<\/p>\n\n\n
Tulsidas, the poet-saint who gave the world the Ramcharitmanas, opens his great epic with something almost shocking. Before he tells a single story of Rama, before the bow is lifted or the ocean crossed, he pauses to praise not Rama, but Rama’s Name. And in those opening verses he makes a claim so bold that, taken at face value, it sounds like heresy: the Name of Rama, he says, did even more than Rama Himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read that again. The devotee who spent his life singing the glories of Lord Rama is telling us that the two syllables “Ra-ma” accomplished more than the flesh-and-blood prince of Ayodhya. This is not a careless flourish. Tulsidas builds the case carefully, verse by verse, and once you see his logic you understand why Ram Naam japa is held as one of the most exalted practices in all of bhakti.<\/p>\n\n\n\n