An Advaita Tale from BhAgavatam
In an earlier blog I was referring to BhAgavatam, an epic work by the Sage VyAsa, which gives case studies of different types of devotees. If the Upanishads were to be considered as the textual law, the purANa-s like BhAgavatam have to be called the case law, giving several illustrations of vedAnta in action. Such case studies are important examples for the seekers, because they demonstrate all the distractions, perils and pitfalls in the path of self-enquiry. These are in the form of tales, very often symbolic or allegorical in nature; sometimes with humans as players and sometimes animals or demons as the dramatis personae. There may or may not be any historicity in the tales but the philosophical message is clearly conveyed. BhAgavatam has been interpreted by both dualist and non-dualist writers, and revered by both. There is also a tradition to do pArAyaNam, which means reading a portion of the text every day (considering it as parA – supreme, ayanam – way of life).
The tales are related to the audience in a place called naimishAraNya, the meaning of which is also symbolic. The human mind is compared to the rim of a wheel (nemi in Sanskrit) which perennially moves. This was the original creation of Brahman and he left it to roll. It kept on rolling and came to a place called naimishAraNya. Symbolically, the place where mind stops is naimisha, i.e. a state of stillness, where the mind is receptive to instruction and ready for self enquiry.
Bhagavatam starts with a brief anecdote on Vyasa, the great sage. His son Suka, who was also a great sage, was once walking ahead of him in the forest. At that time the divine damsels were bathing in a nearby pool. They saw the young man, Suka, but did not mind his presence and continued bathing. But as Vyasa approached, they hastily covered themselves out of modesty. A surprised Vyasa asked why it was so, and the damsels told him that the son possessed vivikta dRRiShTi – the right knowledge of Self. He did not distinguish between male and female as he saw Brahman in everything. Vyasa, the father was still very much a man of the world, having bheda dRRiShTi – differentiating knowledge. Suka always walked naked as he had no sense of identification with the body, which was known to the divine women, as the commentator Vamsidhara explains. The fully dressed Vyasa, an elderly man, had not yet reached that level of detachment and that is why he was curious to know about their reaction to him, while the son hardly distinguished them.
A little while later, and before the composition of BhAgavatam, VyAsa, was in a pensive mood sitting on the banks of the river Saraswati, having the fore-knowledge of the deterioration of dharma in days to come and he was thinking of how to remedy it. At this stage sage Narada (the one who resolves such existential anxieties) approached him and came to know of the problem. He advised Vyasa to analyze the problem by himself, as Vyasa was himself an accomplished sage by then. He recalled how Vyasa had done a lot of work by then. He had edited the huge mass of Vedas and made them into four compact texts, he had written a huge work – MahabhArata (of which Gita is a small part) – and still he had not found peace. The predicament was clear; he had a lot of shravanam or theoretical knowledge, but it was not enough; he had not developed detachment yet. At this point Narada advised him to write about the tales of the devotees. This is the remedy for his grief at personal level and also the solution for Vyasa wanted to do for the world to guide the world.
This led to the composition of the work BhAgavatam. There is a concept of avatAra – coming down of god – in the Indian mythology. This is for the purpose of restoration of good in mankind. As students of advaita we know that it is not the Brahman (the formless, attributeless and changeless consciousness) which comes down, but the god who has been accepted at the functional level, the one who can take any shape or form depending on the need of the time. Varieties of such forms, in human and non-human shapes can be seen in BhAgavatam. Of these, the avatAra of Krishna has been most popular because of its variety, playfulness and colorfulness.
There is one anecdote of Krishna which is most talked about and frequently misunderstood, the one relating to the gopikA-s, the women of Krishna’s clan. The whole episode happened when Krishna was about ten years of age and when the gopi-s were about six to seven years, as is clearly seen in the text. Krishna by that time had exhibited many miracles even as a suckling baby. The present episode has to be seen in this background.
The young girls go for bathing in a pool on a festive occasion, praying to goddess Katyayani to make them the brides of Krishna (this is a vratam, a practice in which girls offer worship to get eligible husbands). Krishna notices them in the pool, takes away their clothes kept on the pool side and sits on a tree and directs them to come one by one and take their clothes. The girls initially hesitate, but Krishna tells that unless they come out and request he would not give the clothes. It is an atrocious act superficially speaking, but the message conveyed by the author is otherwise. The gopikA-s represent the jIva the individual souls, who have to lose their sense of identification with the body and see everything as Brahman. Here again the imagery of clothes is similar to what we saw in the Suka’s anecdote above. Clothes are a symbol for dehAbhimAna – the sense of identification of Self with the body – and Krishna is the one who has to give them knowledge by taking away such identification. Etymologically, Krishna is ‘one who attracts or pulls or takes away’ (karShati iti kRRiShnaH). The word gopikA ordinarily means a woman of the gopa clan, the clan of cowherds to which Krishna belonged. Etymologically, the one who wants to protect or hide herself (AtmAnaM gopAyatum ichChati iti gopikA) is gopikA. The need to protect oneself arises only when one sees oneself as different from others. Anyat pashyati anyat vijAnAti, sees and knows things as different from oneself, as the bRRihadAraNyaka Upanishad says. This vision is the cause of fear and a j~nAni is one who transcends such fear. Clothes symbolizing ego or self-consciousness is seen elsewhere also in the Indian texts.
The next five chapters in BhAgavatam (book 10) reveal the symbolism with great clarity, particularly the prayer by the gopI-s, famously known as gopI-gIta. Sage VyAsa wrote BhAgavatam in the age of intense faith creating a mythical atmosphere perhaps around a historical character. Really speaking, the amorous sports described in these chapters are impossible for a human and unnecessary for Brahman. For Vyasa, Krishna was an avatAra, a descent of god on earth, and conveying a philosophical message through a romantic myth was part of the collective unconscious (as Carl Jung would call, or collective vAsanA in advaita language). In fact it is termed as madhura bhakti – romantic devotion, which has generated an impressive cultural and artistic tradition.
The only danger is with a teacher going into raptures describing the playful deeds and interpreting the text without the philosophical background, or with a poet using his poetic license (which has been done to some extent by later poets) to make the tale pedestrian. Like most of the Indian myths, there is philosophy woven into a tale and the commentators of these texts (Sridhara and Vamsidhara in the case of BhAgavatam) have left no doubt about the symbolism.
