Rama Takes Diksha from the Sage Suvrata

Hearing Shatrughna's words and seeing that he is truly detached from kingdom and family, Rama reflects a moment and gives the kingdom to the son of Anangalavana, a mine of virtues like his father, who rules lovingly and is obeyed across the earth as Rama was. Vibhishana hands Lanka to his son Subhushana and Sugriva hands his kingdom to Angada, and all of Rama's friends make ready to cross the ocean of existence with him.

Like Bharata Chakravarti before him, Rama, son of Dasharatha, lays down the burden of rule, seeing sense pleasures as poisoned food and all his splendour as a faithless woman. Holding in his heart the path taught by Munisuvratanatha and honoured by a hundred Indras, trembling at the thought of birth and death and free of anger and the other passions, he shines like the sun freed from clouds.

Just then the merchant Arhaddasa arrives, and when Rama asks after the welfare of the fourfold sangha (the community of monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen), he replies that even the munis have been pained by Rama's suffering. As they speak, word comes that Suvrata, a sage in the line of Munisuvratanatha, master of the great vows, conqueror of desire and anger and possessed of the charana riddhi (the power of sky-walking), has arrived, and Rama, thrilled with joy, goes to him with many Vidyadhara and land-dwelling kings, as the first Baladeva Vijaya once went to the sage Svarnakumbha to become a monk.

Rama circles the sage, bows with folded hands and, immersed as if in an ocean of nectar at the sight of him, asks with deep faith and humility for the Jina's diksha, saying he has turned from the world's entanglements and wishes to walk the path of the yogis by his grace. The sage replies that he is truly fit for it: there is nothing of worth in the world, the Jina's path is beginningless and unobstructed and grants imperishable bliss, and only the wise like him take it up.

Circling the sage as the sun circles Sumeru, Rama girds himself to destroy karma, breaks the bonds of desire, burns the cage of affection, strips off his necklace, earrings, armlets and girdle and at once gives up his clothes, as the soul leaves the body, then pulls out his hair with his own soft hands. Taking the five great vows and the five samitis (rules of careful conduct), he sits in the lotus posture within the fortress of the three guptis (restraints of mind, speech and body), free of the seven fears, a friend to the six kinds of living beings, an enemy of the eight karmas, keeping celibacy in all nine ways and holding the ten virtues, his chest marked with the Shrivatsa.

The gods shower the five wonders and kettledrums sound, and the souls of Kritantavaktra and Jatayu hold a grand celebration. Amazed that Rama has given up such splendour and such jewels, the kings ask themselves what possessions could keep them at home and lament the days they have wasted without vows; Shatrughna becomes a great muni, as do Vibhishana, Sugriva, Nala, Nila, Viradhita and many other kings, the Vidyadhara kings giving up all their vidyas for knowledge of the self, and some of the new monks gain the charana riddhi.

In all, a little over sixteen thousand kings take muni diksha with Rama, and twenty-seven thousand queens take the vows of aryikas under the aryika Shrimati. With his guru's leave, the great sage Rama then wanders alone as a Jinakalpi (one keeping the strictest solitary discipline), setting aside every distraction and meditating on mountains, in caves and in wild forests where fierce beasts roam.

He attains avadhi jnana (clairvoyant knowledge), by which he sees every material thing in the world down to the atom, and he comes to know Lakshmana's many past lives and his own, yet no attachment stirs in him. Among the stages of his life before diksha the text counts three hundred years as a mandalika (provincial ruler), forty years of conquest and 11,560 years as ruler of the three khandas; Lakshmana's death was destined to happen this way, the gods were not to blame, and it was simply the occasion for Rama's detachment to arise.

Steadfast as a mountain of vows and virtue, with the shukla leshya (the purest colouring of the soul) and absorbed in shuddhopayoga (pure awareness of the self), Rama turns wholly toward liberation. Gautama urges Shrenika and all listeners to follow the Jina's path as Rama did, warning that so-called ascetics who keep tridents, bows and tongs and wear false insignia are like stone boats that carry no one to liberation, and that only the possessionless nirgrantha munis, who beg from no one, are worthy of worship. Whoever reads or hears of Rama's renunciation with a pure heart, he says, is freed of every trouble, finds peace and in time reaches infinite bliss.