Today the world is suffering and there is no one who can sacrifice his own life, for the sake of dharma, virtue, uprightness. I don’t want to sacrifice myself. I have no courage. Nobody has the courage. We are Ravana. Let Rama incarnate. Let Rama manifest, the man who can live for dharma. Let him incarnate and along with him the beautiful Sita, the goddess, the powerful prakriti, the powerful kundalini, the powerful shakti, the powerful daughter of earth.
Rama loved Sita very much as he had no doubt in his mind, but he was a powerful emperor and he had defeated Ravana, another powerful emperor. Ravana and most of his army died, but some of his people were still living in different places. They had to find some way to destroy Rama without using military force and they discovered the weakness in his society. The social ethics of Ayodhya, in particular, and India, in general, were that if your wife remains with another man for a year, you cannot take her back. That was the weak point in the society, so they struck the blow at that point! They started the rumour. This was a very sensitive issue at the time and still is today, at least in India. Rama had no choice. He could not stay with Sita because the whole kingdom asked him, “What exactly are you trying to tell us?” So, he thought it was much better if Sita went. She was not hurt because she was not a brahmin, vaishya or shudra. Sita was a kshatriya, and kshatriya children are taught right from birth to face difficulties in life with courage and happiness. Death, insult and injury must be faced with an open heart. She had that training, so she could follow the path of sacrifice in separation from her beloved Rama.
Naturally, as husband and wife they missed each other, but she did her dharma and he did his because he had different obligations to fulfil. As a husband his obligation was to his wife, but as a king and emperor his obligation was to his subjects. He had to decide which dharma to follow, the dharma to his wife or the dharma to his subjects. Rama was a very conscientious person; he renounced his personal dharma and accepted the community dharma. Sita was sent away, not because she was bad, but because of the prevailing social ethics.
Sita went to the forest where she lived in the ashram of Valmiki, which was a very renowned hermitage. There she gave birth to twin sons, Lava and Khusha. The two boys received the best education in the ashram under the tutelage of Valmiki. Valmiki also wrote the first Ramayana during their stay in the ashram, because he knew the whole story. That Ramayana was written during Rama’s lifetime itself and was sung to him in his court by his twin sons, whom he could not recognize. They were singing this Rama katha in the streets. Rama heard it and called them in and so they sang it to him.
Of course, there are people who say, “No, he did wrong,” but I feel that a man has to have some sort of discrimination and final judgement regarding his own dharma. Being a husband is a secondary dharma, being an emperor is a primary dharma. He was a king first and a husband next. I also have two dharmas: I am a sannyasin first and a guru next. If there is a crisis I will always look to my sannyasa dharma, not to my guru dharma, as I have done in most cases. When there is an acute dilemma about one’s dharma in life, a person should follow the dharma which he thinks to be his very own. Sri Rama was a king first and foremost. Rajadharma, kingship, was his first dharma. His personal dharma of being a husband to Sita came next in priority.