A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of Calm

Gadhi Finds It Was True

Yoga Vasishtha 5.47

The story · English

Gadhi's mind slowly settled, the way a stormy sea settles when its waves die down. He came back to himself like a man waking from sleep, or a drunkard growing sober. He was standing in the water, still at his ritual bath, the same Gadhi as before. He lifted his feet out and climbed onto the bank, as a lotus bud lifts its head when the frost is gone. The water, the sky and the earth were all as he had left them. Only what he had seen was astonishing. He stood a long time with knitted brows and staring eyes, asking himself what he was, and what he had been doing all this while. Then he said, this was a weakness of mine, and it has shown me a delusion.

On the bank he began to question what he remembered. Where was the mother and wife who had stood by him at his death? He was unmarried. He knew nothing of a wife's love, as a Brahman knows nothing of forbidden liquor. He was far from his homeland, and knew no friends or kin to go back to and die among. All of it, he decided, was dream and magic, and our minds are like wild beasts roaming the forest of error. He went home to his house in the woods and brooded for some days. Then a Brahman arrived, weary from travel, and Gadhi welcomed him with fruits and flower syrup. They said their evening prayers and lay down on beds of leaves and grass, talking quietly about holy things.

Gadhi noticed how thin and tired the guest looked and asked the reason. The guest said he would tell the plain truth, not a traveling storyteller's lies. He had lived in the rich northern land of the Kirs, honored by the people and well fed. There someone had told him, as gossip, that a chandala had once been king there for eight years. He asked the villagers, and all of them said the same: it was true. But the king was found out in the end, and he burned himself on a pyre, and hundreds of Brahmans burned themselves after him. Hearing this, the guest left for Prayaga to do penance, and he had fasted three days and nights, breaking the fast only today. That was why he was so lean.

Gadhi questioned him a hundred ways, and the guest answered every question the same. Gadhi lay awake until sunrise, his heart pounding. In the morning he bathed, said his prayers, and took leave of the guest. Then he thought it over, bewildered. The part about his death among his family had surely been a delusion. But the part about becoming a chandala was now confirmed, since the Brahman had done penance just for entering a chandala city. He decided to go and learn the whole truth for himself, with an unafraid mind. He set out at once, crossing many strange countries as swiftly as a swollen stream in the rains, until he reached the land of the Bhotas, and found himself among a people whose ways were nothing like his own.

Near it he saw a city exactly as in his dream. At its far edge lay the chandala quarter, like a pit of hell. He saw his own likeness in the faces of the chandalas. Then he found his own house, flooded with rainwater, sprouting barley and brambles, its roof gone, its bed barely visible. White bones of bulls, cows, buffaloes and horses lay scattered across the yard, the remains of animals he had hunted. Hollow skulls, once his cups and bowls, still stood on the ground, full of rain. Dried strings of entrails lay like parched plants. He gazed long at the place, which looked like a skeleton left unburied. Then, stunned, he walked to the nearby village and asked someone whether he remembered the old chandala who had lived out there.

The villagers were as startled by his odd question as doctors by a strange complaint. Yes, they said, a hideous chandala named Katanjala had lived there. He had a large family, as many as the fruits of a mango tree. But fate took them all, the way a forest fire takes a mountain. He left his homeland, went to the city of the Kirs, and became their king for eight years. When the citizens learned his birth, they drove him out like a poisonous tree from a garden, and he burned himself on a pyre. Then they asked Gadhi why he cared so much, and whether the man had been his friend. Gadhi spent a month going from house to house asking questions, and told them his own dream. Then he went home, ashamed and astonished, the memory sitting on his mind like the dark spot on the moon.

Still restless, Gadhi went back to the ruined chandala place and walked among the huts. The scattered bones looked like imps gathered round trees in a burial ground. Here, he remembered, the chandala ate monkey meat and drank with his friends. Here he slept on a lion skin beside his dark-skinned wife. Hounds had been tied to a withered tree. Children had played in the dust and sung to bamboo pipes. Wedding parties had danced as loud as the sea. Bamboo bird cages still hung high. Then he traveled on past the borders of Butan, over rivers, rocks and deserts, to the snowy mountain and the great city beyond. There he asked the citizens about the chandala king, and they told him the same tale: eight years of reign, chosen by the realm's elephant, and burned on a pyre twelve years ago.

Gadhi saw the king of the city ride out with his attendants, and he recognized him as Vishnu, whom he had seen in his own devotion. The dust of the procession darkened the sky, and Gadhi remembered his own old pomp as king. He saw the same Kir women, the same fans, the same elephants. He said, this is a dream that looks real when I am awake. I must have asked Vishnu to show me maya, and this is his answer. He went to a mountain cave and lived a year on waterfall water held in his palm. Vishnu came to him, clear as an autumn lake, and said, you have now seen the net of delusion. What more do you want? Gadhi asked why a delusion could be seen with the open eyes, as if it were real.

Vishnu answered that nothing exists outside the mind. Earth, sea, hills and sky are held in the mind as the fruit and flowers are held in a seed. Desires make a thousand appearances, and when desires are rooted out, nothing is left behind. So the guest, the journey, the ruins, the villagers and the city of the Kirs were all pictures in Gadhi's mind. He had actually rested in this cave on his way, fallen asleep, and dreamed it. Gadhi went back to the Bhotas and Kirs for six months and found their accounts unchanged. Vishnu came again and explained how many minds can hold one thought at once, as a crowd takes up one opinion. A real chandala, Katanjaka, had indeed lived and died there. Gadhi's mind had taken that life for his own. Vishnu told him to do his duty and know his true self.

Vishnu vanished. Gadhi, still perplexed, prayed once more and begged to be freed from his error. Vishnu said the world is an enchantment born of forgetting the self. The thought of the whole chandala's life had filled Gadhi's mind while he stood in the water, and he had mistaken it for his own. Only one who knows I am all in all escapes such mistakes. He told Gadhi to go to a sacred bower on the mountain and practice austerities for ten years. Gadhi, ashamed of how he had nursed those false thoughts, went to Rishyamukha and sat like a rain cloud on a mountaintop. He gave up every desire. At the end of the tenth year he knew his true self, free of fear and sorrow, and he wandered the world a liberated man, calm as the full moon.

कथा · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Gadhi's Vision · Yoga Vasishtha 5.44
• Next: Uddalaka's Meditation · Yoga Vasishtha 5.51
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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