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Hyperion the story of Ravan is simple. In Ravan we have a highly religious person- with great strength and knowledge- his failing is his mindless ruthlessness against those who attempt to hamper his ego. The concept is simple, there is a personal dharma- to be devout- to gain knowledge and to do one's duty and then there is the Universal Dharma- to do what is right under all circumstances even if it means harming your own interests and sacrificing your ego. What it portrays is that being religious is not enough-
even being the most devout devotee is not nearly enough- if you are cruel, if you enslave others, if you resort to indiscriminate violence then you lose your stature and nullify all your good qualities.
It is difficult to explain- a better example is the following story- A sage had taken a vow to
never lie and gained much praise and fame for it..now in these scriptures (non-religious)
a vow is a serious thing- it is one's personal dharma- break it and you are unworthy of anything, anyway, as he meditated a group of travelers took refuge in his "aashram", they explained that they were being chased down by forest bandits and they were going to hide themselves in his aashram. The bandits followed the travelers to this aashram but stopped short of searching the place- for to anger a sage meant sure death, but they recognized the sage and knew of his vow- they asked him where the travelers were-
the sage told them the truth. The bandits waited at a distance from the ashram and after a few hours the travelers, thinking themselves to be safe, exited the place and commenced on their journey.
The bandits followed them and slaughtered them to the last man. . When the sage, after much tapasya took samadhi (voluntary relinquishing of one's mortal life) he found himself barred from heaven- the devas told him that he had broken dharma. He argued that he had never broken any dharma
and moreover had always kept his vow. The devas told him that was exactly the problem, his meditation and his adherence to his vow was admirable but in having kept his vow he had doomed the poor travelers.
They further explained that causing harm to innocents was a breach of the Dharma of the universe and that he did it to keep his vow was a poor excuse. He had kept his vow due to his ego- for he could not bare to turn on his words- that mindless adherence to an otherwise commendable vow was the symptom of intellectual decay caused by a person's ego. The sage argued that had he broken his wow the result would be the same- he would have broken his dharma to which the devas replied that it would have been irrelevant- his devotion was a poor replacement for care for humanity. T
he sage knew that if he told those bandits the truth he would condemn the travelers to death and yet he went ahead just to ensure that no one would mock him for having broken his vow and more importantly so that he would not think of himself as "a-dharmic- THAT WAS HIS GRAVE MISTAKE!".
That rambling and poorly transcribed story from me depicts the firm philosophy that the law of universal good must supersede all personal religious practices, beliefs, bias, vows and ego in ALL CIRCUMSTANCES!