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

Chudala Awakens

Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.77

The story · English

Vasishtha turned to Rama with a piece of advice. Keep your eye on one thing, he said, the way Bhagiratha did. A man who runs down many roads ends up in the middle of none of them. Gather your restless mind like a bird flying loose, and hold it close to your chest. Then he offered an example, the old prince Sikhidhwaja, who never wavered from his purpose. Rama asked who Sikhidhwaja was and how he held so steady. Vasishtha said that in an earlier Dwapara age there lived a loving couple, and that the same pair would be born again in the same way and place. Rama doubted it. How can the past be the same as the present? Vasishtha answered that creation turns in fixed rounds, and that things which came before return, some in their old shape and some only in likeness, the way waves of one ocean keep taking new forms.

So Vasishtha told of Sikhidhwaja, a prince of Malava. He was handsome, calm, brave and quiet by nature. He performed sacrifices, supported the poor, studied the sastras and listened to the sacred teachings. He carried his knowledge without boasting, and he would not so much as touch a woman, treating them all like straws. His father died when he was only sixteen, and the boy took up the whole realm. He defeated his enemies on every side and ruled so justly that his people lived at peace. His ministers were wise, and his own mind was bright. Years passed, and he grew into his youth the way spring comes in with all its colour.

Then one spring evening, walking under a bright moon, Sikhidhwaja saw blossoms glowing in the arbours and heard bees humming over the bushes. Soft breezes carried the scent of flowers, and a longing rose in him for someone he had never met. He wondered when he would swing in his garden with a young wife, play with her among the lotuses, and hold her in his arms. He wandered from garden to forest to lakeside with these thoughts, and he lost interest in everything but talk of love. His ministers, who read the signs of their king as part of their work, met to discuss a marriage. They chose the young daughter of the king of Syrastra, and she was married to him. Her name was Chudala, and she was a worthy match for him in every way.

Chudala opened to her husband the way a lotus opens to sunrise, and he made her bloom as the moon does a blue lotus. They were happy together, so much so that he left the business of the kingdom to his ministers and gave himself to her company. They played in swings and pleasure ponds, strolled under sandalwood and mandara trees, and rode far into forests lined with jasmine. Whatever they did, they did together. They also taught each other. She had been trained in learning from childhood, and she shared the sastras with him. She taught him dancing and music, and he taught her what he knew. Over time they seemed to share one heart and one soul, like two bodies of a single person. They still kept the laws, looked after their people, and shone side by side like two moons.

Years went round, and the pleasures of youth began to lose their taste. The couple saw age creeping up on them. They thought: our bodies are as frail as sea foam and as sure to fall as ripe fruit. Life drips away day by day, like water slipping through an open hand. Greed grows even as youth runs off like a mountain stream. Pleasure is brief and often painful, and the body is a heap of things that rot. What delight in this world never turns stale? They decided to look for something that would hold up through every stage of life and cure every ill that comes with living. That something, they agreed, was knowledge of the self. They gave themselves to the study of spiritual truth, reading, talking it over, and meditating, and Chudala listened to the teachers day and night.

Chudala turned the question inward. Whether I act or rest, she thought, I find only one self in my clear mind. Where does this sense of me come from, and where does it live? Not in the body, which knows nothing of itself. Not in the organs, which belong to the body and are as dull as it is. The mind drives them the way a bat drives a ball, so the mind must be a kind of matter too. Even the firm will behind our actions is only a force at work, like a sling that sends a pebble flying. And the ego that says I did this has no substance of its own, any more than a ghost does. She went on, down through the life force in the body to the heart. Each of these, she saw, works only by borrowed power. What remained was the awareness that lights them all.

She thought on it for a long while, and at last she cried out quietly that she had found the one thing worth knowing. Everything else, she saw, was a rung on the way to it, and the rest was as empty as a second moon in the sky. There is only one pure awareness, without equal and without decay. The world appears in it the way waves rise and fall in the sea, or the way gold takes the shape of different jewels. Then she turned this on herself. This awareness has no birth or death and cannot be broken or burned. I am that, she thought, with no separate self. What delusion could reach me now? She felt herself absorbed in eternity, calm as a white cloud in an autumn sky. Her mind no longer moved with love or fear, pride or pleasure.

After that Chudala lived each day in a quiet rapture, turned within. She wanted nothing and hated nothing. She had crossed the wide gulf of the world and gotten free of her doubts, and she rested in the supreme soul after her long weariness. People spoke her name as a model of perfection. She stayed apart, like an old bull on a mountaintop who has found a green meadow and no longer cares about the world. In her solitude she grew fresh as a new plant, and her face was like a flower just opened. One day Sikhidhwaja saw her and was struck with wonder. He said: how is it that you have your youthful bloom again, like a plant in spring? You shine brighter than the world under a full moon. You look like someone who has drunk the elixir of life and gotten everything she wanted.

Sikhidhwaja went on. I see that your mind disdains every pleasure, he said. It is cool and calm, deep as the sea, and it treats the three worlds like straws and wants nothing from them. Next to your inner joy, earthly pleasure is as dry as a desert beside an ocean of milk. Your limbs were once as tender as plantain shoots, and now you seem strong in body and mind. You look the same as before, yet you seem to have become another being, as a plant becomes a tree through the seasons. So tell me, he asked. Have you drunk the drink of the gods? Have you won an empire or the philosopher's stone, or gained immortality through yoga? Have you found something more precious than the three worlds, something no one else has been able to reach, my blue-eyed lady?

Chudala answered him gently. I have not lost my old form, she said, and I have not become someone new. I am your wife, as I always was. I have let go of what is untrue and taken hold of what is real. I know what truly exists, and I know that all the nothings of the world appear and then vanish into nothing. I am as content with pleasures as without them, and neither good nor bad can stir me. I take my delight in one empty, unbounded presence that has settled in my heart, so the royal gardens no longer move me. I am this and not this, the all and nothing in particular. I wish for no pleasure and fear no pain. I see that all my eyes and mind perceive is nothing in itself. Within me I see what no sense can reach and no thought can grasp, and that bright vision is what makes me shine to you.

कथा · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: Bhagiratha Brings Down the Ganga · Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.74
• Next: The Miserly Kirata · Yoga Vasishtha 6.1.83
• All of Yoga Vasishtha · Ask Krishna about it

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