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This story begins at an hour in a hermitage when the great sage Vyasa was churning the fire-sticks, the arani, to kindle the flame for his rite. At that very moment an apsara named Ghritachi passed before him. Seeing the dark-eyed beauty, Vyasa was thrown into confusion and thought that this daughter of the gods was not for one such as him. The apsara too, seeing him unsettled, grew afraid that he might lay a curse on her, and taking the form of a female parrot she flew away. The instant he saw her in the shape of a bird, wonder filled his mind. For all his steadiness he could not master that restless mind, and as he went on churning, his radiant seed spilled onto the very fire-sticks in his hands. From that wood there appeared a boy as lovely in form as Vyasa himself, as though a fire had blazed up at the pouring of clarified butter into the offering.
Ganga herself came and began to bathe the infant in her waters, flowers rained down from the sky, the gods sounded their kettledrums, and the apsaras rose into dance. Lords of the gandharvas such as Vishvavasu, Narada, and Tumburu sang at his birth, and down from the heavens came a divine staff, a water-pot, and a black antelope skin. Because he had seen the form of the shuki, the parrot, Vyasa gave the boy the name Shuka. The boy grew to his full size in a single moment, and Vyasa, who knew the rules of sacred learning, performed his thread ceremony. All the Vedas, with their every secret, stood present before him just as they lived in his father. Taking Brihaspati for his teacher, Shukadeva kept the discipline of the celibate student in the guru’s house, studied all the Vedas and the codes of dharma, offered the parting gift to his teacher, and returned to his father.
The refusal to marry
Vyasa embraced his returned son with love, breathed in the scent of his brow, and after some days raised the matter of his marriage. He said, my son, marry now, become a householder, and worship the gods and the ancestors; there is no good passage for a man without a son, so set me free of my debt. But the dispassionate Shukadeva folded his hands and said, father, teach your pupil the knowledge of what is real. Where in this world of men is there a happiness free of calamity? Take a wife, and I fall under her power; what happiness can there be for a man who has lost his freedom? A man may sometimes slip loose from chains of iron or of wood, yet he never slips loose from the bond of son and wife. This body stays filled with dung and urine, and a woman’s body is the same; what person of discernment would wish to love it? I was not born of a womb; how then should my mind settle on the pleasures that come of the womb? So give me that knowledge which will guard me from the fear of this serpent that is the world.
Hearing these well-reasoned words from his son, Vyasa fell into worry and tears began to run from his eyes. Then he explained that a home is neither a prison-house nor a cause of bondage; a man who is free in his mind becomes free even while he lives as a householder. The householder who earns his wealth by just means, who tends the sacred fire, who speaks the truth and keeps himself pure, wins release even while dwelling at home; teachers like Vasishtha too took refuge in this very stage of life. He gave examples. Vishvamitra, who had practiced austerity without food for three thousand years, was bewitched at the sight of Menaka, and from that union Shakuntala was born; even his own father Parashara had been struck by the arrows of desire at the sight of a fisherman’s daughter; even Brahma had been thrown into agitation at the sight of his own daughter. Therefore, to win victory over the powerful senses, a man should first become a householder, and only in old age take up austerity. But Shukadeva still would not agree.
The Devi Bhagavata and the road to Mithila
Then Vyasa said, my son, read this Shrimad Devi Bhagavata that I have composed; this sacred Purana of twelve skandhas and eighteen thousand shlokas is filled with the noble deeds of the Goddess and carries a man across the ocean of worldly existence. Shukadeva read it in due form, and still his mind found no peace, and he came to look as withdrawn as Narada. Then Vyasa said, if my teaching brings you no peace, go to the city of Mithila, to King Janaka; that royal sage of Videha is a man liberated while living, who dwells in the world and yet is never caught in the net of maya, and he will destroy your delusion. This raised a deep doubt in Shukadeva: how could a man ruling a kingdom be free of the body and liberated while alive? It seemed as impossible as a barren woman bearing a son. Still, to lay his doubt to rest, he set out. Crossing Sumeru in about two years and the Himalaya in one, he reached Mithila, whose people were content and lived by good conduct.
At the city gate the gatekeeper stopped him and asked his lineage and his purpose. Shukadeva first stood silent as a pillar, then laughed and said, your words alone have served my purpose; I came to look upon the city of Videha, the bodiless, and here even entry is hard to win. He gave so calm a discourse on attachment and detachment, on enemy and friend, that the gatekeeper knew him for a man of wisdom and led him within. The courtesans of the royal house were skilled in song and dance and in the arts of love; seeing the young and handsome sage, they were enchanted, yet Shukadeva, master of his senses and pure of soul, looked on them all as he would upon his mother. He felt neither delight nor distaste; through the night he performed the twilight worship and meditated, and by morning he had settled once more into samadhi.
King Janaka’s teaching
Hearing of Shukadeva’s arrival, the pure-souled King Janaka came to him with his family priest and his ministers, honored him with a fine seat and the gift of a milk-giving cow, and asked after his welfare. To Shukadeva, seated at ease and calm of mind, Janaka put his question: great one, you who desire nothing, for what reason have you come to my house? Shukadeva told him his whole story and ended by saying, lord of kings, I long for moksha; of austerity, pilgrimage, vows, yajna, the study of scripture, and knowledge, tell me which is the direct means to liberation.
Janaka said that a brahmin who walks the path of moksha should first live with a guru and study the Vedas and the Vedanta, then marry and live as a householder; let him earn his wealth by just means, stay always content, and place no hope in anyone. When sons and grandsons are born to him, let him take up the forest life, and through austerity conquer the six enemies, desire, anger, greed, pride, delusion, and envy; and only when a pure dispassion has arisen in his heart should he take refuge in the fourth stage of life, renunciation; the right to renounce belongs to the detached man alone and to no other. The Vedas name forty-eight sacraments, of which forty are for the householder and eight for the seeker of liberation, and to pass in order from one stage of life to the next is the command of the cultivated.
Shukadeva said that when dispassion and knowledge have already arisen in the heart, one might well live at once in a hermitage or in the forest. To this Janaka explained that the senses are very strong and breed many disorders in the mind of a man whose understanding is not yet ripe; the net of cravings does not fall away quickly, and so it should be given up by degrees. It is the man who sleeps in a high place who falls, and not the one who sleeps low; should a man take renunciation and then fall from it, no other road is left to him. As an ant setting out from the root climbs slowly, resting as it goes, and reaches the fruit, while the bird that flies at great speed grows weary, so should the mind be conquered by passing through the stages of life in order. The man who is calm and knows the self even while living as a householder feels neither delight nor grief, and stays the same in loss and in gain. Janaka said, sinless one, look at me: I rule a kingdom and yet am liberated while I live; I do all my work by my own will, and still no sorrow touches me and no joy.
Then he opened the secret. How can the visible world that the eye takes in ever bind the unseen atman, the self? The five great elements and their qualities are things seen, but the stainless atman is reached only by inference, and it is never bound at all. The mind alone is the cause of bondage and of release; the body has no share in it, nor the living self, nor the senses, and the moment the mind grows clean, everything grows clean. Bathe again and again at every sacred ford, and if the mind has not become clean, all of it is wasted. The distinctions of enemy, friend, and stranger also dwell only in the mind; in the sense of the one self, these distinctions do not remain. The chief cause of bondage is ignorance, and knowledge is what drives it away; so the wise man should cultivate knowledge without ceasing. It is the qualities that play among the qualities, the elements among the elements, the senses among the senses; what fault in this belongs to the atman? For the protection of all, the Vedas have set down their bounds, and welfare comes to the man who walks the road the Vedas point out.
Even so, Shukadeva’s doubt remained. He said that the dharma of the Vedas holds a great deal of violence; the drinking of soma, the killing of animals, and the eating of flesh seem to be plain wrongdoing, so how can the dharma the Vedas prescribe be one that gives liberation? Janaka answered that the violence which appears in a yajna is in truth no violence at all; just as smoke shows in a fire only through the presence of damp wood, so the harm done by people who act from attachment is real harm, while for people without attachment it is not called harm. An act performed free of attachment and of ego the learned hold to be as good as an act never done; for the self-controlled seeker of liberation, that is what non-violence means.
This was the teaching of the Videha king of Mithila: that bondage and freedom live in the mind, and the man who conquers his mind is as free upon a royal throne as an ascetic seated in the forest. Holding this knowledge in his heart, the dispassionate Shukadeva, born of the fire-sticks, began to understand the secret of liberation-in-life that King Janaka had lived out while ruling his kingdom.
Source: Shrimad Devi Bhagavata Mahapurana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)