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 'I am saying these words by the order of Sugriva,' said Hanuman. 'You have violated Dharma. You are blindly rushing towards your death. The effects of penance you undertook - by conquering the baser desires of the senses five - are on the wane by what you have done now. The glory that you earned by your victories over the three worlds has diminished already by your misdeeds. A portion of whatever remained was wiped by me today. You are going to see your glory, your power and the strength of your boons moving away from you if you persist in what you are doing.'
'What you have done is not worthy of a person, who has mastered the Vedas. The learned, the wise would never think of treading the path of destruction, like what you do. You have taken another man's wife stealthily, by force and against her wish. Nothing can stop your destruction Ravana! Even if you have thousands of strong arms that can devastate the worlds, even if you are endowed with thousands of heads, that is not going to stop your end. They would just turn to ashes, just as a small flame of a lamp turning bales and bales of cloth to ashes. (kadung kanal ut podhi seerai jnuuru avai semam seluthumo') Return Sita and live long, sparing your kith and kin of gory death.'
Nothing of the long peroration of Hanuman appealed to Ravana. All his twenty ears turned a deaf ear! He listened to only one sentence, however. That Hanuman says so by the order of Sugriva. He laughed like thunder. 'A puny monkey existing on fruits and roots has advised me! And another monkey dared to enter my country and is standing before me!' His anger surfaced again.
That's the trouble with all thick heads. They can never see what is really wrong with them. Just look at this Ravana. He performed great penance to gain power. He waged gory wars to reach this position. He established himself as the greatest in all the three worlds. He had the Devas, and even the elements, to serve him. He had the richest wealth in the universe that even Hanuman, at the time of his search for Sita, acknowledges as the result of unrelenting effort and his penance. He had the most beautiful damsels to serve on him. But to what avail? He could not see what was wrong with him! He could not realise that it was against all virtues to covet another man's wife and retain her against her wish. He could not see the warnings written on the wall. He was deaf to all the good-intentioned advice. The greatest of maladies is not wrongdoing alone. But the inability to realise what one is doing is wrong.
Valluvar says:
oodhi unarndhum pirarku uraithum thaan unarap
pedhayaril pedhayar ill. (Kuaral 834)
 There is a man that is learned and subtle and a teacher of others, and yet continues to be the slave of his passions himself; there is no greater fool than he. (Tr. by Sri VVS
Aiyar).
Does it not remind one of what Ben Elton, the British comedian, said?
"Nothing kills passion faster than an exploding harpoon in the
guts". That was true in the case of Ravana. His lust for Sita did not die until Indrajit, his eldest son was killed and until he lost almost all of his army in the pursuit of a vain and vexatious desire
Hari Krishnan
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