by Roopa Pai
For the next twenty-four years, between the ages of forty-nine and seventy-two, a man is expected to gradually hand over the reins of his household and/or his business to the next generation, and take on the role of an adviser, always available to the young ’uns when they need him, but otherwise allowing them to run their own ships in the way they think fit, so that they in turn can flower into their own full potential. Thus gradually distancing himself from attachment to his family and home in the retirement stage, or Vanaprastha (say vaana-prasta) Ashrama, he prepares for the next life-stage. (In the story, this is the stage Yagnavalkya wanted to move to, which is why he wanted to divide his possessions among his wives).
From seventy-two onwards, a man is expected to remove himself from all ties of family and society (at least emotionally, if not physically) and lead the equivalent of an ascetic life, full of prayer, reflection and contemplation. This is the renunciation stage, or Sannyasa Ashrama.
Pretty neat, don’t you think? The age divisions and recommendations seem to echo what naturally happens as people get from the age of twenty-four to forty-eight to seventy-two, especially with regard to their attitudes. Sure, you are still at the Brahmacharya stage, but you can see what those in other ashramas are doing and thinking by taking a look at your older cousins, parents and grandparents. Make sure you include the women too – now that they are just as educated as men are, the ashrama recommendations would apply to them too.
Maitreyi was heartsick to hear of her husband’s imminent departure, but she had always known this day would come, so she took the blow with good grace and asked, ‘You talk of dividing your property, sir, but tell me this – if the wealth of the entire earth were mine, would that make me immortal?’
‘Eh?’ said Yagnavalkya. ‘What kind of a question is that? If all the wealth of the earth were yours, you would simply live, while you were alive, like very rich people do. But you certainly would not be able to buy immortality, however wealthy you were.’
‘What will I do with half your property, then?’ said Maitreyi. ‘I want none of it. Give it all to Katyayini, who loves such things. As for me, teach me something that will help me become immortal.’
‘Beloved!’ cried Yagnavalkya, well pleased. ‘You have always been dear to me and now you have made yourself dearer by asking me to share what is closest to my heart. Come, sit beside me, and I will tell you what you want to know. But make sure not just to hear what I say, but also to reflect on it as I speak.’
Maitreyi nodded. ‘I promise, sir.’
‘Why does a wife love her husband, dearest? Not for his sake, but her own – he makes her Self happy. Why does a husband love his wife? Not for her sake, but his own – she makes his Self content.
‘Why are children loved, dearest? Not for their own sake but their parents’ – they make their parents’ Self joyful.
‘It is the same with everything else – priestly power and royal power, wealth and the gods, the universe and all the creatures in it – they are all loved not for their own sake, but for the sake of one’s own Self.
‘Is it not clear, then, Maitreyi, that it is the Self that one should direct one’s attention towards? That it is the Self that should be thought about, reflected on, meditated upon? That once one knows the Self, one understands everything else? That it is only by knowing yourself that you know the world?
‘Fie on the priest who believes his priestly power comes from outside of his Self. Fie on the king who believes his royal power comes from outside of his Self. May the gods forsake anyone who believes the gods live outside of his Self. May all creatures abandon anyone who believes that those creatures lie outside of his Self. May the Infinite reject anyone who believes that the Infinite rests outside of his Self.
‘You see, Maitreyi, as the sound of a drum cannot be fully understood by someone who knows not both drum and drummer, neither can one fully understand the sounds of a conch or a lute without knowing both instrument and musician.
‘As clouds of smoke arise, unbidden, from a fire overlaid with damp fuel, so from the breath of Brahman have arisen, effortlessly, all the Vedas, Upanishads, poetry, history, ancient lore, the arts and the sciences.
‘As all the waters converge into the ocean, all touch into the skin, all smells into the nose, all visible forms into sight, all sounds into hearing, all thoughts into the mind, all wisdom into the heart, all action into the hands and all movement into the feet, so does everything in the universe converge into the Self.
‘As a lump of salt thrown in water cannot be taken out of it again, although it makes every drop of that water salty, even so, beloved, does the individual Self dissolve in limitless Being and cannot be separated from it, although that Being itself carries in it the essence of every individual self. The Being arises at birth with the Self and departs with it at death. After death, therefore, there is no separate self, no awareness, nothing.’
Maitreyi blanched. ‘After death, there is nothing? You are confusing me, sir, I am bewildered.’
‘Reflect once more, calmly, on what I have said, beloved – where does the sense of separateness come from? From the limited body, which perceives itself as different, separate, from everything around it. But once the body is gone and the Self dissolves into the Immense Being, there is no “other” to perceive, don’t you see? When there is no other to see, and no eyes to see it with, what can you see? Nothing. When there is no other to smell, and no nose to smell it with, what can you smell? Nothing! When there is no other to hear, and no ears to hear it with, what can you hear but nothing? When there is no other to think about, and no mind to think about it with, what is thought but nothing? When there is no other to know, and no intellect to know it with, what can you know but nothing?
‘Tell me, Maitreyi, by means of what can one perceive the one who perceives it all? How, beloved, can one know the Knower when he himself has become it?’
***
In this famous Upanishadic story, known not only for Yagnavalkya’s insights into what it means to be immortal but also for the fact that it is one of the few stories that features a woman as the seeker of truth, Maitreyi, who is not interested in worldly possessions, asks her husband to teach her how to go beyond death.
And what can we take away from his answer? That as long as we think we are our little, flawed, limited, perishable bodies, we most certainly cannot, will not, be immortal, for the body decays and dies from minute to minute, until one day, it stops functioning altogether. But once we understand that who we are, what we are, is pure energy, pure consciousness, pure being – everything changes!
Sure, for the present, we are energy and consciousness contained in a physical body (and it is that energy that is the reason the body is able do what it does). But when the body is gone, the energy that sustained us simply goes back to becoming part of the energy that sustains the world, pushing plants up from the soil, keeping the earth in her orbit and the sun and moon in theirs, bringing atoms together to make molecules, giving tigers the power to roar and deer the strength to run.
The great advantage of being able to see yourself as cosmic energy is the sudden and stunning realization that everything and everyone you see around you is in fact the same energy, poured into a dazzling, mind-boggling, fabulously diverse and absolutely wonderful array of bodies and forms and shapes. It is the same energy that enables each of those forms to do its own fascinating set of things, just as it is the same electricity that enables a vacuum cleaner to suck up dust and an X-ray machine to see your bones. Once that switch is thrown, you will see everyone and everything as part of a multi-armed, multi-headed, multitalented, multidimensional, limitless you.
That cosmic energy, so the Upanishads tell us, has been around since before the earth existed, is the reason the world exists and will be here well after the universe as we know it is gone. And since you have now had the realization that YOU are that cosmic energy, it stands to reason that you will be around forever too. Does that sound a bit like immortali
ty? You bet it does!
ADHYAYA 3
It ain’t bragging if you can back it up!
If you aren’t familiar with that line above – ‘It ain’t bragging if you can back it up!’ – it is actually a well-known quote by one of the most charismatic, cheeky and beloved sportspeople of the twentieth century, the iconic Muhammad Ali, but it works quite well as a title for this story from the BU. This story also features the sage Yagnavalkya,* this time interacting with the only other female seeker we find mention of in the Upanishads, Gargi Vachaknavi. Here’s how it goes.
*It is believed, in fact, that it was Yagnavalkya himself who composed the BU, or at least a large part of it, since his conversations form such a big part of the Upanishad.
Janaka, the king of Videha, had just finished a great sacrifice and was handing out generous gifts to all and sundry. Many learned sages had come from as far afield as Kuru and Panchala, and Janaka, eager to find the wisest among them, fastened bags containing ten gold coins each between the horns of a thousand cows, drove them all into a pen and announced, ‘These cows are for the wisest among those present here. Step forward and take them if you believe you are the one!’
While everyone else hesitated, Yagnavalkya stepped forward and said to one of his students, in a voice that carried, ‘Drive the cows home, son.’ The boy cracked a huge smile. ‘Hail the prince among sages!’ he said, and joyfully drove the cows away. Furious, the other sages came down upon Yagnavalkya like a tonne of bricks. ‘The man is beyond presumptuous!’ they fumed among themselves. And at him, they snarled, ‘You really believe you are the wisest among us, do you?’ Yagnavalkya shrugged. ‘We all bow to the wisest one here, I’m sure,’ he said, ‘but we know, don’t we, that what we are all really after are the cows?’
The irreverent answer, which hurt more because it was the truth, only served to get the other sages even more riled up. ‘Let’s have a debate, then, and we shall see if you are indeed the wisest!’
Thus began a right royal debate at King Janaka’s court. It lasted for days, with the most learned men in the land – Ashvala, Arthabhaga, Lahyayani, Chakrayana, Kahola, Uddalaka* – questioning Yagnavalkya on the technicalities of the yagna layout and chants, and the nature of Death, Brahman and the Self. He answered them all satisfactorily and they were all forced to eventually admit defeat.
*Remember him from the Chandogya Upanishad? That’s right, Shvetaketu’s father!
Then Gargi Vachaknavi stepped forward. ‘Respected brahmins,’ she addressed the gathering. ‘I am going to ask this man two questions. If he answers them satisfactorily, know that any further debate is a futile exercise.’
The gathering bowed. Gargi was a highly respected sage, a woman of great wisdom, and most of them were willing to take her at her word that if Yagnavalkya answered her questions, he was indeed the wisest in the hall.
Turning to Yagnavalkya, Gargi said, ‘Like a fierce warrior of Kashi or Videha would rise to fell an enemy, I rise to fell you, Yagnavalkya, with two questions that are as the two deadliest arrows in the warrior’s quiver.’
‘Shoot, Gargi,’ said Yagnavalkya.
And Gargi asked her two questions, which Yagnavalkya answered expertly, winning her respect. At the end of it, Gargi turned to the gathering and said: ‘Respected brahmins, consider yourself fortunate if you get away simply by paying this man homage. For I declare this, here and now – no one can defeat Yagnavalkya in a debate about Brahman.’
But Shakalya, a stubborn pandit, insisted on challenging him, and came, expectedly, to a bad end.
Then Yagnavalkya turned to the august assembly and said: ‘Respected brahmins, is there anyone else among you, who would challenge me, singly or together?’ And he added, cheekily, ‘Or I could question you, if that’s what you prefer.’
This time around, however, not a one dared to say a word. And Yagnavalkya returned home, laden with gifts, having gained the respect not just of the gathered sages but of the great King Janaka himself.
You see? It ain’t bragging if you can back it up! But if you aren’t quite sure you can, it’s best you stay silent. Shakalya’s ‘bad end’ was having his head shatter into a thousand pieces, and no one wants that, really.
ADHYAYA 4
Can you change your destiny? Of COURSE you can!
So thoroughly had Yagnavalkya succeeded in impressing King Janaka at the impromptu debate that the latter became the sage’s fan for life. The BU features several other conversations between the two, with Yagnavalkya as teacher and Janaka as starry-eyed acolyte, plying his guru with thousands and thousands of cows in return for answers to his (never-ending) questions.
Here is an excerpt:
One day, Yagnavalkya paid a visit to King Janaka, thinking, ‘Today, I will not answer any of his questions.’ But then he remembered that the last time he had been at Janaka’s court, he had offered the king a boon and the king had asked for nothing but the right to ask the sage questions. Yagnavalkya sighed, resigning himself to another volley.
The moment he had been respectfully received and seated, Janaka began.
‘Yagnavalkya, what is the source of light for a man in this world?’
‘The sun, Your Majesty,’ replied Yagnavalkya. ‘For it is by his light that a man sits, goes out, does his work, and returns.’
‘Quite right,’ said the king. ‘And when the sun sets, what is the source of light for a man in this world?’
‘The moon, Your Majesty, for it is by his light that a man sits, goes out, does his work, and returns.’
‘Quite right. And when the sun and moon have both set?’
‘Then fire is our light, Your Majesty, for it is by that light that a man sits, goes out, does his work, and returns.’
‘And when the fire has died out?’
‘Then the voice is our light, for even if it is too dark for a man to see his own hand, he goes straight to the spot from where he hears a voice.’
‘Quite right. But when the sun has set and the moon is dark and the fire is out and the voice is stilled, what then is the source of a man’s light?’
‘His Self, or Atman, your Majesty. It is by the light of the Self that a man sits, goes out, does his work, and returns.’
‘And what Self is this?’
‘That person that is neither the body nor the mind, neither sight nor hearing, but pure awareness, the light within the heart – he is indeed the Self.’
And so it went, with Janaka asking question after question, and Yagnavalkya, bound by his promise to the king, answering him patiently. They talked of the exact mechanics of Death and the blissful world of Brahman where the Self reposes between one life and the next. They discussed the oneness of the Self with Brahman and how there was really no difference at all between the two. And then they came to the tricky question of how exactly a man’s destiny is fashioned. Was a man’s destiny determined even before he was born? Was there any way he could change it? How did one man become ‘good’, and another ‘bad’?
And Yagnavalkya said, ‘O King, what a man becomes depends entirely on his own actions. If his actions are good, he himself becomes good; if they are bad, he himself becomes bad.’
‘But what makes a man act?’ asked the king. ‘What if he performs no action at all?’
‘Ah, but a man cannot perform “no action at all”,’ smiled Yagnavalkya. ‘For the root of all action, good or bad, is desire, and a man is made of nothing but his desire.’
‘Know this, Your Majesty,
A man is nothing but his deep, driving desire.
As is his desire, so is his will,
As is his will, so is his action,
As is his action, so is his destiny.’
The dire words, so simple but so powerful, so ruthless, echoed in the good king’s head. Yagnavalkya was right – it was really as simple as that. Learn to control your desire and you can control your destiny – that’s all there was to it!
Janaka bowed low before the great sage. ‘I salute your
wisdom, blessed one,’ he said, in a voice brimming with gratitude, ‘I beg you, accept me as your slave.’
***
Learn to control your desire, and you can control your destiny! Really? Yes! Control your desire for TV time before an exam, and you will be able to focus better on your studies and crack the exam. Control your desire for junk food, and you will be healthier. On the flip side, don’t control your desire to sneak a look into your friend’s answer paper, and be marched off the principal’s office. Don’t control your desire to lie to your parents, and suffer a truckload of guilt over it.
Even situations where controlling your desire seems like a bad idea could end up working for you! For instance, let’s say you control your desire for that pricey new phone, becoming an outcast among your friends as a result. (PS: If this happens, you might want to review those friendships.) Now, you can cry quietly about it, or you can let your parents know how their action (of not getting you a new phone) has ruined your life. Chances are, your parents will be guilted into getting you something else that you really want,* which they may not have otherwise. See what you did there? You controlled your destiny!
*You wish! – Signed, Your Parents
Jokes apart, think very, very carefully about your actions before you do them, for you become your actions. And it is the little, everyday actions that count just as much, or more, than the big, grand, one-off actions. ‘I’m going to cheat a little today, and that’s OK, because from tomorrow I’m totally going off it,’ may sound good as an excuse for cheating when you say it to yourself, but don’t be fooled – in the grand scheme of things, every single action counts.