The Nine-Day Ram Katha of Pujya Morari Bapu
Little Rock, USA · 28 June – 6 July 2025
Across nine days in Little Rock, Morari Bapu offered his 958th Ram Katha not on the *marg*, the path, of which he has spoken so often, but on the *margi* — the traveller, the wayfarer, the one who is *nirantar chareti chareti*, forever walking. The seed came from his own Vaishnav sadhu community, who had pressed him to speak, with the Manas at the centre, on the renunciate who walks the road; and the whole katha turned on the difference between naming a path and setting foot upon it. To be a margi, Bapu taught, is not to speak the word *marg* but to walk it — and to stray is to become *kumargi*. The Ramcharitmanas is itself a *margi granth*, a book of the path; the invitation of these nine days was simply to become one who travels it.
The katha stood on two chaupais, returned to morning after morning. The first — *"Ati Hari kripa jahi par hoi, pav dei ehi marg soi"* — teaches that one steps onto this Sanatan marg, the marg of Ram and the Gita, only when Hari's grace is not merely given but poured out to excess. The second — *"Milehu Garud marag mahã"* — recalls how Mahadev met Garuda on the road and, out of love, could not resolve the great bird's doubt then and there but sent him onward to Kakbhushundi, "for only a bird understands a bird's tongue." Garuda's ahankar — the pride of one who carries Vishnu and dwells in Vaikunth — is precisely what the road must wear away. That we stand on this path at all, Bapu said again and again, is itself the fruit of great grace; the path across the God-absorbed sea-creatures, *"magan bhaye Hari roop nihare,"* is the path of pure *kripa*, the one meant for people like us.
When a listener asked whether *margi* names an outer journey or an inner one, Bapu answered that his whole intention is the inner yatra — yet the inner is known only through the outer. The seven sopans of the Manas map seven stages of the heart's travelling: the transparency of Balkand, the *sanyam* of Ayodhya Kand, the *maun* of Aranya Kand, the *maitri* of Kishkindha, the trust of Sundar Kand that the solution arrives before the problem, the refusal of needless struggle in Lanka Kand, and at last, in Uttar Kand, *"payo param vishram,"* the contented rest of one who needs nothing more. The prem margi, he warned, finds no complete rest along the way — *"Ram kaj kine mohi kaha vishram"* — yet supreme rest is his in the end.
Bapu read the Manas as a gathering of travellers, each on a distinct road. Ram walks the path of satya — *Ramo vigrahavan dharmah* — Bharat the prem-margi, Janaki the path of karuna, Dashrath of dharma, Kaushalya of vivek; Shabari a Buddha-margi of ahimsa, Sugreev a bhog-margi robbed of gyan; Ravan in moha, Kumbhakarna in abhiman, Meghnad in kama; and crowning them all Hanuman, the homeless doorkeeper, traveller of vairagya whom no camera can capture, for detachment is inward. When all these paths are found gathered in one person, said Bapu, know him to be a Buddha Purush. From these he drew the *panch marg*: the son follows the loving father, the wife the truthful husband, the daughter the compassionate mother — yielding *satya, prem, karuna* in every relationship — beyond which lie the political path of the just king and the adhyatmik path of the Buddha Purush. Above them all, Ram-nam is the *raj marg*, the royal road, moving from vani to man to dhyan and at last to *smaran*.
Turning to the prem marg that Bharat walks, Bapu asked where its journey begins, and answered: from zero. Until a person becomes empty — free of even a trace of ahankar for whatever puruṣārtha, prārabdha, or grace has given — the yatra of love cannot start; this *shunyata* is the true beginning. As the door confessed that the light was never its own but the sun's, and came only when the door stepped aside, so love's journey begins in the stepping aside. He offered a Prasthan Trayi of prem: zero at the start, a semicolon rather than a full stop in the middle, and Siyaram at the end — Tulsidas setting his seal with *"Prem Piyush Purna."* The provision to carry is *sattvik shraddha*; the companion is the sadhu-sant; the goal is not siddhi but purity.
To the ache of those who walk yet cannot walk well, Bapu lifted up the host city's own name: there is no great mountain in the way, only a *little rock*. As a grain of rice in a tooth or a speck in the eye spoils the whole, tiny things obstruct the yatra — *ninda*, *irsha*, *dwesh*. He named the four *kumargs* — never *mada*, *maan*, *abhiman* — and, on America's Independence Day, taught inner freedom as the abandoning of the seven *Maryada* of Ved Vyasa: gambling, intoxicants, violence, causeless conflict, the insulting of any woman, unkind or excessive speech, and *kusang*. He imposed nothing: "I have not come to stop you, but to give you such a sweet drink of the Katha that other ras turns bland of its own accord."
On the final day, asked on what path his own parampara had walked, Bapu named his lineage as wayfarers each of a different marg — Dhyan Swami Baba the Dhyan margi, Jeevan Das Mehta the Jeevan margi, Narayan Das Bapu the Naam margi, Premdas Bapu the Prem margi — and confessed: "I am not granthastha, I am panthastha," one who speaks standing upon the path. From that standing place he drew the lakshanas of a margi sadhu: a yogi never a bhogi, a viyogi, a viragi who sheds weight to climb, anuragi, suhagi, prayogi forever experimenting as Gandhi did, nirogi from ceaseless walking yet rogi with the incurable prem-rog whose only vaid is Savariya, sahyogi, asangi, paragi, ragi, and prayagi — a confluence uniting all streams. The essence he pressed out at the end was *smaran, gayan, shravan* of Ram, which are Satya, Prem, and Karuna.
- Ati Hari kripa jahi par hoi, pav dei ehi marg soi — only upon whom Hari's boundless grace descends does He set a foot upon this path. - Milehu Garud marag mahã — Mahadev meets Garuda on the road, and sends the proud bird onward, for only grace can wear away his ahankar. - Ram naam sam nahi — no method equals the ceaseless remembrance of the Name, and no prohibition equals forgetting Ram. - Ram naam avalamban eku — in Kaliyug the Name alone is the support. - Prem Piyush Purna — Tulsidas's seal: love is nectar made complete. - Payo param vishram — the supreme rest of Uttar Kand, the traveller's journey's end.
So the nine days closed as they opened — as a path — with Bapu's blessing that all happiness be ours, and the tears left to him. Jai Siyaram.