Uttara Ramayana: How Jaimini Tells It

In an earlier article of mine available online [Retelling the Ramayana: How Padma Purana Does It], I discussed how differently the author of Padma Purana tells the story of Rama from how Valmiki does it. Reading the Jaiminiya Ashwamedha Parva recently, I was fascinated by the changes its author makes when he tells the Uttara Ramayana story.

The context is of the narration of the Ashwamedha battle between Arjuna and his son Babhruvahana. While describing the battle to Janamejaya, the author-narrator Jaimini compares it to the similar battle between Rama and his son Kusha. This prompts Janamejaya to ask for the details of the battle between Rama and Kusha and Jaimini responds by narrating the story at length, devoting twelve of the total sixty-eight chapters of the book to it.

Jaimini
After returning from his fourteen year exile, says Jaimini, Rama begins ruling Ayodhya. Years pass and yet Sita does not conceive – the duration mentioned by Jaimini is ten thousand years, whatever he means by it. Eventually she conceives and completes four months of pregnancy. It is when she is in the fifth month that Rama has a terrible dream. In his dream Rama sees that Lakshmana has abandoned Sita on the banks of the Ganga and she is weeping there like an orphaned child. Next morning he informs Vasishtha of his dream and requests the sage to fix a date for the pumsavana ritual, so that the pregnancy is completed without any trouble. Vasishtha fixes a date in the next fortnight. Accordingly Rama gives orders to Lakshmana to invite Sita’s father Janaka and sages like Vishwamitra for the ceremony. They arrive and the pumsavana is royally performed. Following the ritual, Janaka hands over his kingdom to Rama and retires to the forest for devoting his whole life for spiritual practices.

It is one night following this while Rama and Sita are in bed that Rama asks his wife about her daurhrida [dohada – the pregnant woman’s wish]. Sita tells him that by his grace she has no desires, all her desires are fulfilled, but there is one thing she is keen to do: visit the ashrams of ascetics on the banks of the Ganga.

Rama spontaneously bursts out laughing at this – a thing we cannot imagine Valmiki’s Rama doing. Laughing aloud he asks her if fourteen years of life in the jungle hasn’t satisfied her. He then promises her that she shall visit the banks of the Ganga the very next morning.

We can see clearly here that Jaimini is already taking an independent road in telling the Uttara Katha of Rama. Things are quite different in the Valmiki Ramayana. In the older telling of the story by the Adikavi, the prophetic dream Rama sees about Sita being abandoned in the forest is missing, and so is the pumsavana ritual. Naturally, Janaka does not come to Ayodhya to attend it nor does he hand over Mithila to Rama to rule over and retire to the forest for tapas. Rama asks Sita about her dohada not when they are in bed together, but in entirely different circumstances.

Valmiki
In Valmiki’s version, following his return from the exile and coronation as king, we find Rama and Sita in each other’s company in an atmosphere of love in the Ashoka Gardens on the palace grounds, a place filled with all kinds of beautiful trees. There are ponds in the garden, filled with acquatic flowers and abounding in chakravakas, swans, cranes, storks and all other kinds of birds that flock around water. Seated on a couch in the Ashoka Vanika, Rama lovingly gives Sita with his own hand a beverage called madhu-maireyaka to drink, just as Indra gives Shachi drinks. Servants bring varieties of meat and fruits. Naga women, Kinnaris and Apsaras, all pretty, all adepts at dance, all well adorned, dance around Rama, very close to him. The dancing women are inebriated and Rama enjoys their dances thoroughly. Seated with Sita, Rama looks as though Vasishtha is sitting with Arundhati.

Valmiki then tells us that Rama used to spend the first half of his days attending to his religious and royal duties and the second half, in the company of Sita like this for a long time, until winter passes. [The commentator Govindaraja explains a statement of the Advikavi here to mean that two winters thus passed after the coronation.] It is then that one day he notices signs of pregnancy on Sita. He is delighted and asks her what her dohada is – a pregnant woman’s desires should be fulfilled; what desire of hers can he fulfill? Sita smiles and tells him of her desire to visit the sacred tapovanas of the great sages on the banks of the Ganga and to sit at their feet. She wants to spend at least one night in the holy groves where these ascetics practice tapas. Rama happily promises that her desire will be fulfilled the very next day.

It is interesting to take a look at some of the changes introduced by Jaimini in his narration. Both Valmiki and Jaimini are portraying Rama’s great love and care for Sita. Valmiki speaks of their evenings together when Rama gives her drinks, meat is served and beautiful inebriated women dance around the couple. This is characteristic of Valmiki who is not shy of speaking of such things. Speaking of the scene of Ravana’s antahpura, for instance, the sage-poet unabashedly paints the picture of a post-orgasmic scene there, where few things are left to the imagination. Similarly in the Aranya Kanda he speaks of Rama giving a piece of cooked meat to Sita and asking her to try it, telling her it is good to eat, it is tasty and it is well-roasted – idam medhyam, idam swādu, nishṭaptam idam agninā. Sage Bharadwaj too offers the soldiers of Bharata passing through his ashram both meat and drinks, along with other kinds of food and drinks. However, by the time of Jaimini perhaps these things had become unacceptable in the case of holy men and women like Rama and Sita, and the poet omits these details. There is no meat eating mentioned in this context, no intoxicating drinks, and no dance. He chooses other incidents to portray their intimacy. For instance, Rama’s spontaneous laughter at Sita’s desire to visit the forest again. That is a very intimate action. Rama also has the precognitive dream of Sita being abandoned – the kind of dream a loving person deeply concerned with another is likely to have. His interpretation of it is that something evil is going to happen to her pregnancy and he does what he thinks is appropriate – conducting a Vedic ritual to safeguard the pregnancy and Sita.

Jaimini
Following the promise he makes to Sita that she shall visit the ashram the next day, later that night, Jaimini tells us, Rama receives his spies and listens to the reports of each separately. The reports are all good. When Rama presses them, though, one of them admits that he has heard something negative too. The wife of a washerman had left her husband and gone away to her father’s place where she stayed for four days. The father then realizes that it is wrong for him to keep his married daughter at home for such a long period and, accompanied by his brothers, he takes her back to her husband. The furious washerman shouts at them, “Do you think I am Rama? He can accept back Sita who stayed in the house of the Rakshasas, but I will not.”

Rama sends the spy away and starts reflecting on his words. He ponders over what he should do. How can he abandon Sita whose purity has been proved by fire? No, he cannot, just as an educated brahmana cannot give up good conduct. Or maybe he should give her up, like brahmanas in the Kali age who give up the Vedas. By the morning, he makes up his mind to abandon Sita.

Early next morning his brothers meet Rama. Rama tells him all that happened in the night and informs them of his decision to abandon Sita out of fear for the censure of the world - lokabhaya.

The brothers are shocked. It is Bharata who speaks first. He reminds Rama of Sita’s purity which she has proved by entering fire. He also reminds Rama of Dasharatha’s words on that occasion. Dasharatha had appeared in the skies and told Rama not only that Sit is pure but also that she is capable of purifying others by her presence. In fact, Dasharatha had said then, he should not have been admitted into heaven because he had died grieving for his son, but it was because of his daughter-in-law Sita’s purity that he was admitted into the heaven. Bharata reminds Rama that the gods too had vouched for Sita’s purity.

Rama admits that it is all true; Sita’s purity is beyond doubt. But what is he to do with this evil talk that is going on? How can he put an end to it? For a king, there is nothing worse than ill fame and nothing more desirable than kirti, yashas – righteous fame. One should give up those who cause ill fame – be it a son, a brother, or a wife.

Here Rama quotes a few examples from the past, of people who had made great sacrifices for the sake of righteous fame. One of them is the highly anachronistic example of Karna ‘long ago’ giving away his armour and ear rings to Indra.

tathaiva kavacam karno vāsavāya dadau purā - Jaimini 27.23

Lakshmana has difficulty in controlling his anger now. Waving his arms in fury, he tells Rama that his action is like giving up one’s own mother, like saving a cow from mlecchas and then abandoning it saying it has been touched by mlecchas and has hence become impure.

Shatrughna is equally furious at what Rama has said. He tells Rama he should carry out what he says and kill himself – that will make him immortal. And Sita is such, and her love for Rama is such, that she will bring him back from death. But, he asks Rama, how will he bring a dead Sita back to life? He implies that Rama is not capable of doing that, his love for her is not so powerful.

Rama’s only response is to say that his fear for ill-fame is such that if necessary he will give up himself and them, his brothers, what to speak of Sita.

Finding Rama bent on giving up Sita, Bharata and Shatrugha do not wish to stay with him anymore and go to their own palaces. Lakshmana however is not able to do so, seeing Rama’s grief. Rama tells him either to chop off his, Rama’s, head or to carry out his order and abandon Sita in the jungle. “I touch your feet and beg you,” Rama tells Lakshmana. “Abandon Sita on the bank of the river in the jungle. That sin will come to me.”

These words of Rama shames Lakshmana. He remembers the injunction of the scriptures that one should always obey the orders of one’s elders. He remembers how Parashurama had cut off his mother’s head obeying the orders of his father Jamadagni. He orders his driver to get his chariot ready and goes by it to Sita’s house, his head hung heavy in pain.

Here Jaimini adds something beautiful: the horse collapses on the way and has to be brutally whipped to get up and proceed.

Seeing him bowing to her in her palace, Sita is delighted. He praises Rama’s generosity: he is fulfilling what she had asked for in the night, though she had said it in a light mood. She tells Lakshmana she will take gifts for the sages and their wives. Her words torment Lakshmana, but he remembers his duty to Rama and silently responds by saying all right, his head bent, tears flowing from his eyes.

Sita takes leave of Kausalya as well as Kaikeyi and Sumitra and happily boards the chariot. With a choked voice Lakshmana orders the charioteer to drive fast.

Valmiki
In Valmiki’s Ramayana, it is not from his spies that Rama hears of the evil talk about Sita, but from his friends. As usual he was sitting with his friends in his chamber that night listening to all kinds of humorous stories told by them. After a while he asks Bhadra, a friend, to tell him what the citizens are saying about him and his family. Initially Bhadra tells him of the wonderful things they say, but when Rama insists he tells him of what they are saying about Sita – or more precisely, about his continuing to keep Sita as his wife. “What joy can Rama’s heart have from enjoying Sita who was forcibly taken into his lap by Ravana? Ravana had taken her with him to Lanka and kept her there in his Ashoka Gardens. Why does he not reject her? Now we too will have to tolerate such behaviour from our wives.” Such is the talk going on in the towns and in all the villages, Bhadra tells Rama. Rama asks his other friends if this is true, and they all admit it is so.

So in Valmiki’s version, it is not just one washerman who talks maliciously of Sita, but there is wide talk of that nature in all towns and villages. As I point out in my article on the Padma Purana version of the Ramayana, there the author goes further and gives a reason for that washerman. In his previous lifetime, he was a parrot and Sita had separated him and his wife, and caged her. The female parrot had killed herself in the cage when Sita refused to release her, and the male parrot had jumped into the Ganga and killed himself, cursing Sita that she too will later be separated from her husband. Thus to the Padma Purana it is Sita’s past karma haunting her now. We all have to pay the price of what we do, whoever we are. Karma is inviolable.

To continue the story as Valmiki tells it, after dismissing his friends, Rama sends for his brothers in the night itself. When they come, he talks to them about how nothing is more important than one’s good name and how nothing in the world is worse than ill fame. He asks Lakshmana to take Sita and leave her in the jungle beyond the Ganga near the ashrams and tells his brothers if anyone spoke against his decision, he would treat him as his enemy forever.

Valmiki’s Rama does not allow his brothers to speak a word against him. He gives them no choice. Jaimini’s Rama is equally determined about abandoning Sita, but he at least listens to his brothers’ angry talk. Jaimini’s Rama shames Lakshmana into obedience by saying that he is requesting his younger brother by touching his feet. The emotional force used by Jaimini’s Rama is different too – he asks Lakshmana to chop his head off, if he will not obey him. Valmiki’s Rama appears more hard-hearted when he says whoever speaks a word against his decision will become his enemy forever.

Valmiki’s Lakshmana goes to Sita the next morning with his chariot to take her and abandon her. But he lies to Sita – he specifically tells her he is taking her to the hermitages of the ascetics on the orders of Rama, as desired by her. She picks up gifts for the sages and happily starts her journey.

Jaimini
Let’s now go back to Jaimini.

As the chariot proceeds, Sita sees evil omens everywhere. A female jackal comes before Sita and begins howling piteously. Flocks of deer are seen running helter-skelter in large numbers. And Sita’s right eye begins to flutter continuously. Sita suspects bad things – but not for herself. She prays for the good of Rama, so that no harm comes to him.

When the chariot reaches the Ganga, the river that destroys sins is in a spate. Lakshmana gets down from the chariot and takes her across the river by a ferry. On the other side, both Sita and Lakshmana take a bath in the Ganga and then proceed on foot into deeper jungles. Jaimini paints a dark picture of the terrifying jungle here – there are sharp thorns everywhere, there are ancient trees on which are perched crows which are being eaten by snakes that hiss constantly. The place is filled with cheetahs, bison, wild boars and black scorpions with raised tails. Tigers wait still looking for opportunities to pounce upon does. Wild cats are digging mice out of their holes.

Fear makes Sita’s hairs stand on their ends. “I do not see any ashrams here, Lakshmana; nor do I see any sages or their wives,” she tells her devar. “There are no ashram children running about either. I do not see smoke rising up from agnihotras. What I see instead is smoke rising from wild fires burning forest grass and trees. Instead of the sound of Vedic mantras, I hear the wild cries of forest birds.”

Such is Sita’s innocence that she puts the blame for it all on herself. Perhaps this is her punishment for turning away from Rama by desiring to visit the ashrams. She is indeed an ugly woman who does not deserve to see the sacred ashrams. The auspicious ashram sounds and sights are not for her.

Tears streaming down from his eyes, Lakshmana tells Sita that the ashrams are still far away. He then informs her how she has been abandoned by Rama out of fear for the censure of the world – loka-apavada-bhaya.

Sita hears those words and collapses on the ground like a star falling from the skies. It was as though she has been bitten by a deadly snake. Lakshmana fans her with the end of his cloth and she comes to and sitting up, asks Lakshmana, “Once you had left me alone in Janasthana and went away. How will you again leave me in this terrible forest and go away?”

She tells Lakshmana how he is the dearest of her devars, brothers-in-law, and recalls one by one his acts of love and devotion to her. She does not blame Rama for abandoning her for no fault of hers – it must be her karma from a past life time. She asks Lakshmana to hurry back, or else Rama might get angry with him for being late. As for her, the god who protected her in the womb and protected her in Lanka will protect her in the forest too. She gives messages of love and devotion to her mothers-in-law to Lakshmana.

Sita has only one complaint against Rama – he should not have entrusted the tender hearted Lakshmana with the work of abandoning her in the jungle. He should have asked someone like the hard hearted Sugriva, slayer of his own brother, or Vibhishana who turned against his own brother, to do that job. She gives her blessings to Lakshmana and asks him to leave her and go back. Lakshmana goes round her in reverence and praying to the forest gods and goddesses to protect her, begins walking away and finds his legs are refusing to carry him away from Sita. Sita looks on at the disappearing Lakshmana and hopes perhaps he would return. When she finds that he does not, she swoons again.

The Jaiminiya Ashwamedha Parva turns eloquent here in describing the sympathy of the forest for Sita. It describes how swans give up lotus stalks and start wailing in their harsh voices. The does and their babies give up feeding on grass and raising their heads stall still watching Sita lying in a swoon. Peacocks give up their dances and run towards her. Birds stop searching for food and instead spread their wings and protect Sita lying on the forest floor. Water fowls sprinkle water on her with their wings. The chamaris fan her with their chamara-like hairy tails. The wind takes a dip in the Ganga and then gathering the flowers lying around, showers them on Sita in an act of worship.

Sita wakes up taking Rama’s name. Because of contorting in pain as she lay in swoon, her hair is open now and like the rest of her body, it is covered in dust. Her first impulse is to end her life, but that would be the great sin of bhroonahatya – killing an embryo in the womb. Not knowing what else to do, she runs first in one direction, then in another, falling every now and then in her agony and loneliness. Her feet start to bleed from running in the thorn-filled and rough forest floor and from falling down repeatedly.

It is in this state that Sage Valmiki finds her in the jungle while he is roaming there along with his disciples looking for wood appropriate for a sacrificial pillar.

Valmiki
Jaimini differs from Valmiki in where Sita is left. In Valmiki Ramayana, Rama’s instructions are to leave Sita at some lonely place near Valmiki Ashram and that is precisely what Lakshmana does. In fact it is possible that from where Sita was left the ashram was visible and Sita was visible from the ashram too. For, Lakshmana says to Sita when they reach there:

āśramānteṣu ca mayā tyaktavyā tvam bhaviṣyasi
rājnah śāsanam ājnāya tava evam kila daurhṛdam
tadetajjāhnavī tīre brahmaṛṣīṇām tapovanam
puṇyam ca ramaṇīyam ca mā viṣādam kṛthāh śubhe

“Obeying the order of the king and as per your pregnancy wish, I am to abandon you near the ashram. Here is the sacred and beautiful tapovana of the brahmarshis on the banks of the Ganga. Do not grieve.”


Jaimini changes this and there is no indication that it is near the ashram that she is left. In fact, there are all kinds of contrary indications. Sita complains that she does not see any ashrams there, nor any sages nor their wives. She speaks of seeing no ashram children running about, seeing no smoke rising up from agnihotras. All she sees is smoke rising from wild fires burning forest grass and trees. Instead of Vedic mantras, she points out, all she hears is the wild cries of forest birds.

Jaimini’s forest is also not the gentle forest near ashrams – what we find everywhere is sharp thorns, ancient trees on which are perched crows who are being hunted by hissing snakes, and the forest floor filled with cheetahs, bison, wild boars, black scorpions with raised tails, tigers waiting to pounce upon does, cats digging mice out of their holes.

In Valmiki she is so close to the ashram the young ashram children see and hear her cries and inform the sage of her. Sita here has no consolation of being anywhere near ashrams. And she runs about madly in intolerable agony, first running in one direction and then in another. It is in this state that Valmiki who is looking for wood for making a sacrificial post finds her in Jaimini.

Also, in Jaimini, it is the fear of bhroonahatya – the sin of killing the children in her womb – that prevents Sita from killing herself. In Valmiki it is the fear that with it Rama’s ancient royal line will come to an end.

Summing Up
Summing up the differences so far, Jaimini in spite of being a lover of Rama, is quite critical of his action of abandoning Sita. He makes Rama himself compare his action to that of the brahmanas of Kaliyuga giving up the Vedas – when the brahmanas who are supposed to live for protecting the Vedas give them up, it is always for unholy purposes, for selfish ends. Jaimini does not see Rama’s fear of lokapavada – the censure of the world – as anything noble. Like so many of us today, he perhaps feels Rama took the easy way out. Instead of standing by Sita and fighting for her like a hero and making the people of Ayodhya realize their error, he chose to get rid of her so that he can be in their good books. He definitely was not setting up a good example before the world, just as a brahmana who gives up the Vedas is not, whatever his reason.

Jaimini makes Sita say that the god who protected her in the womb and in Lanka will protect her in the forest too.

yo garbhe rakṣitā devo yo vai lankādhivāsinīm
mām sa vai rakṣitā cādya na duhkham kartumarhasi.

These are the words of a woman who has been given up by the very man who is supposed to protect her. In fact, it is he who has thrown her into the middle of dangers. These words remind us of Draupadi, wagered and lost by Yudhishthira and thus made a slave, turning to God in the form of Krishna for protection, when they fail her.

In one of the most eloquent expressions of kindness and compassion the world has seen, Jesus from the cross asks God to forgive his tormentors and crucifiers. Valmiki’s Sita does the same, a few thousand years before Jesus. And Sita does not ask Rama just to forgive those who have been cruel to her, but going beyond it, to actively love them.

Valmiki’s Sita thus asks Rama to love the people of Ayodhya who have sent her to the jungle; and not love them with the common love of a king for his subjects, but as Rama loves his brothers – he loves no one more than he loves his brothers, not even her. This is loving your enemies in the truest sense of the term. She asks Rama to love her tormentors, her crucifiers, with all his heart.

And when she does not kill herself by jumping into the Ganga, it is because she does not want Rama’s line to come to an end with her.

Valmiki’s Sita is almost superhuman in her compassion and kindness. But Jaimini brings her down to the earth, without reducing her in any way. She is so tormented by her fear and agony – it is not near the ashram that she has been abandoned, but in a terrifying jungle with scorpions and snakes and cheetahs and wild boars all around her – that she has no thoughts for the citizens of Ayodhya. And we can understand Sita if she refuses to kill herself out of the fear for bhroonahatya rather than out of the fear of loss that it will cause Rama. She is just being human there. Perhaps the thought that when she kills herself Rama will lose something does not occur to her at that moment.

~*~

To be continued...

Zen, Learning and Enlightenment

I was staying in Uttar Kashi then, in Tapovan Kuti, originally a tiny one-room cottage that belonged to my grand teacher Swami Tapovanamji, later enlarged and developed by his disciple and my guru Swami Chinmayanandaji into a large ashram with scores of rooms with modern comforts. This is in Ujeili, on the lower slopes of Varanavat Mountain, facing Har Parbat across the Ganga in the east and the famous Valakhilya Mountains some distance away in the south east. It is a beautiful place, the whole area this side of the Ganga filled with ashrams.

I used to watch every day a serious looking young monk on the terrace of a nearby ashram. He would walk up and down on the terrace the whole day, with an open book in hand, and from the constant movement of his lips it was clear he was repeating and learning by heart the book. Eventually one day I asked him what the book was and he showed it to me. It was a commentary on the Brahma Sutras. On top of each page was the text of the Sutras, below it in a different font and size the vyakhya, and below that the tika in yet another font and size and still below the tippani. And what the young monk was doing was learning by heart the entire text – the sutras, the vyakhya, the tika, the tippani, all. During our conversation he told me his dream was to become a mahamandaleshwar – that is the head of large division of spiritual organizations, below the position of the Shankaracharya.

I do not know what later became of the young monk – this was in the late nineteen seventies and I never met or heard of him after that. But recently when I read the story Zen master Kyogen, this incident came to my mind. Kyogen was also a scholar of great learning and his story tells us that his very learning stood in the way of his achieving the goal of spirituality – enlightenment.

One day Isan, who was his friend from their days with their master Hyakujo, asked him, “Tell me, Kyogen, when you were with our master in his monastery, you were very brilliant. You used to answer a single question in ten different ways. Now answer this question: What is your real self? The self that existed before you came out of your mother’s womb, before you knew east from west?”

It is said that this question puzzled Kyogen completely. He searched for the right answer in his mind and came up with answer after answer, but every time Isan rejected it. Eventually Kyogen was reduced to saying, “I fail. Explain it to me.” And Isan said, “The answer I know is my answer. It will be of no use to you. Find your own answer.”
But of course Kyogen did not know how to find his own answer – that was his problem. The only thing he knew was to find answers from books – of which he had a huge collection. Once again he went through all his books, searching for the answer to Isan’s question. He found none. No book answered that question – at least, they did not answer it satisfactorily. Eventually he told himself, “A hundred pictures of rice cakes are not going to fill a single hungry stomach.” The story tells us that as this realization dawned, Kyogen gathered his books and destroyed them all.

The pursuit of the scholar was no more for him. It hadn’t taken him anywhere. He left his friend Isan, said goodbye to all monasteries and teachers, and became a grave keeper.

One day he was sweeping the grounds of the grave when something very ordinary happened. A stone that he had swept away went and struck a bamboo.

Kyogen stood speechless. He forgot himself. He forgot all his learning. He forgot the whole world. And then his stillness was broken by a burst of spontaneous laughter arising from him. He laughed as he had never laughed before in his entire life.

Kyogen had attained enlightenment. He had attained what all his books had not helped him attain, what he has been searching all his life. He was now a Buddha in his own right.

Kyogen performed a ritual of purification and then returned to his old friend Isan. He lighted incense before him and paid homage to him. “Great master,” Kyogen said addressing Isan, “thank you! You have been kinder to me than my own parents. Had you given to me the answer when I begged you to, I would have never attained it. I would have never reached where I stand today.”

It is customary for Zen masters to write a poem in celebration of their enlightenment. Here is the poem composed by Kyogen:

One stroke and all is gone.
No need of stratagem or cure.
Each and every action
Manifests the ancient way.
My spirit is never downcast,
I leave no tracks behind me,
Enlightenment is beyond speech,
Beyond gesture.
Those who are emancipated
Call it the unsurpassed.

In the Chhandogya Upanishad, Narada, the great scholar approaches Sanatkumara and asks him to teach him. In response, Sanatkumara asks Narada to tell him all that he already knows. Here is Narada’s response:

"Bhagavan, I know the Rig Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Sama Veda, the Atharva as the fourth Veda, the epics and ancient lore as the fifth, grammar which is the Veda of the Vedas, the rules of sacrifices, the science of numbers, the science of portents, the science of time, logic, ethics, etymology, the science of pronunciation, ceremonials, prosody, etc., the science of elemental spirits, the science of weapons, astronomy, the science of serpents and the fine arts. All this I know, venerable Sir.

"But, Bhagavan, with all this I know only words; I do not know the Self. I have heard from men like you that he who knows the Self overcomes sorrow. I am afflicted with sorrow. Please help me, Bhagavan, to cross over to the other side of sorrow."

Narada has learnt all that could be learnt – every branch of knowledge that existed in his days. And yet he is far from that knowledge which ends all sorrow, which takes you to the other side of sorrow, into enlightenment and bliss.

The highest knowledge can only be attained beyond words. It is attained in a world where no words exist, no language exists, where only silence exists – silence and stillness. Kyogen reaches that world when the stone strikes the bamboo. Chiyono, another Zen master, attains it when the old pail in which she was carrying water breaks, leaving no water and no moon in it. Tokusan attains enlightenment when his master suddenly blows out a burning candle.

The stories may be different, but in all cases enlightenment happens in silence and stillness, when we are ready for it. All preparations, all sadhanas, are to make us ready for it.

***

Soma: Scandalous Sex Life of the Founding Father

Vyasabharata 3

In the Adi Parva of the Mahabharata, responding to a question from Janamejaya, Vaishampayana tells him stories of his royal ancestors, the lunar dynasty of kings. In some texts of the epic, this happens before the story of Shakuntala and in others, following her story.

The lunar dynasty produced numerous magnificent kings who for all times to come became beacon lights for India. They carved out paths which all coming generations of rulers aspired to follow. In spite of this, lust remained a running theme in the tale of the dynasty from the beginning till the end. Here is the story of the moon god [known variously as Soma, Chandra, Chandrama, Shashi, Indu and so on] from whom the lunar dynasty gets its name.

Soma’s story too is a story of lust. Besides, we probably have here the world’s first tales of adultery.

The Mahabharata does not tell us much about Soma, the founding father of the lunar dynasty to which the Bharatas belong. For this reason, we have to combine what it says with what other texts have to say about him.

The myth about the birth of the moon god, Soma, is perhaps the most beautiful birth story in world mythology. And the story is uniquely Indian – no other culture in the world could have produced a story like this.

The story tells us of Sage Atri being asked by Brahma to engage in creation. Atri wanted to acquire the power needed for this and with that intention, started a powerful form of tapas called anuttara.

The name means the highest tapas, beyond which there is no other tapas.

Sage Atri was purity itself and such was his commitment to the tapas that he soon reached the highest peaks of spirituality, and the Ultimate Reality, the Brahman, appeared reflected in the still lake of his mind. As the pure ecstasy of the experience possessed him, tears of supreme joy started flowing from his eyes: the bliss that passes understanding, born of self-realization. And, as those tears began flowing down his cheeks, the story tells us, the guardians of the eight directions transformed themselves into exquisite women and drank up those tears. They were in love with those tears and wanted to conceive children out of Atri’s ecstasy.

The women became pregnant but found themselves incapable of enduring the powerful fetuses in their wombs and pushed them out of their wombs. Brahma, the Creator, gathered the fetuses and joined them to form a single magnificent child who instantly grew into a youth. This was Soma, the moon god. The Creator endowed him with every imaginable weapon and thus empowering him, took him to his world, the Brahmaloka, where the brahmarshis requested him to make the youth their lord. The luster of the youth grew steadily as sages, gods, gandharvas and apsaras sang the Sama hymns in his praise.

Prajapati Daksha gave twenty-seven of his daughters in marriage to Soma.

Later Soma, himself born of tapas, entered a long period of tapas. His chosen deity was Vishnu. Vishnu was pleased with the tapas and appeared before him and asked him to seek a boon from him. “I want to perform a Rajasuya sacrifice in the heavens,” said Soma. “When I do that bless me that all the great Gods like Brahma should be present in the sacrifice. And I want the trident-wielding Shiva to stand guard at the gate of the sacrificial place.”

The moon god had acquired so much power that at his desire the great Gods had to be at his beck and call.

The Rajasuya began. Every celestial attended the sacrifice: the gods, Vasus, Maruts, Brahma, Vishnu, Arti, Bhrigu, all. As desired by Soma, Shiva himself stood guard to the sacrifice. And when the Rajasuya ended, Soma gave the three worlds as dakshina to the priests who officiated in the sacrifice.

The sacrifice ended with the avabhrita ritual bath. As Soma stood up, glowing in indescribable glory after the ritual bath, the goddesses present there could not contain themselves. Nine of them fell in love with him instantly. Not only did they fall in love with him, great passion for him raged in their hearts. Blazing lust screamed out from every part of the goddesses’ body, seeking immediate fulfillment. While the gods, the sages and other guests stood watching aghast, these nine goddesses threw themselves at him openly: Vishnu’s wife Lakshmi, Kardama’s wife Sinivali, Vibhavasu’s wife Dyuti, Dhata’s wife Pushti, the sun god’s wife Prabha, Havishman’s wife Kuku, Jayanta’s wife Kirti, Kashyapa’s wife Anshumali, and Nanda’s wife Dhriti. These goddesses abandoned their husbands and openly sought pleasure from Soma. And he pleasured them all as no one else could pleasure a woman. The god’s were infuriated and wanted to curse Soma for this audacious sin, but found themselves powerless to do anything against him. The Rajasuya had made him all powerful and rendered everyone else powerless before him.

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Some say it was when Tara saw Soma as he stood in all his glory after the ritual bath that concluded the Rajasuya that she became infatuated with him, like the nine goddesses. The Devi Bhagavata Purana, which tells us this story in detail, has a different story to say.

Before we go into that story, the word ‘tara’ means a star, and in mythology all over the world the moon and the stars are closely linked together. In our own mythology, the moon god is wedded to the twenty-seven daughters of Daksha, who are all stars: the twenty-sever stars of astrology – Ashwati, Bharani, Kartika, Rohini and so on. Tara’s infatuation with the moon god is thus supported by the logic of mythology. Tara’s husband Brihaspati is the planet Jupiter, who pales in comparison with the lustrous glory of the moon in the night sky.

According to the Devi Bhagavata, one day Tara went to the house of Soma. Tara was beautiful beyond words, a lusty woman at the peak of her youth, intoxicated with youthful passions. Soma saw the irresistible Tara and instantly desired her. And Tara too took one look at Soma and straight away fell in love with him. Carried away by the stormy passion they felt, they neither could, nor wanted to, resist the fiery longing they felt for each other and had sex. Following which, Tara decided to stay on in Soma’s house, rather than go back to her husband Brihaspati.

Soma is a god and Brihaspati is the guru of the gods. According to Indian culture, the relation between Soma and Tara is that of a disciple and his gurupatni – his guru’s wife. Indian culture speaks of an erotic relation between the two as the worst possible sin, a mahapataka. And it is this dreaded sin that the two were indulging in without any compunctions.

Brihaspati waited for a few days for Tara to come back. When she did not, he sent one of his disciples to Soma’s house. But drunk with the love of Soma, Tara refused to go back to Brihaspati. Days passed and Brihaspati once again sent a disciple, asking Tara to go back to him and Tara did exactly what she had done earlier – she again refused to go back to Brihaspati. This happened again and again and eventually Brihaspati decided to go on his own and take Tara back.

Brihaspati was in a fury when he reached Soma’s residence. Addressing the moon god, he said angrily: “What have you done, you fool? I am your guru and Tara is your gurupatni. You can protect her, revere her, but you cannot have any other relationship with her. What have you been doing keeping her in your house? Were you protecting her or were you having sex with her? Don’t you know that for you to have sex with her is to commit one of the gravest sins in the world? You are not fit to live among the gods. Give my wife back to me and let me take her back to where she belongs – my home. Do as I say before I lay a curse upon you.”

Soma laughed haughtily at the enraged words of the guru. He began by attacking Brihaspati for losing his self mastery. “It is only those brahmanas who have full mastery over their emotions that deserve honour. You seem to have no mastery over yourself and for that reason you cannot curse me either. The curse of a man without mastery over himself will have no effect.”

“As for Tara,” Soma continued, “she is here on her own. I haven’t kept her a prisoner here. And she is enjoying herself. When she has had enough of enjoyment, she will come back to you and you can have her back. Let her stay here so long as she wants to. What harm can it do? ”

Soma reminded Brihaspati quoting the scriptures that a woman never becomes impure from adultery. She is purified month after month when she has her period.

Brihaspati saw he had no options but to go back. But at home he was tormented by longing [smara-aaturah] for Tara. Soon he was back at Soma’s place. This time, however, the watchmen who stood guard at the gate did not even let Brihaspati go in.

Brihaspati waited long, but Soma did not appear. The furious guru could no more contain his anger and shouted aloud from the gate: “You wretch! You vilest of gods! No one is more depraved than you are. Tara is your gurupatni. She is like your mother! You have forcibly kept her a prisoner in your house and you have been living in sin with her! Give her back to me this instant or I shall reduce you to ashes.”

Soma now came out and spoke to Brihaspati with a smile on his face. He said, “Why do you talk such nonsense! Your beautiful wife is here because you cannot give her the satisfaction she seeks. And in any case, she is too beautiful for you. She is endowed with every imaginable feminine perfection. Such a jewel of a woman is not fit for a beggar like you. Why don’t you take some ugly woman for a wife – she would be fit for you. It has been ordained that exquisite women should have handsome husbands. And the kamashastras [books on the erotic science] too say that beautiful women should have for their husbands men who are equal to them in beauty, youth and prowess. You seem to be totally ignorant of the Kamashastra! Now go away. I have no intension of giving her back to you. And let me tell you, your curse will have no effect on me, for you are in the grips of lust.”

Insulted, humiliated, furious, Brihaspati went straight to Indra, his chief disciple and the lord of the gods and told him what happened. Indra took matters into his own hands and sent a messenger to Soma explaining to him the evil nature of his relationship with Tara and asking him to give her back to Brihaspati. Indra reminded him of the twenty-eight wives he already had [according to some counts Daksha had given twenty seven of his daughters to the moon god as his wives, and according to some others, twenty-eight.]. He reminded him of the celestial courtesans like Urvashi and Menaka. He could have them for his pleasure if he so wished, said Indra – but this relationship with his gurupatni was certainly a shame for any man, and particularly so for a man whose father was a sage like Atri.

Soma told him that the whole notion that a man can own a woman is wrong. Tara had gone to him on her own and she was happy with him, just as he was happy with her. Tara hated Brihaspati and she wouldn’t go back to him on her own. No power in the world was going to separate her from him against her will.

The moon god did not forget to remind Indra of his own adultery and the adultery of Brihaspati, which he stated as one of the reasons why Tara hated her husband.

This was a challenge to the power of Indra and the gods in general. Soma, who was so haughty about his power, had to be taught a lesson through power. There was only one solution now: a war against Soma. With all the gods on one side and Soma on the other.

Acharya Shukra, the guru of the asuras, heard of the problem in the celestial world. He took Soma’s side and offered him assistance if there was a war – his own and that of the asuras.

The armies gathered, ready for war.

Brahma, however, decided to interfere at the last moment. Brahma was Sage Atri’s father and hence Soma’s grandfather. Soma finally listened to Brahma and agreed to send Tara back to Brihaspati. Tara was given no choice in the matter. She certainly was not happy about this, but she had no alternative and reluctantly went back to her husband. Brihaspati was delighted that he got his wife back. Taking her with him, he went home.

The story does not end here.

Tara was pregnant when she went back. When the child was born, Brihaspati became very happy and made arrangements to celebrate the birth and perform the rituals. But Soma would have none of it. He laid claim to the child, telling it was born of him. This time it was Brihaspati’s turn to refuse, saying the child was his and it resembled him.

Once again the celestial world was hot with anger and the gods and asuras assembled ready for war. This time too, it was Brahma who interfered. He asked Tara to tell the truth: Whose son was it? And Tara coyly whispered that it was Soma’s and, embarrassed, hurried back to her inner apartments.

The war was avoided once again.

Soma named his son Budha and it is with Soma that the child grew up.

Soma is the first king of the lunar dynasty and Budha, the second. Budha’s son Pururava is one of the greatest legends in the lunar dynasty filled with legendary kings. His life with the apsara Urvashi has fascinated our culture for ages and inspired numerous works of literature, from the most ancient times right up to our own times.

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One of the puzzling things in the stories of the moon god is his strong association with sexual desire. It is not puzzling in the sense that this is a rare connection found only in Indian mythology – on the contrary, this is a near-universal connection and hence, in that sense, not puzzling at all. It is puzzling because he is born of the tears of a sage’s ecstasy of self-realization.

But then, Indian culture has associated sexuality with sacredness right from the beginning. We have looked upon [sexual] desire, kama, as the very source of life. The Nasadiya Sukta of the Rig Veda, the Sacred Hymn of Creation, speaks of kama as the first born and the origin of everything born subsequently: “There arose Primal Desire in the beginning, the seed of the mind, the first born.” [Kamastadagre samavartadhi manaso retah prathamam yad aseet.] Krishna too speaks of kama as sacred – as himself, as God – so long as it is not against dharma. [dharmaviruddho bhuteshu kamo’smi bharatarshabha. Gita 7.11] But when that sexuality takes you over, possesses your mind, enslaves you, then it is bad.

In the case of the moon god, what we find is his becoming a slave to his sexuality and because of this sexual slavery, practicing precisely the opposite of the kind of kama that Krishna calls sacred. In spite of all the arguments he gives, in both the stories above we find him a slave to his sexuality. In the first case, there is only one reason why he would respond to the open, public demand of the nine goddesses – his own sexual desire for them, originating as much from his maleness as from his sense of power and sense of arrogant superiority over the other gods. In the second case again, we find him not a master, but a slave to not just sex, but to one of the worst forms of sexuality that Indian culture speaks of: his sexual partner is a woman he should look upon as his own mother. He not only has sex with her, but has an ongoing sexual relationship that lasts for quite some time. And there is no attempt on his part to hide that relationship– he openly declares it, flouts all sexual morality when he says any woman can choose any man she likes as her sexual partner and contemptuously tells Brihaspati that the reason why his wife left him is because he, Brihaspati, is not an adept in the sexual arts and cannot give satisfaction to his wife.

Perhaps what we find here is the mind at play. The moon is the deity of the mind in both Vedic literature and subsequent Indian philosophy. And the mind is a slave to passions. The reasons Some gives, when he chooses to give reasons, are not the true reasons, but the ‘good’ reasons. At least in the case of the affair with Tara, the Devi Bhagavata makes the true reason very clear: the first thing that the Devi Bhagavata tells us of this affair is that at the first sight of the beautiful Tara, Soma became kamaaturah – tormented by lust for her.

Perhaps the contradiction in Soma’s obsession with sex and the story of his birth from the tears of a sage’s spiritual ecstasy could be resolved if we remember that when Atri attained self-realization, he was doing tapas to empower himself for creation.

In any case, a legacy of the moon god thus is one of powerful sexual longing – amoral or immoral – and this becomes the legacy of a vast number of kings in the lunar dynasty. King after king falls because he becomes a victim to unbridled sexuality.

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A third story we have about Soma is about his obsessive passion for one of his wives, which makes him neglect his other wives. According to this story, which the Mahabharata itself tells us, Daksha gave twenty-seven of his daughters in marriage to Soma. They were all beautiful, but the most beautiful of them all was Rohini. Soma is besotted with her and in his obsession with her, totally ignores his remaining wives. They go to their father and complain to him about it. Daksha instructs Soma to mend his ways and behave equally towards all his wives, but his infatuation with Rohini is such that he continues to ignore them. His wives once again go to their father and Daksha again reminds Soma of the need to be with his other wives. This time too Soma ignores the advice. It is after Daksha’s daughters went to their father a third time that Daksha curses Soma. The story tells us how Daksha’s curse brought the dreaded disease rajayakshma [tuberculosis, the wasting disease] upon him. A repentant Soma was later asked to go and bathe in the sacred waters of Prabhasa and this bath changed his yakshma into the current monthly waxing and waning we see the moon passing through.

Indian literature tells human stories in the name of the gods. What we read here are some such stories. It is also possible that the episodes are speaking of cosmic astronomical events which the Puranas narrate in human/celestial terms. Tara and Soma as well as Tara and Rohini are astrologically linked; and Soma and the goddesses could also be so linked.

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Arabian Nights, Ananda Mimamsa and Happiness

I know an executive whose income runs into several lakhs per month and yet rarely have I seen him smiling.

In contrast, one of the happiest faces I have seen is that of my milkman Ketan. It may be peak winter, as it is now, or it may be raining torrentially as it was a couple of months ago – but he invariably greets me with a cheery good morning as he comes to deliver milk packets every day without fail. In the rainy season he wears a rain coat and goes from house to house to deliver the milk, stopping his bicycle in front of each house and getting down to walk to the front door. His clothes will be drenched in spite of the raincoat and inside the clothes, his body will be drenched. In winter, he would be shivering inside the old windcheater he wears. But that does not reduce his smile or the cheerfulness in his voice.

I made a social visit to a doctor sometime last year. We were friends, sort of. He is on the staff of a large hospital as a fulltime senior doctor, and saw patients at home before he went to the hospital in the morning – private practice. When he came home for lunch, he again saw patients. In the evening when he came back from the hospital, there were more patients waiting for him at home – he spent two or three more hours seeing them then.

When I visited the doctor on that day, he had finished his consultancies for the day and was somewhat relaxed. His wife brought us tea and we talked over the tea. Or rather, he talked and we listened – his wife, my wife and I. And he talked for more than an hour and a half, until I said we had to go, it was getting late, and he reluctantly stopped.

What the doctor talked about for an hour and half was about how his lot was worse than that of a rickshawwalla. Literally. The bitter doctor bickered about how the riskshawwalla makes more money in terms of the investments he has made. Looking back later we found it difficult to believe this, but he had earnestly and sincerely argued for full ninety minutes that he earned less in terms of his investments compared to a rickshaw puller. He spoke of the years he had spent as a student working hard so that he can join medicine, of the years he had spent as a medical student, of the years he had spent as intern, of the years he had spent as a fresh doctor; he spoke of the hours he had to study during each of these years and of the hardships he had to put up with, of the nights of sleep he lost in the process, and of the money he had invested at each stage. What did a rickshaw puller invest, he asked me rhetorically. Wasn’t the rickshawwalla making more money than he was?

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I have always loved the Arabian Nights, right from my childhood days when I read stories of Sindbad, Alladin, Hatim Tai, Harun al Rashid, and of course of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. [Once, some thirty years ago, I took a group of, mostly, executives from two of India’s leading corporate houses for a fifteen-day study and meditation camp in the Himalayas. The executives were all older than me, I was the youngest. I remember the group in a moment of fun naming me Ali Baba and themselves the forty thieves – they were forty in number. I enjoyed it.] I have with me different versions of the Nights and I love picking up a volume and reading a story randomly every now and then.

Yesterday I came across a volume of Powys Mathers’ translation of the Nights in a used books shop and purchased it – I have a particular affection for this translation, done from the literal and complete version of Dr JC Mardrus’ original French translation of the Nights. Later, in the evening, I began reading the volume. One of the stories I read was The Tale of The Two Lives of Sultan Mahmud. This is how the story, told by Scheherazade starting on the eight-hundred and nineteenth night, begins:

“It is related, O auspicious King, that Sultan Mahmud, who was one of the wisest and most glorious of the Egyptian rulers, used often to sit alone in his palace, weighted down by a causeless sadness and beholding the world black before his eyes. At these times, life was tasteless to him and without significance; yes, even though Allah had given him, without stint, health and youth, power and glory, and for his capital, the most delicious city of the earth, where his eyes might ever be rejoiced by flowers, serene skies and women gilded like the waters of the Nile. These gifts were forgotten during the hours of royal sadness and Mahmud envied the lot of drudges bent over the furrow, and travellers lost in the waterless desert.”

One day the sultan was sitting alone, lost in his own dark world. His was more deeply dejected than usual. His inner world was bleak and the world outside looked to him blacker than ever. He refused to eat and drink, or to attend to his duties as king. There was only one thing he desired: that dark object of desire for all men lost in bottomless melancholy – death.

It was then his chief wazir came to him, informing that someone was waiting to meet him – a very old man. “If I may judge by his words,” said the wazir, “he is the greatest sage, the wisest doctor, and the most extraordinary magician who has ever lived among the sons of men.” The sultan silently agreed to meet him.

The withered old man who entered did not kiss the ground in front of the sultan or bow down deeply, as was the custom. Instead he announced in a voice that reflected nothing but authority that he has come to make him, the sultan, conscious of the gifts which Allah had showered upon him. He then took the sultan by hand and dragged him roughly towards one of the four windows of the chamber in which they were. “Open!” he commanded pointing at the window. Obediently Sultan Mahmud opened the window. “Look!” the old man commanded again.

“Sultan Mahmud put his head out of the window and beheld a vast army of riders pouring down upon him from the mountain citadel, and waving naked swords. The first lines had already come to the palace foot and were climbing the walls with a clamour of war and death. Mahmud understood that his troops had mutinied, and came to kill him. He changed colour and cried: ‘There is no God save Allah! This is the hour of my destiny!’”

The old man immediately shut the window and opened it again in a single movement. The army had disappeared now. The whole palace stood enveloped in peace, as did the city around it with its four hundred minarets.

Without giving Sultan Mahmud time to recover, the old man then took him to the second window. What the sultan saw when he opened it and looked out made him recoil in horror. “The four hundred minarets of the mosques, the domes of the palace, the thousand fair terraces stretching as far as the eye could reach, were all one flaming fire, fanned by cries of terror, and belching up black smoke to hide the sun. A savage wind whooped on the flames towards the palace, until the fair building was only cut off from that red ocean by the fresh green of the gardens.” But when the old man shut the window and opened it again, the fire had disappeared and everything stood bathed in serenity everywhere.

Again the old man rushed the sultan to the third window through which he saw a furious Nile rushing towards the city to swallow it up. The waves were so tall that the tallest terraces were already under water and the river was rushing towards the palace in a violent rage. The flood had disappeared when the old man closed the window and opened it again.

What Sultan Mahmud saw through the fourth window to which the old man had dragged him without giving him time to relax was not the green fields that were there, carpeted with roses and sweet basil, narcissus and jasmine, thickets of orange trees. There were no sweet singing birds there that usually filled the whole place with their wonderful music. Instead, Mahmud saw “a red and white desert of terror burned by an inexorable sun; among its aching rocks laired starving jackals and hyenas; vile snakes sped swiftly to and fro upon it.” The sight disappeared and the green reappeared, teeming in flowers and fruits and singing birds as the old man closed and opened the window once again.

Mahmud was now utterly confused and terrified. He was no more sure whether he was awake or asleep, sane or insane. But the old man gave him no time to relax and collect himself. Instead he dragged the sultan to a small fountain that was in the chamber and commanded “Look!” pointing at the water at the base of the fountain. As Mahmud bent down to look into it, two old hands with unbelievable power forced his head under the water.

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Sultan Mahmud now found himself shipwrecked at the foot a mountain that overlooked the sea. He still wore his royal clothes and his crown. At some distance were a group of rough looking people. They were looking at him and making rude gestures. He walked towards the group and announced: “I am Sultan Mahmud. Depart!”

The people laughed at him all the more. The chief of the group came to him and removed his clothes and picked up his crown. He threw the whole lot the sea, and told him, ‘Dress sensibly.” He forced the sultan to wear the coarse farmer’s clothes they were wearing. “Come and work with us,” he told Mahmud, “for in our country those who do not work must starve.”

“I do not know how to work,’ Sultan Mahmud objected. ‘But you can be an ass,’ retorted the man. ‘Anyone can be an ass.”

They dumped all their tools on him and he staggered along behind them, carrying their spades, harrows, pickaxes and rakes. When he reached the village, he was shut into an old stable and given an onion and some stale bread to eat. By the morning, he found that he had turned into an ass – but with all his human memories intact.

In the morning he was taken out for ploughing the field. He refused to budge from his place and they beat him brutally. He brayed in intolerable humiliation and agony. For braying was the only thing he could do now – he was a donkey and had no human speech. Finding him stubborn and useless, the farmers sold him to a miller.

The miller blindfolded him and tied him to the mill, forcing him to turn the mill for hours at a stretch without a break. The miller mercilessly used his goad and stick on him, apart from the constant shower of curses and kicks. His food was a daily ration of beans along with a bucket of water and his only rest was the time he took to eat the beans and drink the water. The former sultan now kept treading along from dawn to dusk turning around the mill, walking in his own dung and urine all the time.

It was five years later that an accident saved from the miller – one day the roof of the mill collapsed on his head. Sultan Mahmud found himself a human being once again.

He now found himself a stranger in an unknown city where an old man spoke kindly to him. The old man enquired if he would be staying in that city for long, adding that he would be welcome there since he was young, strong and handsome. “I would stay in any place where they did not feed me beans,” replied Mahmud.

The old man assured him that he does not have to worry on that account – he would be eating the best food possible every day of his life. “Now,” he continued, “go and stand outside the hammam at the corner of this street and ask every woman as she comes out if she is married or single. When one tells you she is single, you will become her husband instantly, for that is the law of our land. But be very careful not to omit a single woman from your questioning, or you will find yourself in grave trouble; for that is also the law our land.”

The first female Mahmud saw coming out of the hammam was a pretty girl of thirteen. “This would console me for all my troubles,” he thought. He asked her his question and the girl informed him she had already married a year ago.

The next woman to come out of the hammam was an ugly old hag. Mahmud shivered as he saw her – he had never seen a woman half as monstrous as she was. “I would rather die of hunger or become an ass again than marry this venerable ruin,” he thought. But the old man who had befriended him had talked of the consequences of leaving out any woman who came out of the public bath. He asked his question, and, to his relief, the woman told him she was married.

The next woman to come out was infinitely older and uglier than this one. Mahmud had never seen anything – anything at all – as disgusting as this one was. But he had to ask his question – he had no choice. “Are you married or single?” he asked her in a voice quaking with terror at the prospect of having to marry her. And pat came her reply, “Single, O eye of my eye.”

“I am an ass, good aunt, I am an ass! Look at my ears, look at my tail! Nice old women do not marry asses,” he told her in a begging voice. But she had already fallen in love with him. She was taking steps towards him, her mouth poised for a kiss, her harms spread out to gather him in them. Her hands were now holding his head in them and she was bringing her mouth to his.

Mahmud shook his head in violent disgust. He was finding it difficult to breathe. He fought for air, fought for his life with all his might and with a final frenzied struggle, pulled his head back.

He found he had pulled his head out of the fountain and was struggling to breathe again. He looked around. He was in his palace. His wazir was standing on his right and the old man was on his left. There was one of his favourite slave girls standing in front of him, holding out to him on a gold salver a cup of sherbet that he had commanded a few moments before the wazir had come to him to inform him of the old man wanting to meet him.

Relief flooded him. He was a king. He was not shipwrecked, he was not an ass, he was not the husband of that disgusting old, old woman. Of what a pleasure it was to be a sultan, what a privilege! Sultan Mahmud wanted to shout, he wanted to sing, he wanted to dance for joy.

But the old man had begun speaking to him. “Peace be with you, Sultan Mahmud! I am here to make you conscious of the gifts that Allah has showered upon you.” With that he disappeared, leaving no trace behind, as though he had never existed at all.

Sultan Mahmud fell to his knees, weeping; he banished sorrow from his heart, and being happy, began a life that spread happiness about him.

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The Taittiriya Upanishad has something incredibly beautiful to say about happiness, ananda, which is the ultimate object of search of all beings. It speaks about it in a small section called the Ananda Mimamsa – an enquiry into happiness, a study of happiness.
The Mimamsa asks us to imagine a young man. He is young, he is noble, he is educated, firm in body and strong, and he is the master of the entire earth with all its wealth. Let’s call the highest joy such a man is capable of experiencing a single unit of human happiness, says the Mimamsa.

Multiply that happiness a hundred times, continues the Mimamsa, and that is one unit of happiness of the gandharvas of earth. And a hundred times the happiness of the gandharvas on earth is one unit of the happiness of the celestial gandharvas. And a hundred times the joy of celestial gandharvas is one unit of happiness of the manes and a hundred times that is one unit of happiness of the gods in the transient heavens and a hundred times that, one unit of happiness of the sacrificial gods.

And a hundred times that happiness, says the Upanishad, is the happiness of the gods; and a hundred times that, the happiness of Indra. A hundred times that is one unit of bliss of Brihaspati; and a hundred units of that, one unit of the bliss of Prajapati. The happiness of Prajapati, multiplied one hundred times, is one measure of the bliss of Brahma.

As the Upanishad makes this count, it tells us at each stage: and that is also the bliss of a man versed in wisdom and free from desires. That is, the young man, cultured, educated, healthy, owning the entire earth with all its wealth experiences no more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires. Indra experiences no more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires. Nor does Brihaspati, Prajapati or Brahma experience any more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires.

The highest happiness belongs to a man versed in wisdom and is free from desires. A man who has learnt to accept things as they are and surrender to them. A man who is not a victim to the fires of insatiable desire.

As the cheery smile and happy greeting of my milkman shows, one can be happy in the most ordinary circumstances too.

And as the instance of the executive who makes several lakhs every month shows, and as the instance of my doctor friend who feels he is less fortunate than the rikshaw puller shows, one need not necessarily be happy in the middle of riches.

A sultan can be unhappy too, until he learns to count his good fortunes.

Happiness comes from being contented and accepting. Where there is no contentment or acceptance, there is no happiness.

Years ago a Christian nun who was then my student gifted to me a copy of the Bible. Giving the book to me she wrote on the front page, quoting the Bible itself: “Happy the man who finds wisdom.”

Wisdom is finding contentment. Wisdom is finding acceptance. Wisdom is counting one’s blessings.

It is not the rich man that finds happiness. It is not the powerful man that finds happiness. It is not the famous man that finds happiness.

It is only the wise man that finds happiness.

Happiness is finding contentment. Happiness is finding acceptance. Happiness is counting one’s blessings.

0o0














I know an executive whose income runs into several lakhs per month and yet rarely have I seen him smiling.

In contrast, one of the happiest faces I have seen is that of my milkman Ketan. It may be peak winter, as it is now, or it may be raining torrentially as it was a couple of months ago – but he invariably greets me with a cheery good morning as he comes to deliver milk packets every day without fail. In the rainy season he wears a rain coat and goes from house to house to deliver the milk, stopping his bicycle in front of each house and getting down to walk to the front door. His clothes will be drenched in spite of the raincoat and inside the clothes, his body will be drenched. In winter, he would be shivering inside the old windcheater he wears. But that does not reduce his smile or the cheerfulness in his voice.

I made a social visit to a doctor sometime last year. We were friends, sort of. He is on the staff of a large hospital as a fulltime senior doctor, and saw patients at home before he went to the hospital in the morning – private practice. When he came home for lunch, he again saw patients. In the evening when he came back from the hospital, there were more patients waiting for him at home – he spent two or three more hours seeing them then.

When I visited the doctor on that day, he had finished his consultancies for the day and was somewhat relaxed. His wife brought us tea and we talked over the tea. Or rather, he talked and we listened – his wife, my wife and I. And he talked for more than an hour and a half, until I said we had to go, it was getting late, and he reluctantly stopped.

What the doctor talked about for an hour and half was about how his lot was worse than that of a rickshawwalla. Literally. The bitter doctor bickered about how the riskshawwalla makes more money in terms of the investments he has made. Looking back later we found it difficult to believe this, but he had earnestly and sincerely argued for full ninety minutes that he earned less in terms of his investments compared to a rickshaw puller. He spoke of the years he had spent as a student working hard so that he can join medicine, of the years he had spent as a medical student, of the years he had spent as intern, of the years he had spent as a fresh doctor; he spoke of the hours he had to study during each of these years and of the hardships he had to put up with, of the nights of sleep he lost in the process, and of the money he had invested at each stage. What did a rickshaw puller invest, he asked me rhetorically. Wasn’t the rickshawwalla making more money than he was?

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I have always loved the Arabian Nights, right from my childhood days when I read stories of Sindbad, Alladin, Hatim Tai, Harun al Rashid, and of course of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. [Once, some thirty years ago, I took a group of, mostly, executives from two of India’s leading corporate houses for a fifteen-day study and meditation camp in the Himalayas. The executives were all older than me, I was the youngest. I remember the group in a moment of fun naming me Ali Baba and themselves the forty thieves – they were forty in number. I enjoyed it.] I have with me different versions of the Nights and I love picking up a volume and reading a story randomly every now and then.

Yesterday I came across a volume of Powys Mathers’ translation of the Nights in a used books shop and purchased it – I have a particular affection for this translation, done from the literal and complete version of Dr JC Mardrus’ original French translation of the Nights. Later, in the evening, I began reading the volume. One of the stories I read was The Tale of The Two Lives of Sultan Mahmud. This is how the story, told by Scheherazade starting on the eight-hundred and nineteenth night, begins:

“It is related, O auspicious King, that Sultan Mahmud, who was one of the wisest and most glorious of the Egyptian rulers, used often to sit alone in his palace, weighted down by a causeless sadness and beholding the world black before his eyes. At these times, life was tasteless to him and without significance; yes, even though Allah had given him, without stint, health and youth, power and glory, and for his capital, the most delicious city of the earth, where his eyes might ever be rejoiced by flowers, serene skies and women gilded like the waters of the Nile. These gifts were forgotten during the hours of royal sadness and Mahmud envied the lot of drudges bent over the furrow, and travellers lost in the waterless desert.”

One day the sultan was sitting alone, lost in his own dark world. His was more deeply dejected than usual. His inner world was bleak and the world outside looked to him blacker than ever. He refused to eat and drink, or to attend to his duties as king. There was only one thing he desired: that dark object of desire for all men lost in bottomless melancholy – death.

It was then his chief wazir came to him, informing that someone was waiting to meet him – a very old man. “If I may judge by his words,” said the wazir, “he is the greatest sage, the wisest doctor, and the most extraordinary magician who has ever lived among the sons of men.” The sultan silently agreed to meet him.

The withered old man who entered did not kiss the ground in front of the sultan or bow down deeply, as was the custom. Instead he announced in a voice that reflected nothing but authority that he has come to make him, the sultan, conscious of the gifts which Allah had showered upon him. He then took the sultan by hand and dragged him roughly towards one of the four windows of the chamber in which they were. “Open!” he commanded pointing at the window. Obediently Sultan Mahmud opened the window. “Look!” the old man commanded again.

“Sultan Mahmud put his head out of the window and beheld a vast army of riders pouring down upon him from the mountain citadel, and waving naked swords. The first lines had already come to the palace foot and were climbing the walls with a clamour of war and death. Mahmud understood that his troops had mutinied, and came to kill him. He changed colour and cried: ‘There is no God save Allah! This is the hour of my destiny!’”

The old man immediately shut the window and opened it again in a single movement. The army had disappeared now. The whole palace stood enveloped in peace, as did the city around it with its four hundred minarets.

Without giving Sultan Mahmud time to recover, the old man then took him to the second window. What the sultan saw when he opened it and looked out made him recoil in horror. “The four hundred minarets of the mosques, the domes of the palace, the thousand fair terraces stretching as far as the eye could reach, were all one flaming fire, fanned by cries of terror, and belching up black smoke to hide the sun. A savage wind whooped on the flames towards the palace, until the fair building was only cut off from that red ocean by the fresh green of the gardens.” But when the old man shut the window and opened it again, the fire had disappeared and everything stood bathed in serenity everywhere.

Again the old man rushed the sultan to the third window through which he saw a furious Nile rushing towards the city to swallow it up. The waves were so tall that the tallest terraces were already under water and the river was rushing towards the palace in a violent rage. The flood had disappeared when the old man closed the window and opened it again.

What Sultan Mahmud saw through the fourth window to which the old man had dragged him without giving him time to relax was not the green fields that were there, carpeted with roses and sweet basil, narcissus and jasmine, thickets of orange trees. There were no sweet singing birds there that usually filled the whole place with their wonderful music. Instead, Mahmud saw “a red and white desert of terror burned by an inexorable sun; among its aching rocks laired starving jackals and hyenas; vile snakes sped swiftly to and fro upon it.” The sight disappeared and the green reappeared, teeming in flowers and fruits and singing birds as the old man closed and opened the window once again.

Mahmud was now utterly confused and terrified. He was no more sure whether he was awake or asleep, sane or insane. But the old man gave him no time to relax and collect himself. Instead he dragged the sultan to a small fountain that was in the chamber and commanded “Look!” pointing at the water at the base of the fountain. As Mahmud bent down to look into it, two old hands with unbelievable power forced his head under the water.

0o0

Sultan Mahmud now found himself shipwrecked at the foot a mountain that overlooked the sea. He still wore his royal clothes and his crown. At some distance were a group of rough looking people. They were looking at him and making rude gestures. He walked towards the group and announced: “I am Sultan Mahmud. Depart!”

The people laughed at him all the more. The chief of the group came to him and removed his clothes and picked up his crown. He threw the whole lot the sea, and told him, ‘Dress sensibly.” He forced the sultan to wear the coarse farmer’s clothes they were wearing. “Come and work with us,” he told Mahmud, “for in our country those who do not work must starve.”

“I do not know how to work,’ Sultan Mahmud objected. ‘But you can be an ass,’ retorted the man. ‘Anyone can be an ass.”

They dumped all their tools on him and he staggered along behind them, carrying their spades, harrows, pickaxes and rakes. When he reached the village, he was shut into an old stable and given an onion and some stale bread to eat. By the morning, he found that he had turned into an ass – but with all his human memories intact.

In the morning he was taken out for ploughing the field. He refused to budge from his place and they beat him brutally. He brayed in intolerable humiliation and agony. For braying was the only thing he could do now – he was a donkey and had no human speech. Finding him stubborn and useless, the farmers sold him to a miller.

The miller blindfolded him and tied him to the mill, forcing him to turn the mill for hours at a stretch without a break. The miller mercilessly used his goad and stick on him, apart from the constant shower of curses and kicks. His food was a daily ration of beans along with a bucket of water and his only rest was the time he took to eat the beans and drink the water. The former sultan now kept treading along from dawn to dusk turning around the mill, walking in his own dung and urine all the time.

It was five years later that an accident saved from the miller – one day the roof of the mill collapsed on his head. Sultan Mahmud found himself a human being once again.

He now found himself a stranger in an unknown city where an old man spoke kindly to him. The old man enquired if he would be staying in that city for long, adding that he would be welcome there since he was young, strong and handsome. “I would stay in any place where they did not feed me beans,” replied Mahmud.

The old man assured him that he does not have to worry on that account – he would be eating the best food possible every day of his life. “Now,” he continued, “go and stand outside the hammam at the corner of this street and ask every woman as she comes out if she is married or single. When one tells you she is single, you will become her husband instantly, for that is the law of our land. But be very careful not to omit a single woman from your questioning, or you will find yourself in grave trouble; for that is also the law our land.”

The first female Mahmud saw coming out of the hammam was a pretty girl of thirteen. “This would console me for all my troubles,” he thought. He asked her his question and the girl informed him she had already married a year ago.

The next woman to come out of the hammam was an ugly old hag. Mahmud shivered as he saw her – he had never seen a woman half as monstrous as she was. “I would rather die of hunger or become an ass again than marry this venerable ruin,” he thought. But the old man who had befriended him had talked of the consequences of leaving out any woman who came out of the public bath. He asked his question, and, to his relief, the woman told him she was married.

The next woman to come out was infinitely older and uglier than this one. Mahmud had never seen anything – anything at all – as disgusting as this one was. But he had to ask his question – he had no choice. “Are you married or single?” he asked her in a voice quaking with terror at the prospect of having to marry her. And pat came her reply, “Single, O eye of my eye.”

“I am an ass, good aunt, I am an ass! Look at my ears, look at my tail! Nice old women do not marry asses,” he told her in a begging voice. But she had already fallen in love with him. She was taking steps towards him, her mouth poised for a kiss, her harms spread out to gather him in them. Her hands were now holding his head in them and she was bringing her mouth to his.

Mahmud shook his head in violent disgust. He was finding it difficult to breathe. He fought for air, fought for his life with all his might and with a final frenzied struggle, pulled his head back.

He found he had pulled his head out of the fountain and was struggling to breathe again. He looked around. He was in his palace. His wazir was standing on his right and the old man was on his left. There was one of his favourite slave girls standing in front of him, holding out to him on a gold salver a cup of sherbet that he had commanded a few moments before the wazir had come to him to inform him of the old man wanting to meet him.

Relief flooded him. He was a king. He was not shipwrecked, he was not an ass, he was not the husband of that disgusting old, old woman. Of what a pleasure it was to be a sultan, what a privilege! Sultan Mahmud wanted to shout, he wanted to sing, he wanted to dance for joy.

But the old man had begun speaking to him. “Peace be with you, Sultan Mahmud! I am here to make you conscious of the gifts that Allah has showered upon you.” With that he disappeared, leaving no trace behind, as though he had never existed at all.

Sultan Mahmud fell to his knees, weeping; he banished sorrow from his heart, and being happy, began a life that spread happiness about him.

0o0

The Taittiriya Upanishad has something incredibly beautiful to say about bliss, ananda, which is the ultimate object of search of all beings, in a small section called the Ananda Mimamsa – an enquiry into happiness, a study of happiness. The mimamsa asks us to imagine a young man. He is young, he is noble, he is educated, firm in body and strong, and he owns the entire earth with all its wealth. The Upanishad then says let’s call the highest joy such a man is capable of experiencing a single unit of human happiness. Multiply that happiness a hundred times, and that is one unit of happiness of the gandharvas of earth. And a hundred times the happiness of the gandharvas on earth is one unit of the happiness of the celestial gandharvas. And a hundred times the joy of celestial gandharvas is one unit of happiness of the manes and a hundred times that is one unit of happiness of the gods in the temporary heavens and a hundred times that, one unit of happiness of the sacrificial gods; and a hundred times that happiness, says the Upanishad, is the happiness of the gods; and a hundred times that, the happiness of Indra.

A hundred times that, continues the Upanishad, is one unit of bliss of Brihaspati; and a hundred units of that, one unit of the bliss of Prajapati. The happiness of Prajapati, multiplied one hundred times, is one measure of the bliss of Brahma.

As the Upanishad makes this count, it tells us at each stage: and that is also the bliss of a man versed in wisdom and free from desires. That is, the young man, cultured, educated, healthy, owning the entire earth with all its wealth experiences no more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires. Indra experiences no more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires. Nor does Brihaspati, Prajapati or Brahma experience any more happiness than the man versed in wisdom and is free from desires.

The highest happiness belongs to a man versed in wisdom and is free from desires.

As the cheery smile and happy greeting of my milkman shows, one can be happy in the most ordinary circumstances too.

And as the instance of the executive who makes several lakhs every month shows, and as the instance of my doctor friend who feels he is less fortunate than the rikshaw puller shows, one need not necessarily be happy in the middle of riches.

A sultan can be unhappy too, until he learns to count his good fortunes.

Happiness comes from being contented and accepting. Where there is no contentment or acceptance, there is no happiness.

Years ago a Christian nun who was then my student gifted to me a copy of the Bible. Giving the book to me she wrote on the front page, quoting the Bible itself: “Happy the man who finds wisdom.”

Wisdom is finding contentment. Wisdom is finding acceptance. Wisdom is counting one’s blessings.

It is not the rich man that finds happiness. It is not the powerful man that finds happiness. It is not the famous man that finds happiness.

It is only the wise man that finds happiness.

Happiness is finding contentment. Happiness is finding acceptance. Happiness is counting one’s blessings.

0o0

The Moth and the Candle: A Sufi Fable

“One night the moths gathered together, tormented by the desire to unite themselves with the candle. All of them said: ‘We must find one who can give us some news of that for which we seek so earnestly.’

“One of the moths went to a candle afar off and saw within the light of a candle. He came back and told the others what he had seen, and began to describe the candle as intelligently as he was able to do. But the wise moth, who was chief of their assembly, observed: ‘He has no real information to give us of the candle.’

“Another moth visited the candle. He passed close to the light and drew near to it. With his wings, he touched the flames of that which he desired; the heat of the candle drove him back and he was vanquished. He also returned, and revealed something of the mystery, in explaining a little of what union with the candle meant, but the wise moth said to him: ‘Thine explanation is of no more real worth than that of thy comrade.’

“A third moth rose up, intoxicated with love, to hurl himself violently into the flame of the candle. He threw himself forward and stretched out his antennae toward the flame. As he entered completely into its embrace, his members became red like the flame itself. When the wise moth saw from afar that the candle had identified the moth with itself, and had given to it its own light, he said: ‘This moth has accomplished his desire; but he alone comprehends that to which he has attained. None others knows it, and that is all.’” [Attar’s Fables]

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One of the truths the beautiful fable tells us is that there is no way of knowing the Ultimate Truth, except through experiencing it by becoming one with it, no way of knowing God except through experiencing him by becoming one with him . Those who want to experience God must be willing to lose themselves in God. God cannot be known from the outside. He cannot be experienced so long as you are there as different from him. And when you cease to be, when you lose yourself in him, when you become one with him, then and then alone you know him.

Sri Ramakrishna, the great mystic, used to speak of a salt doll that goes to measure the depth of the ocean. But when the doll enters the ocean, it becomes one with the ocean. There is no more any measuring then, there is only a becoming – becoming one with the ocean.

It is this experience of the salt doll becoming one with the ocean that sages from all over the world give voice to in ecstatic words.

Here is Vak Ambhrini, the eloquent poet sage of the Rig Veda giving voice to her experience of becoming one with the Ocean. She says:

“ I move with the Rudras and with the Vasus, I wander with the Adityas and the Vishwadevas. I hold aloft both Mitra and Varuna, and also Indra and Agni and the twin Ashvins.

“I uphold Soma the exuberant; I uphold Tvasta, Pushan, and Bhaga. I endow with wealth the offerer of oblation, the worshipper and the pious presser of the Soma.

“I am the ruling Queen, the amasser of treasures, full of wisdom, first of those who are worthy of worship. That me the Gods have installed in all places, with many homes for me to enter and dwell in.

“Through me alone all eat the food that helps them see, breathe and hear the spoken word. He is not aware of me, yet he dwells in me alone. Listen, you who know! For, the words I speak to you deserve your trust.

It is I who announces the tidings that the gods and men alike rejoice to hear. The man I love, I make mighty in strength. I make him a priest, a sage, or a learned scholar, as I please.

“I bend the bow for Rudra that his arrow may slay the hater of the words of sacred wisdom. I rouse the people, and make them strive. I have entered the Earth and Heaven, filling everything.

“I give birth to the creator in the heavens atop the world and my own origin is deep in the ocean, in the cosmic waters. From there I permeate all existing worlds, and even touch yonder heavens with my forehead.

“It is my breath that blows as the mighty wind, while I hold together all the worlds.
Beyond the heavens and above the earth I tower, such am I in my might and splendour”.

Yoga is the path to lose yourself so that you can be one with him and know him. Devotion is the path to lose yourself so that you can be one with him and know him. And meditation is the path to lose yourself so that you can be one with him and know him. This losing yourself and knowing him by becoming one with him is also known is jnana, as in jnana-yoga. This is the knowledge that wisdom books from across the world declare as the only knowledge worth knowing.

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And another thing that the fable tells us is that there is no way of communicating that experience. To communicate, you must exist as a separate individual. And so long as you exist as a separate individual, you really have nothing to communicate.

Mind is like the moth that goes near it, but cannot experience it. That is why the Upanishads say: yato vacho nivartante aprapya manasa saha – the Ultimate Truth is that from which words return, having not attained, along with the mind.

In fact, the mind is the obstacle in attaining it. It is the mind that stands in the way of our experiencing it. And that is why Zen says there is only one thing to be attained: no-mind. When you attain the no-mind, everything else is already attained.

In the Chhandogya Upanishad, when young Shvetaketu’s father asks him if he had learnt that by which one hears what cannot be heard, by which one perceives what cannot be perceived, by which one knows what cannot be known, it is this knowledge he was talking about.

Just as the mind is the obstacle in knowing the Truth, so too are words obstacles. For it cannot be communicated through words either.

Actually, it cannot be communicated at all. But if there is a means of communicating it, then it is silence. Silence is the nearest means through which communication is possible. And that is why the Sufi sage poet Jalaluddin Rumi rued: “I wonder why I ever thought to use language.”

Silence can communicate it – perhaps. Dance can communicate it – perhaps. Singing can communicate it – perhaps. But certainly not words, not language, not reason, not the intellect.

It is gunge ka gur, sugar in the mouth of the dumb one, as we say in Hindi. When it comes to communicating it, the eyes are without words and words are without eyes – nain bin gira, gir bin naina. Those who have seen it do not speak, and those who speak of it have not seen it, goes a saying in Tamil: kandavar mindatillai, mindavar kandatillai.

The old story of ten blind men and the elephant tells us that each experienced the elephant differently since each felt with his hands a different part of the elephant. The one who felt its leg felt that the elephant is like a pillar. The one who felt its tail felt it is like a broom. The one who felt its stomach felt it is like a rock. And the one who felt its ears felt it is like the winnow. In their case, none of them knows the elephant as it is, but at the same time, everyone of them has some partial knowledge of it. But in the case of God, no partial knowledge is possible. God has no parts, no limbs, no qualities, and therefore the only way to know him is the way the moth experienced the flame in Attar’s fable.

It is for this reason that all theology is wrong and all philosophy is wrong. Because theologies and philosophies are products of the human mind and the mind can never reach it.

A mystic once compared the wisdom of those who have experienced it, like the seers of the Upanishads and mystics from other cultures, and the wisdom of philosophers and theologians. Theologians and philosophers are like a man fast asleep, he said. He has covered himself from feet to head with a thick blanket so that no light can disturb him. And all the windows of his room are closed. And from within his thick blanket, in the room with all the windows closed, fast sleep, he is trying to theorize about the morning. Whereas the seer is awake. He has thrown the blanket off. He has gone to the window and opened it. And he is looking out through it at the rising sun. He can see the glory that is the east. He can see the birds and beasts waking up. He can feel the morning breeze and smell its fragrance. He can see the trees awakening and the plants swinging in the breeze. He can see people going about their different jobs. He can hear the laughter of the children awake and at play.

The arguments of the philosopher and the theologian are like the arguments of the sleeping man. And what the seer is trying to do is to wake us up, so that we will throw the blanket off, get up and go to the window, open it and look out. He is not interested in logic or arguments, nor is he interested in constructing systems of thought. He may use logic, he may use arguments, he may use any other tool available to him, but he is not interested in any of those. His only interest is in waking you up. He has experienced the morning, and he wants you to experience it.

It is in this sense that the wisdom of the east begins with experience and ends in experience – begins with the seer’s experience and ends in our experience.

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Nalayani: the Past Life of Draupadi

[Translated from the original Sanskrit]

[The Kumbhakonam Edition of the Mahabharata gives us several details that are not available in the KM Ganguli translation of the epic or in the Gita Press edition. The following is one such instance. I believe there is no other English translation of this available at the moment. The passage below constitutes Chapter 212 and 213 of the Adi Parva of the epic in the Kumbhakonam Edition, 1906. In the narrative sequence, these chapters come after Arjuna has won Draupadi, and immediately before all the five Pandava brothers wed her.]

Vyasa Said: Oh king, do not grieve over your daughter becoming wife to all five Pandavas. Her mother had earlier prayed that Draupadi should become the wife of five men. Yaja and Upayaja, constantly engaged in dharma, made it possible through their tapas that she should have five husbands and that is how Draupadi was attained by the five Pandavas as their wife.

It is now time for your whole family to celebrate. For in the whole world there is no one superior to you and you are now invincible – no one in the whole world has the power to defeat you. Let me explain further how she attained five husbands. Listen to me, your heart free from sorrow.

In another lifetime, your daughter was called Nalayani, a woman of impeccable virtue. She served her husband Maudgalya, an old leper, with great devotion. The man was mere bones and skin, bitter by nature, lustful, jealous and prone to quick rages. He stank terribly – his body emitted every foul smell. Advanced in age, his skin was wrinkled, his whole body crooked. His head had grown bald and his skin and nails had begun to wear off. Nalayani served her husband who practiced severe penances; she lived by eating his left over food.

Then one day, while he was eating, his thumb fell off into the food. Without the least hesitation, Nalayani removed it from the food and ate the leftover food. The man, who had the power to do as he wished, was pleased with this. He asked her to ask for a boon.

“I am not old or evil-tempered, nor jealous or hot tempered,” he told her. “My body does not smell, nor am I short in height or lust-filled. My blessings on you, beloved. Now tell me how I can delight you and where you wish to live and enjoy. I shall do all that you wish, tell me whatever is in your mind.”
When he repeatedly asked her to ask for a boon, she asked for one.

Maudgalya was a man of pure actions and he was now pleased with her. He had the power to give boons and he gave all one wished. So Nalayani of blameless beauty told her husband: “O lord, unthinkable are your powers. May you attain great fame in the world by dividing yourself into five and pleasuring me in all those five forms! And after that I want you to become one again and continue to pleasure me.”

“Let it be so!” the great seer Maudgalya of surpassing spiritual power told Nalayani of beautiful hair and alluring smile. He then turned himself into five and pleasured her in those five forms in every imaginable way.

He then spent time in the ashrams of sages worshipped by them, moving from one ashram to the other, assuming any form he desired. He went to the world of the gods and there moved among the celestial sages taking her with him. He lived as a guest in the palace of Indra, worshipped by Shachi, his food the ambrosia of the gods.

Desiring to enjoy pleasures with Nalayani, also known as Mahendrasena, he, the great lord, boarded the divine chariot of the sun god and moved around with her. He then went to Mt Meru and started living on the mountain. He dived into the celestial Ganga with her. He lived in the rays of the moon as the never-ceasing wind does.

When the great sage took on the shape of a mountain range, because of his ascetic power she became a great river in the middle of the mountains. When the sage transformed himself into a sal tree full of flowers, she attained the form of a creeper and wound herself around him. Every time he assumed a body, she traveled with her husband assuming a similar body. And so living, her love for him and his love for her increased in equal measure. The great sage continuously reveled with her using his yogic powers and she, as Divine Will would have it, gave him pleasures in turn.

All this time, she remained the sage’s single wife, like Arundhati to Vasishtha and Sita to Rama, and like them entirely devoted to her husband. In this respect, she became nobler than Damayanti’s mother. Her mind became totally engrossed in the great brahmana Maudgalya, as though her soul itself had merged with him, and it never wavered from him.

This, oh great king, is the truth and for that reason, never think of it in other ways. It is this Nalayani who is born as your daughter Krishnaa from the sacrificial pit, as some divine plan would have it.

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Drupada said: Great brahmana, best knower of all scriptures, tell me the reason why the auspicious Nalayani took birth in my sacrifice.

Vyasa said: Listen to me, King, of how Lord Rudra gave her a boon and why the glorious one was born in your house. Let me tell you more of Krishnaa’s former life story.

Famous by the name Indrasena, the noble Nalayani travelled around with her husband Maudgalya, no worries in her mind. For Maudgalya, those years of reveling with her passed like moments. And then one day, after years of enjoying them, the sage lost interest in pleasures. Desiring the highest dharma, his mind was now turned towards brahma-yoga. The great sage, now keen on austerities, abandoned her.

Abandoned by him, oh great king, Nalayani fell to the earth. As she fell, addressing Maudgalya, she said: “Do not abandon me, great sage. I have been enjoying pleasures as my heart desired, and I am still not satisfied with the enjoyment.”

And Maudgalya told her: “You speak to me without any compunction about things that should not be spoken of. And you are causing obstacles on my path of tapas. So listen to what I say. You shall be born on the earth as a princess and will attain great repute. You shall be the daughter of the noble-hearted king of Panchala. You shall then have five renowned men for your husbands. With those handsome men, you shall long enjoy the pleasures of sex.

Vaishampayana said: Cursed thus, the glorious Nalayani became miserable and went to a forest. Still discontented with the enjoyment of pleasures, she worshipped the Lord of the Gods through tapas. She gave up hopes and expectations, fasted with only the air as her food, and following the diurnal course of the sun, began practicing the tapas of the five fires – with the burning sun above her and four burning fires surrounding her. Rudra, the Lord of Beasts, the Great Monarch of all the worlds, the Great God, was pleased with her severe penance and gave her a boon. “You will be reborn again and in that birth you shall be a lustrous woman; and you shall have five renowned men for your husbands. They will all have bodies like that of Indra and in valour too they shall be like Indra. And there you shall achieve for the gods their great work.”

Hearing this, the woman said: “I requested you for one husband. Why have you given me these five husbands? A woman shall have one man. How can a woman belong to many men?”

And the Great Lord said: “You told me five times, repeatedly, to give you a husband. Noble woman, you shall have five husbands and you shall find happiness with all of them.”

The woman replied: “It has been decided long ago that it is the dharma of a woman to have only one husband, whereas it is the dharma of a man, as practiced by many, to have several wives. This is the dharma for women that the sages decided in the past. And it has also been said that a single woman would be the partner of man in religious rituals. And we also see in the world that a woman has a single husband, just as she has a single virginhood – once ended, it never comes back. The smritis allow a second husband to a woman for the purpose of conceiving through niyoga in an exigency. If she goes to a third woman, that is considered a sin and when she has a fourth man, she falls and becomes a prostitute. This is the path of dharma and for that reason I cannot accept many husbands. That is something not seen practiced in the world and how could I be absolved from the sin of corruption if that happens?”

The Great Lord said: “In the past women lived a free life sexually and were considered pure after their monthly periods. It was not just once that you asked me [for a husband]. But having many husbands shall not be against dharma for you.”

The woman replied: “If I am to have many husbands, and if I desire sex [rati] with them all, I request you to grant me that I shall remain a virgin after my unions with each of my husbands. In the past I attained spiritual merit [siddhi] through service to my husband. I also attained desire for sexual pleasures through that service. Grant me that I attain both in my coming birth too.”

The Great Lord said: “Listen to me, auspicious woman. Rati [sexual pleasure/the goddess of sexual pleasure] and Siddhi [spiritual progress/the goddess of spiritual progress] do not enjoy each other’s company. In your next birth too, endowed with great beauty and good fortune, enjoying with your five husbands after regaining your virginity repeatedly, you shall attain great glory. Go now and you will see a man standing in the waters of the Ganga. Woman of beautiful smile, bring him, the lord of the gods, to me.”

When the Great Lord, Rudra, the lord that has become everything, spoke thus, she went round him in reverence and walked towards the Ganga, the river of great merit that flows in the three worlds.

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Translation by Satya Chaitanya