Passage 8

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In plain words

What is Dharma? That alone which gives the heart contentment is Dharma. The inner Ātma does not accept Adharma. So every man is the very form of Dharma, one born for the very purpose of practising Dharma. But because he sinks into the desires of the senses, he falls prey to sorrow.

Rāma the moon, Sītā the moonlight

Before setting out for the forest, Rāma went to Sītā and told her that he was going to the forest to keep his father's word. Then Sītā said that, since following in her husband's footsteps is itself the Dharma of a wife, she too would come. “In the forests there are cruel beasts; fearsome rākṣasas dwell there. Some harm might come to you through them. So give up this thought,” Rāma objected. Then Sītā said, “Rāmacandra! For you, the protector of the world, protecting me is no hardship at all.” Rāma sought to set her mind at rest: “Sītā! While I am away in the forest, my aged parents will grieve for me. So your duty is to stay in Ayodhyā itself, give your mother-in-law and father-in-law the service they deserve, and keep up their courage,” he said. Then Sītā: “My lord! When your mother Kausalyā, unable to live apart from you, said she too would come to the forest, you taught her that service to her husband is itself a wife's foremost duty. Now, the moment you come to me, you teach that service to the parents-in-law is itself the duty. Which is the truth? Consider it yourself. Not only that: you are Rāmacandra. I am Sītā. That is, I am like the cool moonlight. The moon in the forest and the moonlight in Ayodhyā: that cannot be, can it! Wherever the moon is, there the moonlight too must surely be! So I too am coming with you,” she said firmly. In this way Sītā held that the husband himself is God to a wife, and, ready to face any number of hardships to follow in his footsteps, set forth a great ideal.

Hanumān's Bhakti and prapatti

Where did Sumitrā's cup of pāyasam go, that the eagle snatched away? The eagle let the cup fall on a mountain. It came into the hands of Añjanī Devī, and she drank that pāyasam.