Jaya Hanuman

Hanuman is revered in the yogic tradition as an embodiment of courage and faith. The Hanuman Chalisa is a widely popular prayer written by the saint Tulsidas in Awadi (a variant of Hindi) that consists of 40 verses in praise of Hanuman. There is a popular addendum to the Ramayana in which Ram gives Hanuman a gold ring as they fly back home after the battle with Ravana. Hanuman immediately throws the ring into the ocean, saying that he won’t accept anything that doesn’t have Ram’s name on it. Someone points out that Hanuman’s body doesn’t have Ram’s name on it, and he rips open his chest, revealing Ram and Sita radiating from within his heart. This link offers a version of the story told by my friend Peter Malakoff.

This kind of devotion to an embodied being is often met with skepticism in the modern west, but Hanuman is revered as the ultimate role model throughout India. In giving himself entirely to Ram’s service, he embodies the path of Bhakti Yoga, the yoga of devotion. Bhakti is a path to union with the Divine that centers on the heart, and on uplifting and purifying all human emotionality through the fire of divine love. Love for God is something natural and innate in all humans, even though it’s often hidden from our daily experience. Bhakti practices focus on uncovering this love by chanting the names of God’s many incarnations and emanations, telling stories about God’s graceful interventions in human affairs, and meditating on God’s qualities.

The natural relationship of a part to its whole is devotion, reverence, and love. A fruit naturally worships the tree from which it grows, a tree loves the forest that nourishes it, and a forest resonates with gratitude and bhakti for the Earth. God is our source and the whole that comprises all Our innate honoring of the Divine Beloved is not something that we fabricate or contrive. We discover it by removing the layers of false beliefs, fear, and coping mechanisms that we have developed to deal with the experience of separation.

By incarnating as humans on Earth, we left the experience of infinite oneness with the source of our being; we left the experience of being upheld and supported and surrounded by love. That reality is still within us, but it is buried, and we have turned to behaviors that seem to approximate that experience of comfort and belonging, but in reality don’t provide true satisfaction. These behaviors become addictions to relationships, to control, to distraction, to “getting high” on adrenaline, drugs, and drama. Releasing these coping mechanisms and seeking for something invisible requires courage, perseverance, and faith.

Hanuman’s father was Vayu, the god of the wind. He is called Pavana Tanaya, or son of the wind, and his father Vayu helps him make the impossible leap across the ocean to Lanka. The great 20^th century yogi Neem Karoli Baba, who is said to have been an incarnation of Hanuman, called him “the breath of Ram”. God’s breath is always with us, flowing through us, flowing through life. Just as Hanuman leapt across the ocean to remind Sita that her beloved Ram was seeking her, God’s breath pours from the heart of the cosmos into our bodies, reminding us that our Beloved is near.