Punya and Pavana (second and last)

July 23, 2005

The full story, found in Swami Venkatesananda’s Vasishta’s Yoga, not only delightfully delineates the transitoriness of bodily existence, but also describes the way to extricate ourselves from its hold.

VASISTHA continued:

O Rama, in this connection there is an ancient legend which I shall narrate to you.

In the continent known as Jambudvipa there is a great mountain known as Mahendra. In the forests on the slopes of that mountain many holy men and sages lived. They had in fact brought down onto that mountain the river Vyoma Ganga (or Akasha Ganga) for their bath, drinking, etc. On the bank of this river there lived a holy man named Dirghatapa who was, as his name implies, the very embodiment of ceaseless austerity.

This ascetic had two sons named Punya and Pavana. Of these Punya had reached full enlightenment, but Pavana, though he had overcome ignorance, had not yet reached full enlightenment and hence he had semi-wisdom.

With the inexorable passage of invisible and intangible time, the sage Dirghatapa (who had freed himself from every form of attachment and craving) had grown in age and, even as a bird flies away from its cage, abandoned the body and reached the state of utter purity. Using the yogic method she had learned from him, his wife, too, followed him.

At this sudden departure of the parents Pavana was sunk in grief and he wailed aloud inconsolably. Punya, on the other hand, performed the funeral ceremonies but remained unmoved by the bereavement. He approached his grieving brother, Pavana.

PUNYA said: Brother, why do you bring this dreadful sorrow upon yourself? The blindness of ignorance alone is the cause of this torrential downpour of tears from your eyes. Our father has departed from here along with our mother to that state of liberation or the highest state, which is natural to all beings and is the very being of those who have overcome the self. Why do you grieve when they have returned to their own nature? You have ignorantly bound yourself to the notions of ‘father’ and ‘mother’; and yet you grieve for those who are liberated from such ignorance! He was not your father, nor was she your mother, nor were you their son. You have had countless fathers and mothers. They have had countless children. Countless have been your incarnations! And, if you wish to grieve over

the death of parents, why do you not grieve for all those countless beings unceasingly?

Noble one, what you see as the world is only an illusory appearance. In truth there are neither friends nor relatives. Hence, there is neither death nor separation. All these wonderful signs of prosperity that you see around you are tricks, some of which last for three days and others for five days! With your keen intelligence enquire into the truth: abandon notions of ‘I’, ‘you’, etc., and of ‘He is dead’, ‘He is gone’. All these are your own notions, not truth.

PUNYA continued: These false notions of father, mother, friend, relative, etc., are swept aside by wisdom as dust is swept away by wind. These relatives are not based on truth, they are but words! If one is thought of as a friend, he is a friend; if he is thought of as the other, he is the other! When all this is seen as the one omnipresent being, where is the distinction between the friend and the other?

Brother, enquire within yourself: this body is inert and it is composed of blood, flesh, bones, etc.; what is the ‘I’ in it? If you thus enquire into the truth, you will realize that there is nothing which is you, nor anything which is ‘I’. What is called Punya or Pavana is but a false notion.

However, if you still think ‘I am’, then in the incarnations past you have had very many relatives. Why do you not grieve for their death? You had many swan relatives when you were a swan, many tree relatives when you were a tree, many lion relatives when you were a lion, many fish relatives when you were a fish. Why do you not weep for them? You were a prince, you were a donkey, you were a peepul tree and then a banyan tree. You were a brahmana, you were a fly and also a mosquito. You were an ant, you were a scorpion for half a year, you were a bee, and now you are my brother. In these many other embodiments you have taken birth again and again countless times.

Even so, I have had very many embodiments. I see them all, and your embodiments too, through my subtle intelligence, which is pure and clear visioned. I was a bird, a crane, a frog, a tree, a camel, a king, a tiger and now I am your elder brother. For ten years I was an eagle, for five months I was a crocodile and for a hundred years I was a lion. Now I am your elder brother. I remember all these and many more embodiments I have passed through in a state of ignorance and delusion. In all these embodiments there were countless relatives. Whom shall I mourn? Considering this, I do not grieve.

All along this path of life relatives are strewn like dry leaves on a forest path. What can be the proper cause for grief or joy in this world, brother? Let us therefore abandon all these ignorant notions and remain at peace. Abandon the notion of the world which arises in your mind as the ‘I’. And, be still, neither going up nor falling down! You have no unhappiness, no birth, no father, no mother: you are the Self and naught else.

The sages perceive the middle path, they see what is at the moment, they are at peace, they are established in witness consciousness, they shine like a lamp in darkness, in whose light events happen (without the lamp being involved).

VASISTHA continued:

Thus instructed by his brother, Pavana was awakened. Both of them remained as enlightened beings, endowed with wisdom and direct realization. They roamed the forest doing what they pleased but without blemish. In course of time, they abandoned their embodiment and attained final liberation, as a lamp without fuel.

Craving is the root of all sorrow, O Rama, and the only intelligent way is to renounce all cravings completely is not to indulge them.

Even as fire burns all the more fiercely when fed with fuel, thoughts multiply by thinking. Thoughts cease only by the extinction of thinking.

Hence, ascend the chariot of non-thinking and with a compassionate and limitless vision behold the worlds sunk in sorrow. Arise, O Rama.

This indeed is the Brahmic state pure, free from craving and from illness. Attaining this, even one who has been a fool is freed from delusion. He who roams the earth with wisdom as his friend and awareness as the female companion, does not become deluded.

There is nothing of value in the three worlds, nothing that one may wish to have which cannot be had by the mind free from craving.

They who are cured of the fever of craving do not subject themselves to the successive rise and fall inherent in embodied existence.

The mind attains fulfillment only by utter dispassion, not by filling it with desires and hopes. To those who are devoid of any attachment or craving, the three worlds are as wide as the footprint of a calf and a whole world-cycle is but a moment.

The coolness of the ice pack on top of the Himalayas is nothing compared to the coolness of the mind of the sage free from craving. The light of the full moon is not as bright nor is the ocean as full nor the face of the goddess of prosperity as radiant as the mind free from craving.

When all the desires and hopes, which are like the branches of the tree of the mind are cut down, the mind resumes its own nature.

If you resolutely deny refuge to these hopes and cravings in your mind, then there is no fear for you.

When the mind is free from movements of thought (which are motivated by hopes or cravings) then it becomes no-mind, and that is liberation.

The thinking that is brought about by hopes and cravings is known as ‘vrtti’ (movement of thought); when hopes and cravings are given up, there is no vrtti either.

When the aggravating cause is removed, the effect ceases to be. Hence, for restoring peace to the mind, remove the disturbing cause, which is hope or craving.

THE MAHARSHI

September/October 2004Vol. 14 - No. 5

Produced & Edited byDennis HartelDr. Anil K. Sharm

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