What difficulty is there in this?

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Das Ganu was anxious to render even a Sanskrit Upanishad, namely,

Isavasya Upanishad, into Marathi. This famous Upanishad consists of only 18

verses. It is full of great thoughts and has been considered by Mahatma Gandhi

to be peculiarly important. Mahatma Gandhi said that if the whole of Hindu

spiritual literature were gone leaving only this Isa Upanishad, the whole of

Hindu dharma could be reconstructed with this alone. Though the Upanishad has

received such high encomia, it is a very difficult and tough Upanishad even for

separation of sentences and phrases in it, and much more for the interpretation

of the same. Different writers have adopted widely different courses. Taking

even the very first verse, the punctuation varies. Having so many difficulties

in the way of his ambition, Das Ganu Maharaj went to Baba. Baba said, What

difficulty is there in this? You had better go, as usual, to Kaka Dixits

bungalow in Ville Parle. And there that (cooly girl) Malkarni, will give you

the meaning. People would laugh at a great pandit like Das Ganu getting

interpretation of an Upanishad from a cooly

girl. But all the same Das Ganu went to Kakas bungalow. He slept there. When he

woke up in the morning, he heard a girl (it must be the Malkarni mentioned by

Baba, he thought) singing songs in great joy. She was praising some orange

coloured silk sari, wondering at its fineness and the beauty of its borders, and

the floral embroidery on it. Then he just peeped to see who the songster was.The

songster had no sari. She wore a rag which was not silk, nor orange coloured,

had no borders and no embroidery. He pitied the girl and got a friend to give

her a sari-a small cheap sari. She wore it just one day, and went about enjoying

it. But the very following day, she cast it aside, again wore her tatters and

again began to sing joyously the song about the orange coloured sari and its

beauty. Then Das Ganu understood the Upanishad. He found out that the girls

happiness lay

not in the external sari which she had ‘thrown away (tena tyaktena, which

means, that being thrown away) but in herself. And Isavasya Upanishad says the

same thing. All this world, says the first verse, ‘is covered by the

Maya of Iswara. So enjoy bliss, not by having the externals, but by rejecting

the externals (Tenatyaktena)Tena Tyaktena might mean being content with what God

gives you. The girl was happy as she was contented. Thus Baba taught Isa

Upanishad to Ganu through a cooly girl. Babas ways of teaching were and are

peculiar and different in the case of different

individuals.