The Stories of Vasistha

Background

Scholars have never agreed on when the Yoga Vasistha was composed. Some place it in the sixth century of the common era, others in the fourteenth. My own reckoning points elsewhere. According to Valmiki’s Ramayana, King Rama lived for roughly eleven thousand years, and after his passing several more thousand years went by before Krishna took birth. Krishna too has now been gone for something like five to seven thousand years. By that count, this text cannot belong to the sixth century, nor to the fourteenth.

The original language of the text is Sanskrit. Its shorter form, the “Laghu Yoga Vasistha,” was compiled in the eleventh century by Abhinanda, a disciple of Abhinavagupta, and runs to six thousand shlokas. That this text appears on this website today says nothing about its age. Old stories are retold, again and again, in the language of the present, and their true years remain exactly what they were.

The text is divided into six sections, the prakaranas: Vairagya (dispassion), Mumukshu (the longing for freedom), Utpatti (creation), Sthiti (existence), Upashama (dissolution), and Nirvana (liberation). The first two speak to the seeker’s inner preparation. The remaining four open out a philosophical vision of creation, existence, dissolution, and release. The whole teaching is given from the standpoint of Advaita Vedanta.

Yet the true signature of the Yoga Vasistha is this: it teaches philosophy through stories. Every single tale rests on one philosophical point. A whole lifetime passes for King Lavana in the space of a single night. The crow Bhushunda has already lived through many kalpas. Chudala arrives before her husband, King Shikhidhvaja, in disguise, and teaches him from behind that mask. Each story is an experiment, a thought-experiment, built to push the reader toward loosening their grip.

Here are thirty-nine stories, told in plain, simple language. Each carries a churning of its own. No reading order is needed. Whichever title pulls at you, start there.