May 25, 2004, 12.00am IST
Pranav Khullar.
The Ramayana is the story of Rama. But more significantly, the epic provides a peephole into Vedantic wisdom on the nature of existence, reality and governance.
Vasishta’s sagacious discourse to prince Rama was offered at a moment of confusion and crisis in the young prince’s life, when he was beginning to feel a surge of vairagya at a tender age. While extolling the vairagya state of Rama, Vasishta initiates Rama into the deeper ontological questions of existence and the nature of the mind.
Vasishta begins by emphasising moral excellence, a pre-requisite for any true seeker. He makes a metaphorical comparison of peace, discrimination, contentment and company of sages, to the four sentinels guarding the gate of moksha. A sadhak is to cultivate these traits to prevent the mind from getting distracted. He discusses the nature of existence and role of the mind therein, through a series of anecdotes, the principal among them being the story of Sambarika, a siddha or self-realised soul who arrives at the court of King Lavana.
Sambarika puts the king into a trance, and the king sees himself as a chandala who is born, lives and marries in the community, has children and lives to be 60 years. In the end he immolates himself, unable to face further depravation. At this point, the king awakes from his stupor. He realises that his mind has conjured up the entire 60-year episode into a trance-span of two hours.
The world of phenomena is nothing but a creation of the mind, a jugglery which is to be detected through atma-vichara or self-introspection and analysis.
Vasishta postulates some aspects of Vedanta which would later be formulated in detail by Sankara and others. He details the position of the individual soul vis-a-vis Brahmn, comparing it to a universal mirror which reflects the world as it is, with Brahmn alone being the substratum of this existence.
Vasishta reinforces the imaginary nature of the universe by narrating this story: A meditating Sukracharya gets distracted by a celestial nymph, and slips into a reverie that leads him to attachments, a series of births, till he is ‘rescued’ from the twilight state and shown his true nature as the meditating Sukra.
Rama is called upon to follow the example of Uddalaka, the Upanishadic sage who practised pranava yoga to master his mind and senses and who attained sattwa samanya or pure consciousness by withdrawing into the self. Vasishta then narrates the poignant tale of King Sikhidhwaja and his wife Chudalai.
King Sikhidhwaja decides to renounce his kingdom on an impulse of vai-ragya, to find the ultimate reality, despite the pleading of his wife Chudalai — a yogi herself — not to abdicate his responsibilities. She endeavours to teach the true meaning of detachment to her husband, through the yogic persona of Kumbha Muni. This tale encapsulates the entire spirit of the Yoga Vasishta, as Chudalai helps her husband to realise the true meaning of detachment — through an elaborate understanding of the mind as the seat of illusion. Sage Vasishta now exhorts Rama to adopt the path of karma or duty, dissuading him from renunciation, in much the same manner as Chudalai directs the king in the parable.
As an ancient and pioneering literary-philosophical text on the Vedanta, the Yoga Vasishta could be called the forerunner of the Bhagavad Gita in its convergence of the paths of jnana and karma.
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