The Paramatma cannot be seen with eyes of flesh. Parashara put it to Maitreya plainly: Purushottama is seen through svadhyaya and through samyama, and because those two carry a man to Brahman they are themselves called Brahman. From study a man should go on to yoga, and from yoga he should come back to study, and in the wealth of the two together the Paramatma stands uncovered. Study and yoga are the two eyes that can see him. Maitreya heard that and wanted the second eye. “I wish to know that yoga,” he said, “the one by which a man sees the Parameshvara who holds up all that exists. Describe it to me.” Parashara said he would tell it exactly as Keshidhvaj had once told it to the great Khandikya Janaka, and Maitreya, hearing two names he did not know, asked who Khandikya was, who the learned Keshidhvaj was, and what had ever brought the two of them to speak of yoga.
There was once a king named Dharmadhvaja, a Janaka, and he had two sons, Amitadhvaja and Kritadhvaja. Kritadhvaja gave his whole life to the adhyatma-shastra, and his son Keshidhvaj grew up inside it and became famous in it. Amitadhvaja’s son was Khandikya Janaka, and he went the other way, into the path of karma, the yajnas and the rites and their rules, until no man on earth knew that path better. Two cousins, two halves of what a man can know, and each of them wanted the other beaten. They worked at it for years. In the end Keshidhvaj drove Khandikya off his throne, and Khandikya walked out of his kingdom with his purohita, his ministers and the few things he could carry, and went into a forest so hard to reach that no one would follow him there. Keshidhvaj kept the kingdom and kept sacrificing. He already had knowledge; what he wanted now was to cross death by the road of karma as well, with the eye of knowledge open the whole way, and so he performed yajna after yajna.
The Cow’s Death and the Enemy’s Door
One day, while Keshidhvaj sat at a yajna, a lion came out of the empty forest and killed the dharma-dhenu, the cow whose milk went into the oblation, and the rite could go no further. The king asked his ritviks what prayaschitta the loss called for. They did not know. “Ask Kasheru,” they said. Kasheru did not know either and sent him on to Shunaka, Bhrigu’s son, who would surely know. Shunaka knew exactly one thing about it, and he told the king. “At this hour there is no one on the earth who knows this prayaschitta. Kasheru does not know it, I do not know it, no one else knows it. One man knows it, and that is your enemy Khandikya, the one you defeated.”
Keshidhvaj turned it over and found that he could not lose. “Then I go to my enemy Khandikya and ask him,” he said to Shunaka. “If he kills me, I win the fruit of a great yajna. If he answers me and tells me the whole prayaschitta as it should be done, my yajna is completed and nothing stands in its way.” He put on the krishnajina, the black antelope skin a man wears while he is bound to a sacrifice, mounted his chariot and drove to the forest where the great Khandikya lived. Khandikya saw him coming. He strung his bow, and his eyes went red. “So you have tied on the krishnajina for armor and come to kill us. Do you think I will hold my hand because you wear a black deerskin? Only a fool would think it. Is there no krishnajina on the backs of deer? You and I have both rained sharp arrows onto those. Now I will kill you, and you will not leave my hands alive. You took my kingdom. You are my enemy and an atatayi, and a man may cut an atatayi down where he stands.” Keshidhvaj answered him from the chariot. “Khandikya, I have come to ask you a doubt. I have not come to kill you. Weigh that, and then give up either your anger or your arrow at me.”
Khandikya drew his purohita and all his ministers aside. The counsel was unanimous. “Your enemy has walked into your power. Kill him, and the whole earth is yours.” Khandikya did not disagree with a word of it. “That is true. If I kill him the whole earth is mine. And paraloka-jaya, the victory in the other world, is his, because he is the one who dies. If I do not kill him, that victory is mine and the whole earth is his. I do not count the earth greater than paraloka-jaya. That victory lasts for endless time, and the earth lasts a few days. So I will not kill him. Whatever he asks, I will tell him.” He went back to his enemy. “Ask what you came to ask. I will answer.” Keshidhvaj told him the whole story of the dharma-dhenu’s death and asked the prayaschitta for it, and Khandikya gave him the entire prayaschitta laid down for that fault, step by step, as the rule prescribes it. Keshidhvaj had what he had come for. He took the great Khandikya’s leave, drove back to the yajna-ground and carried out all the rites in their order.
The Teacher’s Fee
In time the yajna was finished. Keshidhvaj took the avabhritha bath that closes it, and his purpose was done, and still something in him would not settle. He went over what he had done. He had honored every ritvik Brahmin and every sadasya who sat in the assembly, he had given each supplicant the thing the man desired, he had done everything the custom of the world asks of a sacrificer. Why, then, did his mind keep telling him that some act was still lacking? Then he remembered it. He had never given Khandikya the guru-dakshina. A man who has been taught owes his teacher a fee, and the enemy in the forest had taught him. He mounted his chariot again and drove back into that hard forest. Khandikya saw him come in arms a second time and made ready to kill him, and Keshidhvaj spoke before the arrow could leave the string. “Khandikya, do not be angry. I have not come to harm you. Know that I have come to give you guru-dakshina. By your instruction my yajna is well completed, and I wish to pay you what I owe for it. Ask what you want.”
Khandikya went back to his ministers. He wants to give me guru-dakshina, he told them. What shall I ask of him? They had the answer ready. “Ask him for the whole kingdom. That is how wise men take kingdoms from their enemies, without troubling a single soldier.” Khandikya laughed at them. “How can men like me ask for a rule over the earth that lasts a few days? You are right in your own way. You are counselors for gaining the ends of this world, and you gain them. What the paramartha is, and what it is like, you know nothing about.” He went to Keshidhvaj. “Will you surely give the guru-dakshina?” “I will surely give it.” “Then hear what I ask. You are deeply skilled in adhyatma-jnana, and that is the paramartha-vidya itself. If you wish to pay me a teacher’s fee, tell me the karma that can quiet all the kleshas.”
Keshidhvaj asked the question any king would have asked. “Nothing is dearer to a Kshatriya than a kingdom gained. Why did you not ask for mine? There is not a thorn left in it.” “Hear why I did not ask for your kingdom,” Khandikya said. “Only fools desire kingdoms and the things that come with them. The dharma of a Kshatriya is to protect his subjects and to kill the enemies of his kingdom in a dharma-yuddha. If you took my kingdom because I was too weak to hold it, no fault of mine lies in the people I failed to protect. That duty belongs to avidya, and all the same a man who abandons his own duty against the rule has made himself the cause of his own bondage. Mine was taken from me. As for the desire for a kingdom, it is a desire for enjoyments in some birth to come, earned by karma; and when it rises in ministers and men like them it rises from raga and from lobha, with no regard for dharma in it. The great hold that begging is no dharma for a good Kshatriya. So I did not beg for your kingdom, which lies inside avidya, protecting subjects and all the rest of it. Men who are drunk on the strong wine of ahamkara, men whose minds are gripped by mamata, those are the men who desire kingdoms. Men like me do not.”
Brahmayoga
Keshidhvaj was pleased with him. “Well said,” he told him warmly, “now hear my word. I wish to cross death by avidya, and so I rule, and I perform yajna after yajna, and I wear my merit down in enjoyments. It is great good fortune that your mind has gained viveka, so hear what avidya is. It is the seed of the samsara-tree, and it stands in two forms: the sense of self in what is not the self, and the sense of mine in what was never one’s own. The embodied being, blinded by delusion, says I and mine of this body built out of five elements. The Self is wholly apart from akasha, wind, fire, water and earth, so what wise man would take the body for the Self? If the Self is beyond the body, what wise man would call his own the house and the field that only the body enjoys, or the sons and grandsons born from it? A man does every act for the body’s enjoyment, and since the body is other than himself, each of those acts is only a cause of bondage, of one more body. This earthy body stands by earth and water the way a clay house stands by its plaster of clay and water, and if a five-element body is fed on five-element things, what has the Purusha enjoyed in it? For thousands of births this jiva has walked the road of samsara, covered in the dust of vasanas, and all it has gained for the walking is the fatigue of delusion. When the hot water of knowledge washes that dust away, the traveler’s fatigue is gone, and the man whose mind is well again reaches nirvana, which nothing surpasses and nothing obstructs. The pure Self made of knowledge is itself of the form of nirvana. Sorrow and the other qualities born of ajnana belong to prakriti; they do not belong to the Self. Water has no contact with fire, and yet, through the pot that holds it, the hiss and bubble of boiling appear in it. So the Self, touched by prakriti as ahamkara and the rest, takes on prakriti’s qualities, and in truth the imperishable stands wholly apart from them. That is the seed, avidya. To destroy the kleshas it breeds there is no means other than yoga.”
Khandikya asked for the yoga itself. “You know the yoga-shastra of the Nimi line. Describe that yoga.” “Hear it,” said Keshidhvaj, “the yoga in which the munis who have merged in Brahman stay, and do not fall from their own nature. The mind alone is the cause of men’s bondage and of their liberation. Attached to objects it binds; freed of objects it liberates. So the discerning muni draws his mind off objects and meditates on Parameshvara, who is Brahman, for the sake of liberation. A magnet draws iron to itself by its own power, and in the same way the Paramatma, of his own nature, draws into himself the muni who meditates on Brahman. The distinctive movement of a mind that rests on the self’s own effort, on yama and niyama and the rest, its union with Brahman, is what is called yoga, and the man whose yoga has that quality is a mumukshu. When he first takes up the practice he is a yogayukta yogi; when he has reached Parabrahman his samadhi is vinishpanna, finished and whole. If some obstacle spoils the yogayukta’s mind, he practices again in another birth and is liberated then; the yogi of vinishpanna-samadhi, his karma burned in the fire of yoga, gains moksha in this very birth and soon. He makes his mind fit for Brahma-contemplation and keeps, without desire for any fruit, brahmacharya, ahimsa, satya, asteya and aparigraha; with a controlled mind he keeps svadhyaya, shaucha, santosha and tapas, and holds his mind constantly on Parabrahman. Those are the five yamas and the five niyamas. Kept for a desired fruit they give their separate fruits; kept without desire they give moksha. Settled in one seat such as bhadrasana, the yati practices yoga. Controlling the prana-vayu by practice is pranayama, of two kinds, sabija, which rests on a support of dhyana and mantra, and nirbija, which rests on none. When the yogi, taught by his teacher, checks prana and apana against each other, two pranayamas result, rechaka and puraka, and when he restrains both at once there is the third, kumbhaka. When he begins sabija pranayama, his support is the gross form of Bhagavan Ananta, Hiranyagarbha and the like. Then he practices pratyahara: he restrains the senses that run after sound and the other objects and makes them follow his own mind, and so the restless senses come under control, for without controlling the senses no yogi ever accomplished yoga. With the wind controlled by pranayama and the senses by pratyahara, he fixes the mind on its shubhashraya, its auspicious support.”
Khandikya wanted that support named. “What is this auspicious support of the mind, by resting on which every fault of the mind is destroyed?” “The support of the mind is Brahman,” Keshidhvaj said, “and Brahman is by nature of two kinds, murta and amurta, the apara and the para. In this world there are three bhavanas: Brahma-bhavana, karma-bhavana, and the bhavana that is both. Sanandana and the munis like him have Brahma-bhavana. All beings from the gods down to the trees and stones have karma-bhavana. Hiranyagarbha and those like him, who hold both the knowledge of their own nature and an office over svarga and the worlds, have the bhavana made of both. Until their karmas are destroyed, men see difference through ahamkara, and so they see Brahman and the world as two. That in which every difference ceases, which is pure existence, past the reach of speech and known only in one’s own experience, is Brahma-jnana, and that is the formless, supreme form of Paramatma Vishnu, distinct from his vishva form. Yogis cannot meditate on that form at the start, so they meditate first on Shri Hari’s gross form, the vishva form: Hiranyagarbha and Bhagavan Vasudeva, Prajapati, the Maruts, Vasus and Rudras, Surya and the stars and planets, every birth among the gods and the Daityas, men, beasts, mountains, seas, rivers and trees, every being from pradhana down to the five tanmatras, conscious and unconscious, footless or on one foot or two or many. All of that is the murta form of Hari, made of the three bhavanas; this whole moving and unmoving world is the vishva form of Parabrahman Vishnu, filled with his shakti. His shakti is threefold. Vishnu-shakti is para, the highest; the shakti called kshetrajna is apara; the third, called karma, is avidya. Covered by that avidya-shakti, the all-pervading kshetrajna-shakti suffers the long sorrows of samsara, and under that covering it shows in beings by degrees: least in inert things, more in trees and mountains, more in creeping things, in birds, in deer, in beasts; more in men than in beasts; more still in Nagas, Gandharvas, Yakshas and the gods; more in Indra, more in Prajapati, and most of all in Hiranyagarbha. All these forms are the body of Parameshvara, for his shakti pervades them as the sky pervades everything. His second form, the formless one called Brahman, is what yogis meditate on and what the wise call sat, and in it all these shaktis rest. From that form, in his lila, Bhagavan takes on forms of every power and moves among gods and animals and men, and in those forms the immeasurable Lord’s unobstructed work is done for the good of the world; no karma gives birth to it. So for his own purification the yogi meditates on that vishva form of Bhagavan, which destroys all sin. Fire with high flames and the wind behind it burns dry grass, and Vishnu seated in the mind burns every sin of the yogi in the same way. Fixing the mind on Vishnu, the support of all shaktis, is pure dharana. Vishnu, beyond the three bhavanas, is the auspicious support of the yogi’s naturally restless mind, for his liberation; every other support, the gods and the rest who are themselves born of karma, is impure. The murta form of Bhagavan frees the mind from its desire for other supports, and fixing the mind on Bhagavan this way is called dharana.”
“Dharana is impossible without a support, so hear how to meditate on Bhagavan’s murta form. The yogi holds Vishnu in his mind: the pleasant face, the eyes like lotus petals, fine cheeks and a broad bright forehead, lovely earrings in well-set ears, a neck like a conch, a broad chest marked with the Shrivatsa, a belly with three folds like waves and a deep navel, long arms, eight of them or four, evenly set thighs and shanks, beautiful lotus feet, the whole form clothed in stainless yellow. Crown, necklace, keyura on the upper arms and kataka at the wrists; the Sharnga bow, the conch, the gada, the sword, the chakra and the akshamala in his hands, two hands held in the varada and abhaya mudras, one giving, one telling the yogi there is nothing to fear; a jeweled ring shining on a finger. On this he meditates, absorbed, until the dharana is firm, and the test of firmness is this: walking, standing, or doing whatever he pleases, the form does not leave his mind. Then he meditates on Bhagavan’s peaceful form, without conch, chakra, gada or Sharnga, holding only a crystal akshamala and wearing the sacred thread. When that dharana too is as firm as the first, he recalls the form without crown, armlets or ornaments. Then he meditates on one chief limb of Bhagavan, and then, leaving every limb, on the whole alone. The unbroken flow in which the form of Parameshvara is experienced, with no desire left for any other object, is dhyana, and the six limbs before it, yama, niyama and the rest, bring it about. When through that dhyana the mind grasps the form of its object with no imagining left in it, no meditator, no meditation, no thing meditated on, that is samadhi. The vijnana that samadhi gives is the means of reaching Parabrahman, and what is reached is the one Self free of every bhavana. The kshetrajna is the agent in attaining mukti and jnana is its instrument, and when the work of mukti is done, that vijnana has done what it was for and ceases. Then, filled with Bhagavan’s nature, he is no longer different from the Paramatma. The knowledge of difference is born of ajnana, and when the ajnana that makes difference is wholly destroyed, who is left to make an unreal difference between Brahman and the Self? Khandikya, I have described the yoga to you in brief and in full, as you asked. What else shall I do for you?” Khandikya had nothing left to ask. “By describing this great yoga you have done everything for me. By your teaching all the dirt of my mind is destroyed. Even what I said as mine was false; a man who knows what is to be known cannot say so much as that. I and mine and all their dealings are avidya, and the paramartha lies beyond the reach of speech; it is nothing that can be spoken or heard. Keshidhvaj, by telling me this liberating yoga you have done all my good. Now go happily.” Khandikya honored him with every due honor, and King Keshidhvaj went home to his city. Khandikya made his son king in his place (Gita Press’s note adds that he still held a fort, ministers and servants in that forest, and his son became their lord) and went deeper into the forest to perfect his yoga with his mind fixed on Shri Govinda. There, with yama and the other qualities his, meditating on one point, he merged in the stainless Brahman named Vishnu. Keshidhvaj took his own road to it. He wanted his release to come when the body fell, videha-mukti, so he wore his karmas out: he enjoyed every object, did many good acts, and desired no fruit from any of them. With the sin and the impurity of his prarabdha spent in that way, he reached the atyantika siddhi, the final attainment that puts out the three tapas.
The Conclusion
Parashara turned back to Maitreya. “So I have described to you the third dissolution, the atyantika pralaya, which is moksha itself, the merging into the eternal Brahman. I have told you how the world rises and dissolves, the lineages, the manvantaras and the deeds of the dynasties. I saw how eager you were to hear, and so I have told you this whole Vaishnava Purana, the best of all shastras, the destroyer of every sin, the giver of the purusharthas. Now ask whatever else you wish and I will describe it.” Maitreya folded his hands. “I have heard with faith and devotion everything you described at my asking, and nothing remains for me to ask. By your grace every doubt of mine is gone and my mind is pure. I know how the world is born, how it is kept and how it dissolves. I have come to know the four kinds of rashi, the three kinds of shakti and the three bhavanas, and the one thing that is to be known I know well: this whole world is nothing other than Shri Vishnu. Knowing anything else is of no use to me. I know the dharmas of the varnas and all the karma of pravritti and of nivritti, the path that goes out into the world and the path that turns back from it. I am free of doubt and I am fulfilled. Be pleased with me; I have nothing more to ask. And forgive me the trouble I have given you in the telling of this whole Purana. In the eyes of the good there is no difference between a son and a disciple.”
“Hearing this Purana, and nothing more than hearing it,” Parashara said, “destroys the whole heap of sins that rise from every fault, for it agrees with the Veda in every part. In it I have described all that you have heard, from creation to dissolution, every order of being from the gods to the apsaras, the munis and their tapas, the four varnas and the deeds of great men, the holy places, rivers, seas and mountains of the earth, the dharmas, the Vedas and the shastras, and a man who remembers them is freed of all his sins at once. Above all of it, Bhagavan Hari is glorified here, the imperishable Self, the one cause of the world’s origin, its keeping and its end. A man who speaks his name even helplessly is freed of his sins the way jackals scatter from a lion. Kirtana of that name, done with devotion, is the supreme dissolver of sins, as fire melts every metal. Remember him once and the fierce impurity of Kali, which drags men to the torments of hell, is destroyed on the spot. Before him the whole cosmos, from Hiranyagarbha and Indra and Rudra through every god and spirit, every planet and nakshatra, the seven rishis, the worlds and their guardians, men and beasts and birds and trees, fire and sea and river, down to the patalas and the earth with its sound and the other objects, is a speck of dust before Meru. He is both the clay of all this and the potter of it, all-knowing, all-formed and formless, the destroyer of sin, and this book glorifies him. Whoever hears it gains what a man gains by the avabhritha bath of the Ashvamedha, and what he gains by fasting at Prayaga, at Pushkara, at Kurukshetra and on the shore of the sea, and the great merit of a full year of agnihotra kept by rule comes to him for hearing it once. On the twelfth of the bright half of Jyeshtha, at Mathura, a man bathes in the Yamuna and sees Krishna: what he gains by that, another gains by attentively hearing a single adhyaya of this Purana with his mind fixed on Keshava. Fast at Mathura on that day, bathe in the Yamuna, worship Achyuta with a composed mind, and the full fruit of the Ashvamedha is yours. It is said that the pitris, watching other men’s ancestors lifted up by their descendants, said among themselves, ‘Will someone born in our line fast at Mathura in the bright half of Jyeshtha, bathe in the Yamuna and worship Govinda, so that we too are raised by our descendants and win such glory? Only the very fortunate have descendants who worship Bhagavan in the bright half of Jyeshtha and offer pinda to their pitris in the Yamuna.’ The merit a man wins then, saving his grandfathers by bathing in the Yamuna, worshiping Bhagavan and offering pinda to the pitris, he wins by hearing one adhyaya of this Purana with devotion. This Purana is the supreme protector of those who are afraid of samsara, the most worth hearing, the best of purifiers. It destroys bad dreams, removes every fault, is the most auspicious of auspicious things, and gives offspring and wealth.”
“This arsha Purana was first told by Bhagavan Brahma to Ribhu. Ribhu told it to Priyavrata, Priyavrata to Bhaguri, Bhaguri to Stambhamitra, Stambhamitra to Dadhichi, Dadhichi to Sarasvata, and Sarasvata to Bhrigu. Bhrigu told it to Purukutsa, Purukutsa to Narmada, and Narmada to Dhritarashtra and to the naga Purana, and those two told it to Vasuki, the king of the nagas. From Vasuki it went to Vatsa, from Vatsa to Ashvatara, from Ashvatara to Kambala, and from Kambala to Elaputra. In those days the muni Vedashira went down into Patala, received the whole Purana there and told it to Pramati; Pramati gave it to the very wise Jatukarna, and Jatukarna told it to other virtuous great souls. In a former birth I heard it from Sarasvata’s own mouth, and by Pulastya’s boon it stayed in my memory, and I have told it to you exactly as it was told to me. You, at the end of the Kaliyuga, will tell it to Shinika. Whoever hears this most secret Purana with devotion, this destroyer of Kali’s impurities, is freed from all sins. Whoever hears it daily has bathed in every tirtha and praised every god. Whoever hears ten adhyayas of it gains, without doubt, the rare merit of giving away a kapila cow, and whoever hears the whole of it with his mind on Shri Vishnu, the support of the world and of the self, gains the full fruit of the Ashvamedha. Hear it, read it, hold it in memory: the fruit of that is found nowhere in the three worlds, because what it reaches is Bhagavan Vishnu himself, who gives the siddhi of a mukti that wants nothing else, and from its beginning to its end this stainless Purana glorifies Achyuta, lord of the world’s creation and keeping and dissolution. The man whose mind is fixed on him never goes to hell. In the remembrance of him even svarga is an obstacle, and even Brahmaloka looks small to the mind that rests on him. The imperishable Lord lives in pure hearts and gives them moksha. What wonder, then, if the kirtana of that Achyuta dissolves sins? Men of karma worship him in their yajnas as the lord of yajnas; jnanis meditate on him as the Brahman of the high and the low; the man who remembers him is not born again and does not die, does not grow and does not decay; he is neither cause nor effect, neither sat nor asat. What else is there worth hearing, when Hari is there to hear of? Without beginning and pervading everything, he takes in the pitri form the kavya called svadha, and in the deva form the havya called svaha that is offered into the fire; those who measure cannot measure him, and that Shri Hari, entering by the path of the ear, destroys every sin.” Then Parashara folded his hands. “I bow to that praiseworthy Lord Purushottama who has no beginning, no end, no growth and no decay, the eternal and changeless reality. I bow to that imperishable Purusha who, one, appears as many, and, pure, appears impure through the forms he takes; who is the oneness of sattva, rajas and tamas, unmanifest, the cause of the world’s origin; who is akasha, wind, fire, water and earth, and serves the Purusha through all his senses. May Bhagavan Hari, whose many forms are prakriti and Purusha, give all men the siddhi that is free of birth and age and everything that follows them.” So this conversation between Parashara and Maitreya ends, and with it the Shri Vishnu Mahapurana.
Source: Vishnu Purana (Gita Press, Gorakhpur)