A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of the World Going On

Dasura in the Kadamba Tree

Yoga Vasishtha 4.48

The story · English

Rama asked Vasishtha for the story of Dasura, a tale about how the world is built of air and imagination, hollow right through. Vasishtha agreed to tell it. In the rich province of Magadha, he said, there is a forest of kadamba trees, loud with birds of every color. Fields of grain spread out around it. Lotuses bloom along the streams, and village girls sing in the groves. At the foot of a mountain there is a quiet corner of moss and shrubs, dusted red by the wind with fallen flower petals. Above that spot rises a sacred hill, and on it stands a kadamba tree crowded with birds. A holy man of great austerity lived there, sitting on a branch, calm and free of wanting. His name was Dasura.

Rama wanted to know how Dasura came to live in a tree. Vasishtha explained that his father was the sage Saraloman, who lived on the same mountain. Dasura was his only son, and he had lived beside his father in the forest since boyhood. After many years Saraloman left his body, the way a bird leaves its nest. Dasura, alone in the forest, cried as loudly as a heron crying for its mate. He began to fade like a lotus in winter. The spirit of the wood saw him and took pity. It spoke to him without showing itself: "Why do you weep like someone who doesn't know better? Everything here is born and then passes away. Even Brahma will pass away. Don't mourn your father. Everything rises and falls, like the sun." Dasura wiped his red eyes and fell silent, like a peacock hushed by thunder.

He rose and performed his father's funeral rites with a devoted heart. Then he turned to his own practice, keeping his vows and the fire rituals of the Veda. But he did not yet know the one reality that fills everything. So his mind found no rest in ritual, and the earth itself seemed stained to him. He felt the ground was polluted and could not settle anywhere on it. Trees, he reasoned, grow from that ground but are not cursed by it. So he made a vow: "I will practice on the branches, and rest there like the birds." High in the tree he lit a blazing fire below him. He was about to cut pieces from his own shoulder and offer them to it. The god of fire thought: if the gods receive their food through fire, then a Brahman's flesh would burn their own mouths.

So the god of fire appeared before him in full blaze, the way the sun appears to Brihaspati. He spoke gently: "Young Brahman, take the boon you want from me, the way an owner takes treasure from his chest." Dasura praised the god with a hymn and offered him flowers. Then he said: "Lord, I can find no holy place on earth. The earth is full of wrongdoing and of those who do it. Please make the tops of trees my only dwelling." The god said, "So be it," from his flaming mouth, and vanished, the way daylight leaves a lotus. Dasura was deeply content. His face shone like the full moon, and his smile opened slowly, like a white lotus when the moonbeams touch it.

Dasura stayed in that tree, which rose so high it gave the tired horses of the noon sun a place to rest. Its branches spread a canopy over the sky, and its blossoms looked up like open eyes. Gentle winds shook pollen from its hanging tufts, which hummed with bees. The forest below was alive. Peacocks sat in the treetops like rainbows. White deer stood half hidden in the thickets, like moons. Cuckoos, parrots and chakoras sang together, and creepers swayed like dancers. Elephants slept beneath the boughs while the stars shone above. Birds flew above, nested in the middle and fed on the ground, so the whole wood seemed like a city with people on every level. The tree shaded travelers and fed them. It stood like a garden of paradise, with grottos of flowering vines below it.

Dasura felt as if he were living on a hill of flowers. From the airy crown of the tree he looked in every direction, like Vishnu surveying the worlds. He sat on a branch that reached the sky, without fear and without desire. He saw a far river shine like a gold necklace. Distant hilltops rose like the breasts of the earth. The whole sky began to look to him like a fairy queen veiled in a blue cloud. Green leaves were her dress, flower clusters her garlands, and lakes her water pots. The scent of lotuses was her breath. The waterfalls were the anklets on her feet. The sun and moon hung at her ears like earrings, and the seas were her mirrors. Clouds were her robe. In every one of the ten directions he saw her.

After that he lived on as the Kadamba Dasura, known across the forest for his hard devotion. Seated on the leaves of the creepers that grew along the branch, he took the lotus posture and called his mind back into himself. He still knew nothing of true spiritual worship. He wanted a reward, so he performed sacrifices in his mind alone. In imagination he offered the sacred fire, the horse sacrifice, and the bull and human offerings, and in his mind he paid the priests their fees. He kept this up for ten full years. Slowly his mind grew clear and wide. His ignorance fell away, and the dust of worldly desire left his heart. Then he saw a woman of the forest standing beside his mossy seat.

She was made of light, dressed in flowers, with large, bright eyes turned toward him. She smelled of blue lotus. Dasura asked, "Who are you? You look like a creeper heavy with flowers." She answered, "May you get what you wish. Whatever is hard to win in this world, great people can win by effort. I am a goddess of this forest. I came to see the festival that the forest goddesses hold on this thirteenth day of the month of Chaitra. I saw my friends celebrating, and I felt sad to be childless among them. You are accomplished, so I have come to ask you to give me a son. If you refuse, I will throw myself into the flames." Dasura smiled and gave her a flower with his own hand. "Go and worship Siva for a month. You will have a boy as lovely as a bud, when this season comes round. He will take up austerities and become a seer like me."

Her face brightened, and he promised to do what was needed. She went home, and Dasura went on with his meditation through months, seasons and years. After a long while the goddess came back, and with her was a boy of twelve with a face as bright as the moon. She bowed and sat before the sage. Her voice was as sweet as a bee's hum to a mango tree. "Here is the son we both wished for. I have taught him everything in the Veda and its branches. The only thing he hasn't been taught is the highest knowledge, the kind that frees the soul from coming back into this world of trouble. Please teach him. Who would want to leave their own child ignorant?" Dasura told her to leave the child with him and go her own way.

She left. The boy stayed at his father's side as a pupil, the way Aruna waits on the sun. He kept to his austerities, and for a long time he lived in that place, known as the sage's son. Dasura taught him with stories and tales, with examples that could be seen, and with the accounts and proofs found in the Veda and Vedanta. The boy listened without worry. He learned to judge things by their causes, using what he saw, what he could infer, what could be compared, and what the scriptures said. His father did not try to sound elegant. He used plain reasoning and correct words to plant true knowledge in the boy's mind, the way a cloud's low rumble tells the peacock that rain is on its way.

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In this book

• Before: Dama, Vyala and Kata: The Demons Who Could Not Fear · Yoga Vasishtha 4.25
• Next: Dasura's Tale of the Air Born King · Yoga Vasishtha 4.52
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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