A story · Yoga Vasishtha · Yoga Vasishtha — Stories of the Last Teaching

The Vidyadhara's Questions

Yoga Vasishtha 6.2.5

The story · English

Vasishtha once told me a story he had heard from the old sage Bhusunda, when they lived together on the top of Sumeru. He began with a comparison. A sensible person who looks for the truth, who governs their own nature and holds the senses back from their objects, will succeed in the end. A person with a twisted understanding and no command over themselves will no more reach a better state than someone can press oil out of sand. A little teaching sticks to a clean mind the way a drop of oil sticks to clean linen. On a hard heart even the finest lesson leaves no mark, like a pearl held against a gritty mirror.

Vasishtha had once asked Bhusunda, who lived alone in a cave on Meru, whether he had ever known a truly infatuated person, someone who did not know himself or his own soul. Bhusunda said yes. Long ago a Vidyadhara lived on a mountain at the edge of the horizon. He was worn out with constant toil, yet anxious to live long. So he took up austerities, vows and self-restraint, and won an unfading life that lasted through four kalpas. At the end of the fourth, his awareness burst open suddenly, the way emeralds seem to flash out of the ground when clouds roar. He thought: what stability is there in a world where everything is born, ages and dies away? I am ashamed to live like this.

Disgusted with the world's frailty, the Vidyadhara came to Bhusunda, bowed deeply, and was honoured in return. Then he put his questions. He said his body was fragile, yet its organs were hard as steel weapons, able to tear and to harm. His senses were dim and always led him into danger. His passions set fire to his good qualities and rose in waves of grief, while ignorance wrapped his mind in gloom. Only mastery over body, senses and heart, he said, brings real happiness, and no sense object can give it. Then he asked directly: tell me of the highest state, which has no growth or decay, no pain, no beginning and no end. He felt he had slept a long time and was now waking.

He went on to describe his life. Misfortune strikes even the fortunate, he said, as frost falls on tender lotus leaves. Beings are born only to die, like gnats. He had passed through one stage of life after another, cheated each time by small gains, never content with the present. He had walked in the garden of Chitra-ratha, slept under the wish-granting creepers of paradise, given away all his wealth, flown in heavenly cars, and sported in the groves of Meru. He had lain in the arms of his consorts and walked through the cities of kings. Looking back, he said, he found nothing of worth in any of it except the bitter sorrow in his heart. Everything had turned to ashes.

Then he went through his senses one by one. His eyes ran after every beautiful thing without asking whether it did him good. His nose chased fragrance as hard to rein in as an unruly horse. His tongue drove him to hunt for food among rocks where wild elephants and wolves roamed. His skin had to bear fire and sun. His ears, which should have loved good teaching, listened to idle talk, like a stag drawn to grass growing over a well. He had heard sweet music, seen mountains and seas and jewels, tasted six flavours served by lovely women, and smelled perfumes. For a thousand years he had enjoyed all this, and now it was dry and stale. Even ruling a kingdom and winning battles had given him nothing lasting. Demons who once ruled the three worlds had burned to ashes.

He wanted one gain that would leave nothing else to be wished for, and he would pursue it even through pain. He saw now that the senses are cunning hunters who lay snares in the forest of the world, and few people escape their poison. He called the body a battlefield, with egoism as the charioteer, desires as rioters, and the senses as the flag-bearers. It may be possible to split the skull of Indra's elephant Airavata, he said, but it is much harder to hold the senses within bounds. Whoever is not blown about like a straw by appetite has reached the excellence of the gods. If he could conquer the five senses, he could conquer everything. Reason alone can heal this sickness of the mind.

He gave one image after another for the senses: foul canals with stagnant water, dark snowy forests, hollow lotus stalks, seas full of pearls and also sharks, caves full of thorns and snakes, hollow dry sticks fit only for fuel, and potter's wheels spinning out fragile clay pots. Sensual pleasure, he said, brings an early death, and leaves friends grieving and sends the person back into rebirth again. Then he finished. He was sunk in a dangerous sea, and only Bhusunda could lift him out, because only the company of saints who have mastered their senses frees people from grief. Bhusunda replied warmly: well said, chief of the Vidyadharas. Good fortune has awakened you. Your intentions shine like gold melted clean in the fire of reason.

Bhusunda told him to say Om in assent, since what he taught came from long research. What you feel within as your ego, he said, is not your true self. Ego and the world are not real entities. All of it is the blissful God, who is neither the cause of your joy nor of your sorrow. The world is like water in a mirage, neither existing nor not existing. Then he drew a picture. The seed of the world is egoism. From it grows a huge tree: the senses are its roots, the sky its branches, stars its blossoms, moons its ripe fruit, Meru and Mandara its boughs, the seven oceans its ditches. Time circles it like worms sucking its sap. Ignorance is the soil, and all living beings are birds that perch on it.

Sun and moon are its two flowers, Bhusunda went on, and day and night the bees that hover over them. The wind is its breath, and self-consciousness is its pith. Ignorance stretches through the whole tree, from the underworld to the heavens, and it is unreal while seeming real. But the seed of egoism can be roasted in the fire of reason, and then it will not sprout again into new births. The thought of I and you creates the seed. The thought that there is no such I and you removes it. Think of the time before the world was made, he said, and ask where egoism was then. Those who work patiently to give up desire, as their teachers instruct, reach the highest state, just as a confectioner grows skilled by practice.

Bhusunda then told him the world is a wonder of the mind, and it exists not in outer space but within. A picture exists first in the painter's thought. In the same way, a vast palace appears to the imagination, with a thousand jewelled pillars, fountains, lotus lakes and wish-granting trees. In it great mountains are toys tossed about by children's breath, and the earth rolls like a die on a chess-board of the sky, with the sun and moon as king and queen, while the gods play. It is a shape in the mind that appears real, like many ornaments made of the same gold. When thought ceases, the world ends. So it is in your power, Bhusunda said, either to turn from enjoyment toward liberation, or to keep acting and go on through births and deaths. You have reached a purified state and will not fall back. Be silent, rest in the purity of your soul, and shut out what is unreal.

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