The search for Sita had ended at the sea. A hundred leagues of water lay between the vanara army and Lanka, and every warrior on that beach knew he could not cross it. They sat down to die there rather than return having failed. Hanuman sat among them, no different from the rest, having forgotten what he was.

Then old Jambavan, the bear, came and sat beside him and began to recite his life to him: son of the wind, who leapt at the sun as a child, who bears the boons of all the gods, whose strength was hidden from him by a curse until this hour. And as the words landed, Hanuman began to grow, and the beach shrank beneath him, and he roared until the trees shook.

He climbed Mount Mahendra and pressed it down as he launched, and crossed the ocean in a single leap. Mainaka rose from the water to offer him rest and he touched it in thanks and would not stop. Surasa, mother of serpents, opened her mouth across his path and he became huge, then suddenly small, and passed through and out again. Simhika seized his shadow and he tore her apart. And then he was standing on the far shore, looking down at Lanka in the dark.

The Moral

The obstacles in the crossing are almost incidental; the crossing was decided on the beach, the moment he remembered. This is the tradition’s clearest teaching about our own paralysis: the ocean in front of most people is not too wide, it is simply un-leapt, because nobody has yet told them what they are. Be Jambavan for someone. It costs a sentence and it can move an ocean.

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