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"A devotee can know everything when God's grace descends on him. If you but realize Him, you will be able to know all about Him. You should somehow meet the master of the house and become acquainted with him; then he himself will tell you how many houses he owns and all about his gardens and government securities." Sri Ramakrishna

Letter #38 - The Wonders of Wonders

 

There is a famous scene in the Mahabharata, the monumental epic which is held together by the central theme of the Pandava brothers and their travels against their cousins, the Kauravas. In between the recitation of this saga are long meandering side stories that extrapolate the whole ethos and philosophical traditions which binds together the land and people of Bharat as it was then known.

The Yaksha Prashna is an account within the Mahabharata of a question-and-answer dialogue between Yudhishthira, the eldest and wisest of the Pandava brothers, and a yaksha (nature spirit). It appears in the Vana Parva (the book of the forest), the third volume of the 18-volume complete edition. The entire Parva describes their struggle and consolidation of strength and wisdom through twelve years of exile in the forest. The story is set as the Pandavas end their exile and return to civilization to redeem their kingdom which in their gullibility was stolen from them by the nefarious means of a loaded game of dice.

Among many translations available I have replicated that series of questions germane to the purpose of this Letter. The original questions and answers concerning the detailed intricacies of the sanatana dharma are far too long for our purposes and are generally couched in a convoluted language. This modern transcription is well edited and suitable to a modern audience but even here quite a few questions and answers have been eliminated as they do distract from the main premise of this Letter.[1]

Question: What is swifter than the wind?

Yudhishthira: The mind.

Question: More numerous than the blades of grass?

Yudhishthira: The thoughts in the mind.

Question: What is the highest sanctuary [degree] of dharma?

Yudhishthira: Liberality [Tolerance].

Question: What is the highest degree of heaven?

Yudhishthira: The truth.

Question: The most valuable possession?

Yudhishthira: Knowledge.

Question: The greatest treasure?

Yudhishthira: Health.

Question: The greatest happiness?

Yudhishthira: Contentment.

Question: What is the highest dharma?

Yudhishthira: To injure none of the living.

Question: What must be controlled?

Yudhishthira: The mind.

Question: What must be renounced to make a man agreeable?

Yudhishthira: Pride.

Question: And what can be renounced without regret?

Yudhishthira: Anger.

Question: And what will be relinquished to gain happiness?

Yudhishthira: Greed.

Question: And what is true forgiveness?

Yudhishthira: He who endures enmity truly forgives.

Question: What is mercy?

Yudhishthira: When one desires the happiness of all creatures.

Question: What is simplicity?

Yudhishthira: When the heart is tranquil.

Question: What is the invincible enemy?

Yudhishthira: Anger.

Question: What disease has no cure?

Yudhishthira: Covetousness.

Question: What is the honest man?

Yudhishthira: He who desires the happiness of all the living things.

Question: And the dishonest one?

Yudhishthira: The one who has no mercy.

Question: What is ignorance?

Yudhishthira: Not knowing one’s Dharma.

Question: What is pride?

Yudhishthira: When a man thinks that he’s the one who is the doer of life.

Question: How does a man become patient?

Yudhishthira: By subduing his senses.

Question: What is charity?

Yudhishthira: Protecting all creatures.

Question: What is wickedness?

Yudhishthira: Speaking ill of others.

Question: What is truly amazing in this world?

Yudhishthira: The most amazing thing is, though humans are mortal, everybody goes about their life as if they are going to be here forever.

Yes, the wonder of wonders is that though we know death is inevitable one day, we go about our lives as if we are immortal. I asked a friend quite conversant with Sri Ramana’s teachings about this phenomenon. He said that the sense of unchanging and eternal ‘I’ in us all is not inhibited by time and space. It is our wrong identification of this ‘I’ with our physical bodies which is the mistake. 

 There was a point in my life when the chief surgeon of a major hospital in London said that I had at best six months or so to live if I was ‘lucky’. It is now close to two years since that pronouncement and I wonder what is the difference between then and now in terms of intensity of the feeling of the life force. I remember that with this surgeon’s prediction my sense of aliveness became sharper than ever and every small act had its significance. Each word, each gesture was dense with mystery. The question kept on popping up, what does it all mean? The question became the kernel that propelled the quest for some kind of satisfactory resolution for that shock by the surgeon which shattered my hitherto complacency and pride. But I also saw infinite possibilities to free my conditioned thinking. We are reminded of that oft quoted verse by William Blake. One would think those lines are now cliched but they contain such a resonance that defies excessive citation.

 To see a world in a grain of sand 

 And a heaven in a wild flower, 

 Hold infinity in the palm of your hand 

 And eternity in an hour.

It is not that I saw all this in toto but simply touched the faint fringes of this breathtaking mystery. It was to see a miniscule gap that caused the apparent solid dam of accumulated memories, griefs, guilt and happiness to crack and instigate a flood of new insights that poured out. Though I felt like a stranded walrus prone on a hospital bed, the mind roamed free above the harsh reality of physical impotence.

Today that concentrated appetite or subdued ecstasy seems to have evaporated and I have settled into a new familiar routine of body, mind and emotion. It is not exactly humdrum; in fact, it resonates deeper in the soul but I have begun to take it for granted and not appreciate the distance travelled over the past few years in self-understanding. I am not unhappy and at peace but I do yearn for another cleft in the wall.

If one reflects sufficiently on why people perform dangerous sports or activities be it rock-climbing, deep-sea diving, fast car racing, gambling in casinos, one cannot but ask why? There is an element of the unknown, the frisson of not being in control that pumps adrenaline into the metabolism. One feels more alive, if but for an instant. There are innumerable ways people step out of their comfort zone in search of that fabled instant, the now timeless shorn of all thought and mixed emotion.

That period in hospital was not unlike an encounter between the surgeon’s impersonal and presumably final-word judgement and the supposed uncertainty that fear imparted by this death sentence. Death lurked behind the hospital door waiting for its entrance cue. Like a minotaur it waited patiently till my resilience evaporated and I was lost in a labyrinth of confusion. And yet, I loved this bitter sweet experience that was first briefly felt at the death of my mother. I had never felt so consistently alive. Where was the fear?

This thirst for instantality can and has been turned into ritual by cultures who seek a reignition of that splendid feeling of being alive and whole. One of the most obvious ones is bullfighting in Spain. Bull fighting is a mixture of dignified ceremony, uninhibited spectacle, a mood of uncertainty, the triumph of the hero over the obvious threat to survival — the dreaded bull especially bred for the fight to the death in the barricaded ring. The posturing, the flamboyant costumes, and the fixed progression of the ritual may seem ludicrous to some but to the matador it is deadly serious for his life is on the line; one mistake and he could be grievously injured or even killed. There is no tomorrow for the faint hearted, be it permanent injury or loss of face and consequent ridicule, or death; there is no hiding for the matador. So, when he struts upon the sandy earth ready to face the flower of the brutal vitality exuded by the bull, he is alone with his fear and courage and we can admire his moment of bravado. 

At the climactic moment after the dance of the cape that exhausts the bull, the matador is utterly still, focused and vulnerable. He stands before the bull, lacking all protective measures with a sword in both hands, and plunges them into the neck of the bull behind the deadly horns. If rightly done more often than not the bull falls dead on the spot. The matador proudly parades around the ring to the acclaim of the crowd. Nobody begrudges him this demonstration of part braggadocio aligned with relief. It is all part of the ceremony. He is the king if only for the hour and sovereign of all he surveys. We are his votaries who applaud his bravery and imagine we could do the same in our own idiosyncratic dreams.

When we reflect on one of our own personal crises, we are like the matador in our own small world. Every spiritual tradition that one may adhere to has these moments of transition when the old is transformed by the onset of a greater vision. Our fears of losing the old familiar patterns can be projected, for example, onto an imaginary bull, bear, lion, tiger or snake. Facing our fears we feel like kings or queens when a divine light infuses us as it inevitably will do if we continue to persevere and have faith in time tested rituals of prayer and meditation that conquer our ignorance. 

The question is how can we generate and maintain the sense of purpose under the shadow of death? How can we use the fear of death to our advantage? This is the subject of the next Letter.

___________

[11)https://isha.sadhguru.org/en/wisdom/article/mahabharat-ep39-yudhishthira-answers-yakshas-questions




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