people cry ‘alas brother, alas son, alas friend’ the serpent of Time swallows them all, and the fool who keeps thinking ‘I did this, I am doing that, I will do this’ sinks like a broken ship.

No one can go along with the dying, Vibhishana continues, or there would never be separation from loved ones, and the soul has had relatives beyond counting, more than the grains of sand in the ocean. In truth the soul has no enemy but its own attachment and aversion and no friend but its own knowledge and perception; those we loved as our own have turned into enemies, wicked men have killed even the mother whose milk they drank, and a master who once made others bow to him may become a slave who is kicked.

Such is the power of moha (delusion) that the soul does not know itself and takes others for its own, grasping gold and women as one might seize a black cobra. There is no place in the universe where it has not been born and died: it has suffered in hell for sagaras, as a pig or dog has eaten more filth over endless births than a heap of a thousand Vindhya mountains, has killed and been killed past counting and has spent endless ages in nigoda (the lowest form of life), so only a fool, possessed by the demon of delusion, would bear such suffering for a moment of pleasure.

Finally Vibhishana, the sun among the Vidyadharas, tells Rama that the body of the Narayana Lakshmana must now be given up, that such excessive grief is not fitting and that he should not keep the corpse clasped to his heart. Yet Rama, wise and discerning as he is, remains in the grip of moha through the force of karma and will not let go of the body, held by the love between the Baladeva and the Narayana; just as a devoted disciple never sets aside his guru's command and the rising sun never fails to dispel darkness, so the karma of delusion does not let an attached soul break free of attachment.