130. performance
The world is a show and you are the viewer.
You make Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva dance.
Even they don’t know your secret, so
who else can know you?
They only know you whom you let know you,
and in knowing, they become you.
By your grace, Raghunandan, you become known
to the devotee, sandalwood to his heart.
Your body of consciousness and bliss,
unchangeable—they know who have the right.
Putting on a man’s body for the sake of gods and saints,
you talk and act like a natural king.
Ram, when they see and hear your acts,
the foolish are bewildered, the wise feel joy.
All that you say and do is true.
According to one ’s costume, so should one dance.^12We the audience have the same relationship to the Ramlila that God has to the
play of the universe: we are watchers of the show. At the same time we are partici-
pants in the show; and, in a way that will be discussed later, we are even creators of
the show. The roles that we play are a matter of costume, appearance, form. A wise
person, one who understands the Lord ’s ability to play, feels joy on seeing him act
out his role as king. Such a person sees the truth in these acts (as the sadhusaid, “We
believe in the form, the dress”). A fool merely feels confused.
On several occasions Ram acts like a human being by showing what seem to be
petty emotions. He mourns pathetically when his wife is abducted. He becomes fu-
rious when Sugriva, the monkey king, forgets his promise to help. We may be in-
clined, like Parvati, to complain that either this is no Lord of the Universe or that
he is indulging in an absurd charade. But Tulsidas often preempts our complaint by
pointing to the incongruity himself:
He of whom the Vedas say, “Not this,” and whom
Shiva fails to reach in meditation, ran in pursuit
of a false deer.^13In this way he searched and wailed
like a passionate husband suffering the extremity