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The Crow Who Watched the Ramayana a Million Times — Transcript

by Indian Monk · 2,167 words · 365 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:00Right now, this exact second, Sita is
0:02being kidnapped and a moment ago she was
0:04rescued. Both are true. Only one
0:07creature in existence knows how. He is a
0:09crow. And today, the most powerful being
0:12in creation has come to ask him a
0:14question. Because if the crow answers
0:16wrong, heaven's greatest servant walks
0:18away from God forever. His name is
0:21Garuda. He does not want to be here. He
0:23carried his question first to Narada,
0:26the wandering sage. Narada sent him up
0:28to Brahma, the creator. Brahma sent him
0:31higher to Shiva and Shiva, the summit of
0:34everything, pointed him down. Three gods
0:36passed the question up the chain and the
0:39top of heaven pointed at a crow. The
0:41crow's name is Kak Bhushundi and here is
0:43the first wrong thing. He bows. Warmly,
0:47gladly, the way a servant greets an
0:49honored guest. Garuda came braced to
0:52humble himself before an equal and the
0:54humility is not even being allowed. It
0:57undoes him worse. His voice, when it
0:59comes, is low, ashamed.
1:03>> There was a battle in Lanka. Rama and
1:06his brother were bound by a weapon made
1:08of serpents, living snakes coiled around
1:10God's own arms.
1:12He could not move.
1:14He was losing.
1:15They called me.
1:18I came.
1:24And the snakes fled from me.
1:28And I freed him.
1:31And this troubles you? I freed him.
1:34I rescued the one they tell me holds the
1:36universe.
1:37So, tell me what I rescued.
1:40A god?
1:41Or a man with a good story?
1:43>> The crow is quiet. Then he laughs. Not
1:46cruelly, softly, the way you laugh at a
1:49question you once asked yourself.
1:52>> You think you saw a defeat.
1:57Sit.
1:59I will tell you what I saw.
2:01>> And notice the word saw, not read, not
2:03heard. This small black bird is about to
2:06talk about the war in Lanka and the
2:08childhood in Ayodhya before it, the way
2:10you talk about a room you have stood in.
2:12Garuda settles onto the rock. He thinks
2:14he's about to hear the Ramayana. He's
2:16about to hear how many times.
2:20>> How many times?
2:22How many times what?
2:23>> The crow doesn't answer him directly. He
2:25starts instead in a courtyard.
2:27>> There is a morning in Ayodhya when the
2:28prince is small enough to fall over his
2:30own feet. He is chasing pigeons.
2:33His mother watches from the doorway with
2:35her heart in her mouth.
2:36One morning the sweet is gone from his
2:38bowl and he cries.
2:41You have never seen anything cry like
2:43this.
2:44The mouth opens wide, the whole face
2:46becomes the mouth.
2:48The wailing shakes the birds off the
2:50roof.
2:52The lord of all worlds undone by a
2:55stolen sweet. Every time he descends, I
2:58go to Ayodhya.
3:00I stay for the childhood. I have kept
3:02that watch kalpa after kalpa since
3:05before your wings existed. I do not read
3:07the Ramayan, king of birds.
3:10I attend it.
3:12Kalpa
3:13after kalpa, when this universe closes,
3:16it opens again.
3:18The wheel turns, the ages return, and
3:20Ayodhya is rebuilt, and the prince is
3:22born, and the sweet is stolen, and the
3:24mouth opens, and I am on the wall.
3:27>> Garuda came asking whether one defeat
3:29was real. He is being told the defeat
3:31happens forever. The snakes bind Rama in
3:34every age. Sita is stolen in every age.
3:37The exile, the pyres, the grief on a
3:40loop, world without end.
3:42>> Then it means nothing.
3:44If it repeats, it's not a life.
3:47It's a performance.
3:49Is your heartbeat a performance because
3:51it happens twice.
3:53That's not
3:55And you have not asked the stranger
3:56question yet.
4:00You assume the wheel turns the same way
4:03each time. It does not.
4:06I have watched Ravana die 11 times,
4:10Garuda.
4:12It has not happened the same way twice.
4:16In one age, he steals Sita.
4:19In another, he never touches her.
4:22He steals a shadow.
4:25And the real Sita waits in fire. In one
4:28age, Rama, he weeps like a man drowning.
4:31In another, he stands dry-eyed and
4:33terrible.
4:35The story breathes. It changes its mind.
4:38The same story told differently by the
4:41universe itself, age after age.
4:44As if even God is still deciding how
4:46this should go.
4:47>> But something in the crow's telling
4:49nags. I am on the wall. I can see the
4:52dust, present tense, for a morning that
4:55should be ages dead. And every road in
4:57his telling leads back to one image, the
5:00crying child, the open mouth. And when
5:02he speaks of it, he looks like a
5:04creature remembering not a scene, but a
5:06place.
5:07>> You keep returning to the boy, the
5:09weeping.
5:11Out of everything, the war, the throne,
5:14why the mouth?
5:15It opened for me.
5:18>> [sighs and snorts]
5:19>> Let me tell you the worst day of my
5:20existence.
5:22One color, I was in that courtyard as
5:24always, and the boy saw me. And he did
5:27what small ones do. He came for me.
5:31Hands out, laughing,
5:33stumbling through the dust. The lord of
5:3614 worlds playing catch with a crow. And
5:39something in me went cold. I looked at
5:41those small reaching hands, and I
5:42thought,
5:44"These are only a small one's hands.
5:45This is only a small boy.
5:47The same doubt, king of birds,
5:50that you carried up this mountain.
5:53And so I did the one unforgivable thing.
5:56He reached for me,
5:58and I pulled away. You fled from a
5:59toddler. I fled from a toddler out of
6:02the courtyard, out of Ayodhya. I climbed
6:05to the top of the sky.
6:06And here is what you must understand. I
6:08never gained a single wingbeat.
6:12I crossed the 14 realms, the realms of
6:15the gods. I flew to Brahma's own seat at
6:18the crown of creation. And the whole way
6:22those two small fingers stayed exactly
6:24one feather behind me. Not chasing,
6:28waiting.
6:29>> For ages?
6:30>> For ages.
6:31And every door I fled through opened
6:33onto the same courtyard,
6:36the same dust,
6:37the same small boy.
6:39So I stopped.
6:41I closed my eyes and I gave up, and the
6:42mouth opened. I fell in. Inside that
6:46mouth, there was a sky, and under that
6:48sky, a universe. Its own sun, its own
6:52moon, its own gods, its own Ayodhya. And
6:55in that Ayodhya, a small boy playing in
6:58a courtyard. And a crow on the wall
7:00watching him.
7:02Me, Garuda, in everyone.
7:05So I flew on to the next universe inside
7:07the mouth. Another sun, another Sita at
7:10another window. And there was always
7:13another.
7:13>> Other ages. The wheel.
7:16You saw the ages waiting their turn.
7:18>> The wheel is real.
7:20I have ridden it.
7:22I ride it still. But inside the mouth, I
7:24learned what the wheel is. It is the
7:27truth built small enough for creatures
7:30who live in time. From inside the mouth,
7:32there is no taking turns.
7:35Every age the wheel will ever carry is
7:37already lit, already burning. Here a
7:39wedding, there a war, there a funeral
7:42prior. While you and I sit on this
7:44mountain, somewhere Sitha is stepping
7:47across the line right now. Somewhere the
7:48snakes are tightening around his arms at
7:51this moment as I speak and no Garuda has
7:53arrived yet. Somewhere he is 4 years old
7:56and the sweet is already gone and the
7:58mouth is just beginning to open.
8:00>> Garuda's wings have risen halfway off
8:02his back, the way wings do before a
8:04creature flees.
8:05>> The wheel is not a lie. It is a keyhole
8:09and I have seen the room. Then the mouth
8:11closed and I was in the courtyard and
8:14the small boy was laughing in the dust.
8:17It was the same moment I had left.
8:20Eons inside.
8:22Not one heartbeat outside.
8:24>> And then?
8:25>> Then the small boy was gone and Rama
8:27stood there, the Lord entire, the one
8:30you carry.
8:31And he looked at me.
8:32At what I had doubted, at what I had
8:34refused.
8:36And he said,
8:38"Ask."
8:40Alone, anything.
8:42>> Anything.
8:43What does God offer a crow?
8:45>> Understand what was in that word.
8:48Anything.
8:50The curse lifted.
8:52The human form returned. Liberation
8:55itself.
8:56The infinite laid at my feet.
8:59And God himself waiting for me to name
9:01my price.
9:04You looked at me on your arrival and
9:06thought, "A scavenger.
9:09The wrong body for a sage."
9:12You were more right than you know. This
9:14body was forged by my own arrogance.
9:16Life after life, I was a scholar of the
9:18divine who thought he owned the truth.
9:22I loved my version of God so fiercely
9:26that I smeared at anyone who saw him
9:27differently.
9:30I argued with the absolute. I refused to
9:32bow to my own teachers.
9:34Certain that my devotion was the only
9:37pure thing in the world.
9:40You cannot sneer at the masters giving
9:42you your eyes and expect to keep them. I
9:44was struck down,
9:46cursed to become this,
9:48a crow,
9:50the lowest bird,
9:51a creature that survives on what others
9:53discard. But grace, king of birds, is a
9:57terrifying thing.
9:59Because the masters who cursed me also
10:01wept for me.
10:03And in the very same breath that
10:04condemned [clears throat] me to this
10:05body, they gave me the name
10:08of Rama.
10:10The curse and the key.
10:11Same breath.
10:14Liberation arrives hidden inside the
10:16punishment we thought would destroy us.
10:18And the offer
10:20in the courtyard,
10:22he would have taken it all back.
10:24He would have taken it all back.
10:27And I stood there
10:29holding an unwritten promise from the
10:31infinite. The sage's body,
10:34the dignity,
10:35liberation.
10:37And I discovered, standing in front of
10:39anything,
10:41that there was only one thing I wanted.
10:44And I was already wearing the body it
10:46came in.
10:47What did you ask for? I asked that my
10:49love for him never break,
10:51not in this birth or any other.
10:53That was the whole wish. I did not ask
10:56for my human body back.
10:58I did not ask him to explain what I had
10:59seen.
11:01I spent everything on loving him. And I
11:04have never, in all the ages since, asked
11:08him to take this body away. Understand
11:10what happened in that courtyard. When I
11:13pulled away from his hand, I was not a
11:15sage conducting a test.
11:17I was a cursed thing repeating its
11:19crime, doubting again
11:22that God could be this
11:25small,
11:26dusty.
11:28And he chased me through every world,
11:31not to punish me.
11:33You do not laugh while you punish. He
11:35chased me the way a small one chases
11:38because he wanted me, this body.
11:42This black, wrong, cursed body of
11:45everything in creation. He ran after me
11:48with his hands out.
11:49>> So you kept it.
11:50>> I love this body
11:52because it is the one in which love for
11:53him was born in me. It is the one he
11:56blessed. My guru's curse turned out to
11:59be the only door with my name on it. The
12:01wrong body is the only body worth having
12:05because it is the one that was wanted.
12:08>> Now,
12:09your snakes, you freed him in Lanka
12:12and it broke you
12:14because you think power that accepts
12:15binding is power disproven.
12:18You have sat inside my story and not
12:20understood it.
12:22The mouth held a million universes
12:25and cried over a stolen sweet. The hand
12:28that held creation
12:30reached for one cursed crow.
12:32And right now, in a thousand worlds, you
12:35know this now. He is bound in serpents.
12:38And in every one of them he could open
12:40his mouth and end it. He does not.
12:43He waits.
12:44Somewhere at this moment another king of
12:46birds is being called and is flying to
12:49Lanka
12:50certain he is the rescuer.
12:54Smallness is not his failure.
12:58>> Then what is it?
13:00>> It is how the infinite reaches for us.
13:03My curse was my door.
13:05Your snakes were yours.
13:08He was never trapped.
13:10He was waiting for you to come.
13:12>> Garuda does not speak. The king of
13:14birds, the storm that reroutes storms,
13:17sits on the rock like a fledgling. His
13:19wings, which have blotted out suns, are
13:22folded small. The doubt is gone. What's
13:25left in its place is not certainty. It
13:27is something softer and harder to carry.
13:29He came here thinking he had witnessed
13:32God's weakness. He is leaving knowing he
13:35was let in. The snakes were never a
13:37defeat. They were a door left open with
13:40his name
13:41on it. And somewhere right now, while
13:43the wind moves between these two birds,
13:45the snakes are tightening again. Some
13:48other Garuda is lifting off, certain he
13:50is the victor, not yet knowing what he's
13:53flying into. Somewhere the sweet is
13:56already gone. Somewhere the mouth is
13:58just beginning to open. Garuda bows.
14:01This time it costs him nothing.
14:03>> Tell it to me again.
14:04>> And the crow, the cursed one, the wanted
14:07one, opens his beak. The mouth opens.
14:10The story begins.

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