Equality and Compassion: Shabari, Kevat and Jatayu

The episodes

Shabari was an old woman of a forest tribe who had waited decades in her hut because her guru had told her Ram would come. When he did, she offered him berries, and popular tradition adds that she had tasted each one first to be sure it was sweet. Ram ate them and praised them. When she said she was low-born and ignorant, he replied that he recognises only one relationship: devotion.

At the Ganga, a boatman washed Ram's feet before letting him aboard and refused payment. Ram embraced him. And when the vulture Jatayu died fighting Ravana, Ram gathered the wood and lit the pyre himself, performing for a bird the rites he had been unable to perform for his own father.

The reasoning

Ram was a prince of the oldest royal house in the land. Custom would have had him keep his distance from all three. He did the opposite, and the Ramayana records it with approval. The message is plain: a person's worth lies in conduct and love, not in birth, wealth, learning or even species.

There is a second point. Ram did not treat these meetings as charity. He received from each of them: food from Shabari, passage from the boatman, news of Sita from Jatayu. Compassion that only gives can look down on people. Ram's kind sat down and ate with them.

How to practise it

• Speak to the person who serves you, drives you or cleans for you as you would to a guest.
• Accept hospitality from those who have little. Refusing it is a way of declaring yourself above them.
• Do not ask about caste or status before deciding how to treat someone.
• Honour the old and the weak who try to help, as Jatayu did, even when they cannot succeed.
• When you visit a temple, remember whose company the deity kept.

Next: Courage and patience in adversity. The episodes are told in the Aranya Kanda.