Bhushunda: Memory Across Ages on the Wish-Bearing Tree

A Name in Indra’s Assembly

Vasistha began with himself. “This whole universe is a turning of Brahma’s will, the way the shapes in a mirage are a turning of sunlight. Brahma brought me out of his own mind, which is why they call me manasaputra, the mind-born, and the first thing he did with me was to set me in the fixed polar circle of the sky. From there I watched the planets wheel and one Manvantara give way to the next.” In those early ages he spent time in the court of Indra, lord of the gods, and there he heard, from Narada and the other messengers who carry news between the worlds, accounts of beings who had lived for lengths of time that made even the gods lean forward.

One day the sage Shatatapa was among them, a man of deep understanding, honored by everyone, and sparing with his words. The gods asked him to speak, and he told them of a place on the northeastern summit of Mount Meru, a spot strewn with sparkling gems, where a kalpa tree of the chuta kind, a mango, bore fruit in every season. One of its branches reached toward the south, and at the top of that branch was a large hollow full of the nests of birds of every kind. “Among them,” Shatatapa said, “is a crow’s nest belonging to one old raven named Bhushunda, who lives as content with himself as the god Brahma lies content on his lotus. No one born into this world has lived as long as he has; the gods in heaven cannot claim a longer life than this one bird, and I doubt there will ever be another as old. His long experience has burned the passions out of him and made his mind large; he rests in his own quiet, and he knows the past, the present and what is still to come. If anyone could have the life of that crow, his life would be worth living, and his old age would be crowned with wisdom.” He said nothing more than this and nothing less, before an assembly of deities who already knew all things.

The gods were satisfied. Vasistha was not. “I felt a great curiosity rise in me,” he told Rama, “to see that aged bird and learn more of him. Who does not want to learn the art of living long?” He went straight from the court of Indra toward the place where the crow was said to rest in his happy nest, and in a short time he was standing on the summit of Meru, which shone with its precious stones.

The peak was flaming like fire with the glare of its gems and its red earth, the gairika that painted the upper sky the color of honey and sparkling wine, so that from a distance the mountain looked as if it were burning in the last conflagration, and the sky, reddened by the reflection and shaded with clouds, looked in one place like the smoke of that fire and in another like the blue luster of sapphire. The whole mountain seemed built out of every color on earth, the way the western sky gathers every color at sunset. Flame came out of a crater on its top and rose through the crevice there, the way the yogi’s inner fire is carried up from the bowels to the crown of the head. Its ruddy peaks and pinnacles reached for the moon like arms and fingers painted with lac, as if to catch hold of her in play, and the wild fire on its slopes went up like the blaze of sacrificial fires fed with clarified butter. The summit kissed the face of the sky and raised its peaks like fingers, their blazing gems for fingernails, as if to count the scattered stars. Clouds roared on one side of it like drums; on another, young plants and creepers danced in their arbors, clusters of flowers smiled like blooming girls, and swarms of bees hovered over them. The tall palms seemed to smile, showing the teeth of their notched leaves, at the giddy groups of Apsaras swinging and strolling in their dalliance beneath the shade. Celestial couples went into the grottos to rest from the climb over the craggy paths, wearing the open sky as their only clothing and the falling Ganga as their sacred thread. The hoary mountain stood like a gray-headed hermit holding the reeds that grew on it for his canes, and its divine inhabitants slept in the covert of the creepers, lulled by the water falling from precipice to precipice. The king of mountains wore a crown of the lotuses in full bloom that grew on its top, breathed their fragrance out on the breeze, carried the gems of the stars on its brow, and was charmed by the songs of the Gandharvas playing their strains on it. Its white head pierced the silver region of heaven and was one with it, being the home of the gods, and the red, white, black, blue, yellow and gray stones of its many-colored tops lent the sky its shifting hues at morning and evening, while the blossoms on them called the nymphs of heaven down to their sports.

On one of these peaks stood the kalpa tree, girt by its own branches on every side, its flowers resting on its head like tufts of hair. The dust of its blossoms hung about it like a thick mist, its flowers shone on it like gems, and its height, reaching to the sky, made it look like a steeple standing on the peak. Its flowers were twice as many as the stars, its leaves doubled the clouds in bulk and thickness, its filaments outshone lightning, and the pollen of its flowers was brighter than the beams of the sun. The songs of the sylphs on its branches rang against the hum of the bees, and the nimble feet and waving palms of the Apsaras dancing on every leaflet doubled the count of its leaves again. The siddhas and Gandharvas hovering about it outnumbered the birds that fluttered through it, and the gray frost that wrapped it like a jeweled mantle outshone the glossy rind that served it for a robe of fine linen. Its top touched the sphere of the moon, drew moisture from that cool planet, and bore fruit larger than the moon’s own orb, and the clouds gathering about its trunk doubled the size of its joints. Gods rested on its trunk, Kinnaras on its leaves; clouds covered its arbors, and Asuras slept at its foot. Fairies drove their mates off with the sound of their bracelets, as bees drive the beetles off with their buzzing, and drank their fill of honey from the flower cups. That arbor of desire spread out on every side of the sky and filled the whole world, holding gods and demigods and men and every kind of living being in its branches. It was full of buds and blossoms, tender leaves and leaflets and flourishing flowers; it flushed with filaments and gleamed with florets, rich in the radiant robes and ornaments it gave to those who wanted them, always astir with the dance of the young plants and creepers around it, laden with flowers on every side, heavy with fruit on every branch, and scattering the pollen of its flowers so lavishly that it drew every heart toward it. And the birds. Flocks of them fluttered about the happy bowers or rested along the broad boughs, some reposing in the leafy coverts, others pecking at the flowers and fruit with their bills. Vasistha saw the storks and geese that carry Brahma feeding on fragments of lotus stalk as white as the digits of the moon, and picking the bulbs of the arjuna and lotus plants in the lakes, and their goslings muttering the omkara, the first syllable of the Veda, because Brahma himself had taught it to them. He saw the parrots with blue pinions like the blue clouds of heaven, their dusky red beaks flashing like lightning, calling out their shrill swaha, the cry that goes with every offering poured into flame, and the green parrots of the god of fire scattered about like green kusa grass lying on the altar of the gods; young peacocks with crests glowing like flames; the peacocks of Gauri and the great peacocks that carry Kumara, the god of war, and the vehicle of Skanda that is versed in knowledge; big white birds that are born, breed and die in the air and never once alight, white as the clouds of autumn, nesting with their mates in the sky; Bharadvaja birds, kalavinka sparrows, little cranes, pelicans, cuckoos, vultures, cranes, cocks, and partridges of many kinds, until the birds on that one tree seemed as many as all the animals of the earth.

The tree held a whole world. Every lineage of the gods had its birds on those branches, each kept to its own assembly, the whole of it humming like a city in the air. Vasistha did not stop to be welcomed by any of them. He began to search, from where he hovered, through the thickening leaves toward the south, for a nest among the hollows of the far branches.

After a while he made out a body of ravens sitting in rows like the leaves of the boughs, like streaks of dark cloud on either side of the Lokaloka, the mountain of the horizon that has light on one face and darkness on the other. Then a lonely branch with a spacious hollow in it, strewn with flowers and heavy with their perfumes. The crows sat in their rows, free of every care. And among them sat Bhushunda, quietly, with his tall body, like an entire sapphire shining among fragments of glass. He kept the rule of restraining his breath and his voice. He had watched the ages come and go and was weary of counting the revolutions of the kalpas and the returns of the Shivas and the Indras. He was the chronicler of all antiquity, the recorder of the wars of gods and demons, and for all that his face was clear and his words were as sweet as honey.

Vasistha came down before him in his bright ethereal body, like a meteor falling onto a mountaintop, and the suddenness of it startled the assembly. The black birds trembled like lotuses on a lake when the breeze shakes them. Bhushunda, who saw the three times, was not troubled at all. He knew who had come. He rose from his leafy seat, came forward slowly, and said in a voice that fell like honey, “Welcome, Vasistha. This is a poor home for such a guest.” He stretched out both hands, hands he had at his will, holding clusters of flowers, and strewed them over the sage in handfuls, as a cloud scatters dew. “Take this seat,” he said, and held out a rind of the kalpa tree freshly cut, which he had plucked with his own hand without asking any attendant crow for help. When he rose, his attendants rose; when they saw the sage seated, they went back to their own seats and posts. Bhushunda offered him water and honey, and the gifts of welcome due to such a guest, and his heart lifted, and he spoke.

“After so long you have favored us with a visit, and the nectar of your coming has brought this arbor and all of us back to life. Great sage, honored by the honorable, I believe it is the merit of my long years that has brought you to this place, and I want to know from which direction your course bent toward my poor home. You have wandered a long time in the great gloom of this world and know its errors by your unfailing experience, and you must by now have found the peace of your mind. What is it that makes you take this trouble today? That is what we wish to learn, and your answer will be counted a great favor by those who wait for it. By the sight of your holy feet we come to the knowledge of everything, and still the obligation of this unasked visit of yours emboldens us to ask this one favor more. We know it was your remembering us among the long-lived that turned your attention this way and made you sanctify this place with your coming. We know the cause. It is our wish to satisfy ourselves with the sweetness of your words that prompts the question.” So the long-lived crow, clear-sighted with his knowledge of the three times, put his inquiry as a matter of form. Vasistha answered him. “It is true, king of birds, as you say: I have come here to see you, who have lived so long. You are fortunate in that coolness of heart, and your sagacity has saved you from falling into the dangerous snares of this world. Now settle a doubt of mine about your great age. Tell me truly what family you were born in, and how you came to know what is worth knowing, the origin and the end of beings and their good or bad lot afterward. Tell me, if you remember it, how long a life you have lived; and if your long sight reaches back that far, tell me how you came to be settled in this lodging, and who appointed it for you.”

“I will tell you all of it,” Bhushunda said, “and you must hear it without letting your mind wander for a moment. The things that deserve the attention of a mind like yours destroy the evils of the world, the way clouds and their kind rain take away the heat of the sun.” Vasistha wanted Rama to see him as he had seen him then. His color was the black of a rain cloud heavy with water. His face was neither merry nor sad. His voice was grave and mild, a gentle smile came with his words, and he spoke of the three worlds as if he were balancing three bel fruits in his hands. He was big-bodied and as unhurried as Mount Mandara, and his mind was as clear as the calm ocean after a storm. When he began his own story, it was the way the rumbling of a rain cloud delights a thirsty land.

He did not take the four questions one at a time. His birth, his knowledge, his years and his nest were one story, and to tell where he came from he had first to describe the god whom the Mothers attend, and the terrible company they keep.

Twenty-One Brothers

“There is in this world,” Bhushunda began, “a god of gods named Hara, chief of the celestials, honored by every divinity in heaven.” Gauri is the better half of his body, and she embraces him as ivy clasps a young mango tree. The Ganga is laced through the matted locks on his head, and on his crown sits the disk of the moon, dripping the ambrosia that cools the poison he once swallowed, the poison that stained his throat the blue of sapphire. His body is smeared with ash, the dust the world is reduced to when his fire has finished with it. His necklaces are strings of bleached bones, and his garment is the open sky. Jackals prowl around him on the funeral grounds, for he keeps his home in the cemeteries on the outskirts of cities. One glance of his eye sets mountains ablaze. His playmates are devils with the heads of bears and camels, goats and serpents, some with their faces set on their bellies.

“With him go the Matres,” the Mothers. They wear strings of human skulls at their necks and girdles of their own entrails. The fat and flesh of dead bodies and the blood of putrid carcasses are their food and drink. Their bodies are soft and shining as gold, snakes curl around their wrists as bracelets, and their faces are the faces of asses and camels. They live in the hollows of hills, in the open sky, in cemeteries, and in the pores of human and animal bodies. At his bidding they dance low around him with the bands of demons, and they feed on the living bodies born and dying in all the fourteen regions of creation.

“Eight of them lead the whole body of the Matrikas: Jaya and Vijaya, Jayanti and Aparajita, Siddha, Rakta, Alambusha, and one more named Utpala. The others are subordinate to these, and others again to them. Among all these Mothers, the one named Alambusha is the source of my birth. I tell you this because of the kindness you have shown me by coming to my home.” Alambusha had a crow for her vehicle, Chanda by name, whose bones and bill were as strong as the bolts of Indra’s thunder, who was as dark as a mountain of jet, and who served his goddess as Garuda serves the consort of Vishnu.

“These eight goddesses once gathered together and set out across the sky on some wicked business of theirs.” They held their rites and their merrymaking in the air, then turned to the left and halted at the shrine of Tumburu, which is sacred to Shiva. They worshiped the forms of Tumburu and Bhairava, which are adored in all the worlds, and then settled in to talk and drink. The talk turned to their lover, the husband of Uma, who gives half his own body to her, and to whether he looked down on them. “We will show him what we can do,” they said, “so that he never again despises our powers, even with a look. He pretends to be alone and naked. We know he is two in one, with Uma for his better half.”

So they overpowered Uma with a potent charm. They sprinkled a little water on her, as they do to a beast about to be sacrificed before the altar, and by that spell they changed the fine features of Durga and drained the strength from her frame. By their enchantment they detached Uma from the body of Hara, set her before them, and spoke the curse that would turn her fair body into their meat. Then they rejoiced. They danced and sang in front of her; their laughter came back off the sky like the roaring of lions; their singing rang through the forests and down into the depth of the ocean, which heaved as it heaves under a full moon. They drank their bowls and daubed themselves with liquor from head to foot, drank more and sang louder, turned about like tops, fell down and rolled, and bit at the bits of flesh they had, until these drunken goddesses had worn out their revel.

“While the goddesses were at their merriment,” Bhushunda said, “their vehicles caught the infection.” The carrier birds went into their own dancing and giggling and drank the red blood of the victims for liquor. Giddy with drink, the geese that are fit to carry Brahma’s consort danced in the air in the company of the crow Chanda, the carrying bird of Alambusha. Then the geese darted down and went on dancing and drinking on the banks of streams, and there, because the borders of waters excite desire, they grew inflamed with lust and dallied with the crow. “And so that one crow, Chanda, took seven geese for his wives at once on that bank, and lay with every one of them, one by one, as each of them wanted.” The geese became pregnant. The goddesses, satisfied by their dancing, grew quiet and took their rest.

Then these goddesses of great delusion went to Shiva and presented Uma to him as his food. The god with the crescent moon on his forehead and the trident in his hand understood that they had offered him his beloved for his meat, and his anger fell on the Mothers. They brought the parts of Uma’s body out of their own bodies, where they had taken them in as food, and presented her entire before him for her remarriage to the moon-headed god. In the end Hara and his consorts were reconciled, together with their dependents and their vehicles, and everyone went home glad.

The geese, when they perceived their pregnancy, went before their goddess and laid their case before her. The Devi heard them and spoke kindly. “You cannot carry my chariot through the air now as you did. Go where you please until you are delivered of your burdens.” Then she returned to her accustomed meditation and remained in her unbroken rest.

The geese, heavy with their embryos, grazed in the lotus bed of Vishnu’s navel, where Brahma himself had been born. Fed on that lotus, they matured and laid their eggs in their season, as creepers put out sprouts in spring. “They laid thrice seven eggs, which split in two in their time, upper half and lower, like so many eggs of the world. And those eggs gave birth to the twenty-one brothers of our family, who are all known as the brotherhood of the Chanda crows.” Born in the lotus bed of Vishnu’s navel, they were raised in that same place until they were fledged and could fly.

“Then we joined our mother geese in the service of our Mother goddess, and after our long service she woke at last from her deep meditation. In time, out of her own kindness, she took us into her grace and gave us the gift by which we are set free while we still live.” After that the brothers thought only of remaining in peace. They decided to give themselves to solitary contemplation, and they went to their father, the old crow Chanda, in the Vindhya mountains, for his advice. He took them into his embrace, and his goddess Alambusha looked on them with kindness and let them stay near her.

“My dear ones,” Chanda said to them, “have you got free of weaving the web of your desires? Then you are free of the snare of this world, which holds every being fast. And if you have not, I will pray to this goddess of mine, who is always kind to those who serve her, to give you the blessing of complete knowledge.” The crows answered him. “Father, we have known whatever can be known, by the grace of the goddess Brahmi. All we want now is a good lonely place where we can meditate without being disturbed.”

“I will show you one,” Chanda said. “There is the high mountain of Meru in the polar region, the seat of all the celestials and the great storehouse of every treasure and gem on earth. It stands as a lofty pillar of gold in the midst of the great dome of the universe, lit by the sun and the moon as its two lamps, and every kind of creature lives on it. It stands like the lifted arm of this globe of the earth, its gemmed peaks and pinnacles for the fingers and their jewels, the moonbeam raised over its head as a golden canopy, and the sounding sea that girds the islands for its bracelets. It sits in the midst of Jambudvipa as its sole monarch, with the boundary mountains for its chieftains on every side, and with the two eyeballs of the rolling sun and moon it glances over the surrounding hills as a king at the center looks over the courtiers seated around him. The clusters of stars hang about its neck like wreaths of malati flowers, the bright moon that leads the train of the stars is the crowning jewel on its head, the firmament on the ten sides girds it as its robe, and the nagas of both kinds, the elephants and the serpents, are the warders at its gates. The nymphs of heaven fan it with the breeze from every quarter and wave the passing clouds over it as their whisks, their hands adorned with the shifting colors of the sky. Its huge body stretches over many leagues, and its feet are rooted fast many fathoms beneath the earth, where the nagas, the Asuras and the great serpents worship them. It has thousands of ridges and steeps, crags and cliffs beneath its two eyes of sun and moon, which the gods and Gandharvas and Kinnaras that live in them praise as the regions of heaven, and fourteen kinds of superior beings inhabit its upper sphere, each with their households and kin in their own circle, and none of them has ever seen the city of another.

“On the northeast corner of this mountain there is a large ridge, whose gemmed summit rises as high and as bright as the sun. On the outside of that ridge stands a great kalpa tree, peopled with beings of every kind, a picture of the whole world in little. The southern stem of this tree has a branch that stands out from it, with golden leaves and blossoms like clusters of gems. I built my nest on that branch long ago, my children, and there I sported and enjoyed myself as long as my goddess sat in her meditation. It is hidden under the flowers, its door is fastened with bolts of precious stones, and it is cool in every season. Go there, to that nest, which even the gods cannot reach, because there you will have both your living and your liberation, and no one will trouble you.” Then their father kissed and embraced every one of them and set before them the meat he had got from his goddess.

When they had eaten, they prostrated themselves at the feet of their father and his goddess, and flew up from the Vindhya range, which is sacred to Alambusha. They passed through the region of the clouds and rode the wings of the winds up to the void of the ethereal gods, passed the solar world and the sphere of the fixed stars, saw the heaven of the immortals, and came at last to the highest heaven, where Brahma sits. “There we bowed to the goddess Brahmi and to our mother the goose, her vehicle, and told them what our father had said. They embraced us and told us to do as he had said.” They passed the region of the guardians of the skies, blazing with solar rays, and flew with the speed of winds until they came to Meru and found the kalpa tree and their appointed nest in it. “Here we live apart from everyone, and keep our silence in all things.”

“That is my answer to how we were born and how we came to be settled here, and I have told you also how we came to the knowledge of truth, which has brought us this undisturbed peace. Now tell me: what more can we tell you?” He said this, and then offered the seat and the gifts a second time. “This nest of mine, this branch, this kalpa tree and I myself are all blessed by your presence. Accept this seat and these gifts from a bird who asks it, and tell us what else we can do for you.”

Vasistha took them, and put his next question. “Tell me, Bhushunda, why I do not see here those brothers of yours, who must be as old as you, and as strong in body and mind as you show yourself to be.” Bhushunda answered him. “I am destined to stay here alone, to watch the course of time go on and on, and to count and recount the turnings of the ages, as others count days and nights. In all that time I had the misfortune to watch my juniors and my younger brothers drop their bodies like so many straws and find their rest in the blessed state. I have seen the very long-lived and the very great, the very strong and the very wise, all swallowed into the blind belly of bodiless death.”

When the Worlds Dissolve

Vasistha wanted the mechanism. “Tell me how you came through the storm of the deluge, which outran the winds and wore the sun and moon and stars like jewels at its neck. How did you escape unscorched by the suns that melted the mountains, and unfrozen under the cold moonbeams that froze the running waters to stone? Why were you not crushed under the snows that fell from the deluge clouds as thick as felled trees? And why was this kalpa tree, which rises higher than every forest, not broken down, when every other tree on earth was leveled by the universal tornado?”

“Our station here in the open, empty air,” Bhushunda said, “has no support under it and no fixed footing. Everyone either fails to notice it or looks at it with contempt, and of all ways of living, a bird’s is the most despised. And yet the Lord of beings has appointed these creatures of the air to stay free of disease and death in these forests and to fly their course through the empty sky. How can sorrow or sickness reach us here, where we are born deathless and rove freely in the open air, free of the pains that come to those birds who are caught in the snares of their desires and ruled by their hopes and fears? We have always relied on the peace and contentment of our souls, and we never let ourselves fall into the error of taking the unsubstantial for substance. We are content with what simple nature needs and gives, and entirely free of the cares and endeavors that bring pain; we live only to pass our time in this lonely lodging of ours. We do not wish to live long so that we can go on wallowing in the body’s enjoyments, and we do not wish for death so that we can escape what our acts have earned. We live as long as we have to live, and die when death comes for us. We have seen the changeful states of mankind and many turns of human affairs, and that has driven every restlessness out of our bodies and minds. By the constant light of the spirit inside us we are kept from the sight of sorrow and grief, and from our seat on the height of this kalpa tree we see clearly the course of the world and the changes of time. Up here on the pinnacle of our heavenly mountain we know nothing of the changes of day and night, and yet we are not ignorant of what happens in the worlds of the sun and the moon that roll on below us. The hollow of this tree is always lit by the gems set into it; still, we know the passing of time by our own breathing, which tells it to us like a clock. Knowing the real from the unreal, I have given up chasing unrealities and settled in my knowledge of the true reality, and by forsaking its natural fickleness my mind has learned to rest at all times in perfect peace. We are not led into the snare of false worldly affairs, and we are not frightened, like earthly crows hungry for food, by the hissing of men. It is by the serene light of our souls’ supreme felicity, and by the unalterable patience of our minds, that we look into the errors and delusions of the world without falling into them. Our minds stay level, great sage, under shocks that upset the tempers and understandings of ordinary people, the way pure crystal stays unstained by the blackest colors around it.”

“The course of the world looks very smooth and pleasant at its beginning, and on mature consideration it proves frail, fickle and false as a person goes on in it. All living beings are seen to pass away, and whether they return here again or not, nobody can tell; what then is there for us to fear? As the streams run without pause to the ocean, so the progress of life tends without pause to the depth of eternity; but we, who stand on the shore of that great ocean, have escaped being carried away by the current of time. We neither cling to our life nor throw it away; we carry it as well as we can, and stay like orchids in the air, lightly touching the tree that holds them and never attached to it. And it is by the goodness of the best sort of men, who are beyond the reach of fear, sorrow and pain, as you are, that we have been set free of every malady; from the example of such persons our minds have grown cool and unconcerned with the affairs of busy life, and are employed only in weighing the truth and the true nature of things. Our souls, finding their rest in their unchanging and unperturbed state, have the fullness of their light and delight, as the sea has its flood tide at the rising of the full and the new moon. Sir, we were as glad at your presence here today as the milky ocean was when it overflowed at its churning by Mount Mandara. We count nothing more precious than this, that holy men who want for nothing should take the trouble to visit our poor home. What do we gain from enjoyments that please for the moment and lose their zest the next? It is the company of the great and the good alone that gives the best gifts, like the philosopher’s stone. You, who are cool and grave by nature, soft and sweet and slow in your speech, are like the kindly bee that sits and sips the juice of the flowers of the three worlds and turns it into the sweet balm of honey. I believe all my sins are removed by the blessed sight of you, and the tree of my life is blessed with its best fruit, the spiritual bliss that comes from the company of the virtuous, whose taste removes every disease and danger.”

“And this kalpa tree we live on stands firm and unshaken through the revolutions of the ages and the blasts of every destroying storm. No one from any of the worlds can reach this arbor, and that is why we live here in perfect peace and delight, with no disturbance of any kind. When Hiranyaksha, the giant demon of the age before the flood, strove to hurl this earth with all its seven continents into the lowest abyss, even then this tree stayed firm on its roots on the summit of this mountain. When this home of the gods trembled with every other mountain of the earth on the tusk of the divine Varaha, the boar, even then it remained unshaken. When Narayana held up Meru on two of his arms and lifted Mount Mandara on the other two, even then it did not move. When the sun and moon shook with fear at the tremendous war of the gods and demons and the whole earth was in commotion, even then it stood firm on its root. When hailstorms blowing with terrible violence uprooted the mountains and swept away the great forest trees of Meru, even then it was not shaken by the blast. When Mandara rolled into the milky ocean and gusts of wind filled its caverns like sails and bore it afloat, and the great masses of the deluge clouds rolled about the vault of heaven, even then it stood steady as a rock. When Kalanemi had Meru in his grasp and was about to crush it with the gods on it, even then it stayed steady on its roots. When the siddhas were blown away by the flapping wings of Garuda, the king of birds, in the war for the nectar, even then it was not moved by the wind. When Rudra in the form of Garuda assailed the snake that upholds the earth and shook the world with the blast of his wings, even then it did not stir. When the flame of the last conflagration threatened to consume the world with its seas and mountains and made that snake throw living fire from all his many mouths, even then this tree was neither shaken nor burned by that all-devouring fire. Such is the stability of this tree, and so no danger can reach us here, any more than evil can reach those who live in heaven. How can we ever be exposed to danger, who are settled on a tree that defies every accident? We are as far out of fear and danger as those who live in heaven.”

“But tell me,” Vasistha said, “you who have borne the blasts of dissolution itself, how you remained unhurt and unimpaired when many a sun and moon and star fell and faded away.” The crow told him. “When at the end of a kalpa the order of the world and the laws of nature break and dissolve, we are forced to leave our nest, the way an ungrateful man abandons his best friend. We stay then in the air, freed from our fancies. The limbs of the body give up their natural work, and the mind is released from its wanting.

“When the zodiacal suns shine in their full vigor and melt the mountains with their heat, I keep my understanding under the influence of Varuna’s mantra, the power of the lord of waters. When the winds of the deluge blow with full force and shatter and scatter the great mountains in every direction, it is by fixing my mind on the mountain, the Parvati mantra, that I remain as fixed as a rock. When the earth with its mountains dissolves into water and one ocean covers all its surface, it is by virtue of the Vayu mantra, my power of air, that I keep myself aloft.

“Then I carry myself across this visible world and rest in the holy state of the spotless spirit, in a profound sleep, without any agitation of body or mind. I stay in that sleep until the lotus-born Brahma is again at his work of creation. Then I come back inside the limits of the re-created world, and settle again on this tree of desire.”

Vasistha asked the question any yogi would ask. “Tell me why the other yogis do not remain as steady as you do, by their dharana, their fixed attention.” Bhushunda did not claim a method they lacked. “It is because of the inseparable and overruling power of destiny, which nobody can prevent or set aside, that I am bound to live in this way, and others in theirs. No one can oppose or reshape what must come to pass for him. It is nature’s law that all things be as they are set to be.

“And it is because of my own firm desire that these things are so fixed and allotted to my share, that they must come to my lot at each kalpa over again: that this tree must grow on the summit of this mountain, and that I must have my nest in its hollow.” He let the two halves of that stand together, destiny from outside and desire from within, the nest being the shape his wanting had taken and kept taking, creation after creation.

Vasistha looked at him for a while. “You are as long-lived as our salvation is lasting, and you are able to guide us in the paths of truth, because you are wise in true wisdom and settled in your purpose of yoga. You have seen the many changes of the world and been through everything in the repeated course of creations. You, of all beings, can tell me the wonders you have witnessed in the revolution of the ages.”

The crow settled himself on his branch. He began, as he would begin again and again, with the same two words. “I remember the earth beneath this Mount Meru when it was a desolate land, with no hill or rock on it, no tree, no plant, not even grass.”

The Worlds Bhushunda Remembers

He gave Vasistha no single line of time. He gave him a catalogue, world after world, each with its own arrangement, and the counts he put on them were his own, the reckoning of a creature who had watched the clock from outside it.

He had said at the start that the world of the kalpa before this one had stood in the very same state as the present, and that he had learned to look on past and present with an equal eye, and to tell of bygone ages as if they were here with him now. So he told them that way, in the present, with the same two words opening every memory.

“I remember the earth under me lying full of ashes for thousands upon thousands of years. I remember a time when the sun was not yet produced and the moon was not yet known, when the earth was not divided into day and night and was lit only by the light of this mountain, which threw the light of its gems on one side of the valley below and left the other in utter darkness.

“I remember the war rising between the gods and the demons, and the flight and slaughter of people on every side of the earth; the turning of the four yugas, the revolt of the proud Asuras, and the Daityas driven back to the wall. I remember the one spot of earth that was carried beyond the boundaries of the universal flood, and the little house of the world with only the three uncreated ones left in it. I remember no creature on earth except the plants, for half the length of the four ages; and the earth full of mountains for four whole yugas, with no men on it and no customs of men. I remember the earth heaped with the bones of dead Daityas, rising like mountains and crumbling for thousands upon thousands of years.

“I remember the formless state of the world, when darkness lay over the face of the deep, when the serpent that supports the earth fled in fear and the celestials left their courses, and there was neither a bird nor a treetop anywhere. I remember when north and south lay under one boundary mountain, and when the proud Vindhya tried to equal Meru. I remember the creation of one sole body named Virat, when the world was empty of men and Asuras. I remember an age when the Brahmins were given to wine, the Shudras were cast out, and the women took more than one husband.

“I remember the surface of the earth as one great sheet of water, with nothing growing on it, when men were produced without the union of man and woman. I remember the world a void, with no earth or sky, no sun or moon to divide the days from the nights. I remember heaven shrouded in darkness, with no Indra and no king, and no high or low or middle among men. It was after that that Brahma thought of creating the worlds and divided them into the upper, the lower and the middle, set the boundary mountains, and marked off Jambudvipa. Then the sun and moon were born, and Indra and Upendra had their dominions; then came the slaughter of Hiranyakashipu and the lifting of the earth by Varaha; then kings were set over the peoples and the Vedas were given to mankind; then Mandara was uprooted and the ocean churned. I have seen Garuda before he was fledged. These are the latest events, and they must be in the memory of my youngsters, and of yourself. And I have known Vishnu with his Garuda become Brahma with his swan, and the same become Shiva with his bull, and back again.”

Then he turned to the names. “And I will tell you more that I remember from the flight of bygone times. I remember the births of the seers Bharadvaja, Pulastya, Atri, Narada, Indra and the Marichis, and of yourselves also. I carry in my mind the venerable Pulaha, Uddalaka, Kratu, Bhrigu, Angiras and Sanatkumara, Bhringi and Ganesha, and Skanda and the others in their train, who were known as the siddha seers of old. I keep the memory of Gauri, Sarasvati, Lakshmi, Gayatri and many more famous goddesses, and I have seen the mountains Meru, Mandara, Kailasa, the Himalaya and the Dardura hills. I carry the exploits of the demons Hiranyaksha, Kalanemi, Hayagriva, Hiranyakashipu, Prahlada and many others of the Danava race, and the memory of the renowned Shibi, Prithu the son of Vena, Nala, Nabhaga, Mandhata, Sagara, Dilipa and Nahusha, kings of men and rulers of the earth. I know by heart the names of Vyasa, Valmiki, Shukadeva, Vatsyayana and the other sages, and of Upamanyu, Bhagiratha and the other pious princes of old. Many things of the remote past, of later ages and of the present age are imprinted on my memory, and there is no need to count them over again. Vasistha, son of Brahma, I remember your eight births, in eight different epochs of the world, and this is the eighth, in which you have come as a guest to my nest. At one time you were born of air, at another of heavenly fire; sometimes of water, sometimes of empty space or of solid rock. The constitution of created bodies follows the nature of the elements they are formed of, and the positions of the heavenly bodies have a great influence on their production; I have witnessed three such formations of the world, made of fire, of water and of earth. I remember ten repeated creations in which the usages of people were uniform and alike, in which the gods were settled in their homes and faced the Asuras, their contemporaries, in battle.

“I saw the earth sink five times beneath the ocean and be lifted as many times by Kurma, the tortoise form of Vishnu. I saw Mandara uprooted and the ambrosia churned out of the sea twelve times over. Three times I have seen Hiranyaksha hurl the earth with all her healing plants beneath the ocean. Six times I have seen Hari come down as Parashurama, the son of Renuka, and root out the Kshatriya race.

“I remember a hundred returns of the Kali Yuga, and a hundred incarnations of Hari as Buddha, the son of king Shuddhodana in the land of the Kiratas. I remember the overthrow of Tripura thirty times by Shiva, the breaking of Daksha’s sacrifice more than once, and the downfall of ten Indras by the god who bears the crescent moon. I remember the battle fought eight times between Hari and Hara, and the first appearance of the jvaras, their fevers, in those conflicts. I remember the minds of men differing in every age, and the readings of the Vedas differing at their rites; the Puranas so interpolated that they multiplied from age to age; and many histories composed by authors learned in the Vedas.

“And I remember that other marvelous composition, the Maharamayana, a work of a hundred thousand slokas and full of sound wisdom, which sets the conduct of Rama before men for their imitation and the misconduct of Ravana for their shame. It was composed by Valmiki, who will compose others also, which you will come to know when they are given to the world. Whether it is Valmiki’s or another’s, it has been published twelve times, and is now almost forgotten. The other work of like weight is the Bharata, which I remember Vyasa writing at first; it is in its seventh edition now, and is fast being forgotten.

“I remember the lord Vishnu descending many times on earth to destroy the Rakshasas; he is now to appear here for the eleventh time under the name of Rama. Three times he has come down as Narasimha, the lion-man, and three times beaten Hiranyakashipu as a lion kills an elephant. He is yet to be born, for the sixteenth time, in the house of Vasudeva, to lift the earth from under the weight of its tyrants.” And then, as if the counting had tired him of counting, he said what he made of it. “This cosmic show is no reality; it is a passing illusion, a bubble of water that appears in order to disappear. It rises and sets in the conscious soul of its own accord, as the billows heave and sink in the bosom of the sea.

“Sometimes I have known the world keep one course; sometimes there is a partial change in its order, sometimes a total one. Every Manvantara brings a reversal in the course of the world, and a new generation is born to supplant the old men of renown. Then I have a new set of friends and a new train of relatives, new servants, and a new habitation. Sometimes I stayed by the Vindhya, sometimes on the ridge of the Sahya, sometimes on the Dardura hills, often in the Himalaya and on the Malaya in the south; and then, led by destiny as I told you, I found my last home on this Meru, built my nest on this mango branch, and have lived here for ages without end.

“It is by my old destiny that this tree has grown here for me to live in, and so I can have no release from this body of mine, to come to the end I would wish for. By the same appointment the same tree has grown here as this kalpa tree, as beautiful now as it was when my father Chanda was alive.

“I was settled in this place when there was no distinction yet of north or east, of sky or mountain. The north was then on another side, and this Meru was in another place; I was one and alone, with no form or body, as bright as the essence that night never shrouds. When I woke from my trance I recognized the objects of creation, and knew the situation of Meru and the other hills from the positions of the stars. The site of Meru’s polar circle and the courses of the planets change from creation to creation, and with them the points of the compass. So there is nothing that is a positive truth, except our conception of it as such and such.

“It is the vibration of the soul that displays these conceptions in the mind. It turns a son into a father and makes a son of the father; it shows a friend as a foe and a foe as a friend. I remember many men turning effeminate and many women growing masculine; I have seen the good manners of the golden age prevail in the Kali Yuga, and those of the iron age gaining ground in the ages before it. I have seen many men in the Treta and the Dvapara, the silver and the brazen ages, who were ignorant of the Vedas and strangers to their precepts, and who followed the fictions of their own invention into heterodoxy; and I remember the laxity of manners and morals among the gods, the demigods and men since the beginning of the world. I remember, after a thousand cycles of the four yugas, that Brahma created from his mind some aerial beings of unearthly form, and those spirits filled a space of ten cycles of creation. I remember the shifting boundaries of countries, and the changing costumes and fashions and amusements of men, through the endless course of days and nights.”

He had answered the question of his years, and more than answered it. Vasistha, sitting on his rind of bark among the silent crows, had one question left, and it was the question that every living creature carries, the question of death.

The Mind Death Cannot Govern

He asked the chief of the crows, where he sat at the end of his branch, how it was that he did not fall into the hands of death, when every other creature that moves across the world is crushed in its jaws.

“You know all things,” Bhushunda said, “and still you ask me to tell you what you know perfectly well. When the master asks, the servant speaks where he would otherwise hold his tongue. Death will not demolish the man who does not wear on his breast the pearl necklace of his corrupt desires, as a robber does not kill the traveler who carries no chain of gold on his chest.

“Death will not destroy the man whose heart is not broken down by sorrows, whose breast is not sawed like timber by the friction of his sighs. Death will not overtake the man whose body is not beset by cares like a tree with poisonous snakes lifting their hoods above it, whose heart is not burned by its anxieties as a wood is burned by fire. Death will not prey on the person who is not poisoned by anger and enmity, who does not keep the dragon of avarice in the dark of his heart, whose body is not already fried by his own resentment, which sucks up the waters of reason in the mind like the fire hidden under the sea. Death will not kill the person whose body is not inflamed by the fiery passion of love, which consumes the stored grain of good sense like wildfire and cuts the heartstrings of reason like a pair of scissors.

“Death does not approach the man who puts his trust in the one pure and purifying spirit of God, and rests his soul in the lap of the supreme soul. Death does not lay hold of the person who is firm in one posture, who does not ramble like an ape from tree to tree, and whose mind is a stranger to fickleness. The well-composed mind has neither its rising nor its setting, neither recollection nor forgetfulness; it has no sleeping and no waking, only a heavenly reverie that is quite distinct from dreaming. He whose mind is wrapped in holy meditation neither gives anything away to others nor receives anything from them, neither seeks nor gives up whatever he has or has not. He does his duties as a matter of course, as he ought, without expecting any reward. The man whose mind has met the grace of God has gain enough and delight to spare.

“So set your mind on what brings your lasting good and your final welfare, where there is nothing of doubt or difficulty and no false expectation. Lift it above the multiplicity of worldly possessions that the unseen, impure demon of evil holds out to tempt your heart, and settle it in the unity of the Divinity. Set your heart on that supreme felicity which is pleasant at the beginning and at the end, delightful to taste, pleasant to the sight, sweet to relish, and wholesome in its effect. Fix your mind on what all the good and godly seek, the eternal truth, the best food of the soul from its beginning and through its middle and its end and throughout its immortality. Apply your mind to what is beyond your comprehension, the holy light that is the root and source of all, in which lies all our best fortune and the ambrosial food of our souls. There is nothing so permanent or so auspicious among immortals or mortals, among gods, Asuras, Gandharvas, Kinnaras, Vidyadharas or the nymphs of heaven, as the spiritual bliss of the soul. There is nothing so graceful or so lasting in cities or mountains or forests, among men or their kings, anywhere on earth or in heaven; nothing steady or graceful among the Nagas and the Asuras and their women, or in the whole circle of the nether regions; nothing so lovely and lasting above or below or around us, or in the spheres of all the other worlds, as the lasting peace of mind.

“There is nothing felicitous or persistent in this world, amid all the sorrows and sicknesses and troubles that hem it in. All our actions are for trivial matters, and all our gains are trifles at best. There is no lasting good in the thoughts that employ the minds of men and gladden their hearts, which serve at best to delude even the wise into fickleness of spirit. No permanent good comes from the ever busy wishes and refusals of mankind, which trouble their minds the way Mandara troubled the deep when the gods and demons churned it. No lasting good comes to anyone from his continual exertions and his many efforts over gain and loss, even at the edge of the sword. Sovereignty over the whole earth is not so great a boon, elevation to the rank of a god in heaven is not so great a blessing, and the office of the serpent who supports the world is not so great a gain, as the sweet peace of mind of the good.

“It is no good to trouble the mind with every branch of learning, or to employ one’s wits and enslave one’s mind in the service of another, or to learn the histories of other people while ignorant of oneself and one’s own welfare. It is no good to live long under the trouble of disease and the sorrow of life. Neither life nor death, neither learning nor ignorance, neither heaven nor hell is any advantage or disadvantage to anyone, until there is an end of the desires inside him. All these states of the world and all worldly things may look like a free gift to the ignorant crowd, and they give no pleasure to the learned man who knows how unstable they are.

“Since all things are so unstable, there is one reality only in the view of the wise, beyond all error and imperishable, present in all things and beyond the knowledge of all. This essence is the soul, the self, and meditation on it removes every sorrow and destroys the false vision of the world that has taken hold of every man through his long habit of taking this phantom of a dream for sober reality. This spiritual light is easily won by sages like you, and very hard to hold for brutes like us. But among the companions of that knowledge there is one that is particularly friendly to me, which eases all my sorrows, and that is the investigation of the vital breath, the cause of life.” Then he fell silent. Vasistha knew the subject well, and he put his question anyway, lightly, as a man asks a friend to go on. “Tell me truly, my friend, what you mean by meditation on the vital breath.”

The City of Breath

“You, who are learned in the Vedanta, are putting this question to a brute bird as a joke,” Bhushunda said, “or else to test how shallow my knowledge is and teach me where it falls short, and I cannot object to that. Hear then something of the contemplation of the breath, which is the cause of Bhushunda’s long life and the giver of Bhushunda’s knowledge. You see this beautiful house of the body, standing on three strong pillars, the three humors of the body, with nine doorways in it. Its owner is the haughty householder Ahankara, egoism, who lives in it with his favorite consort Puryashtaka and his dependents, the tanmatras.

“You know the inside of this house. Its two ears are its two upper rooms; its two eyes are its windows; the hair on the head is the thatch. The mouth is the great doorway, the two arms its two wings, and the two rows of teeth are the strings of flowers hung on the gate. The organs of sense are its porters, carrying sights and sounds and flavors in; the two pupils keep watch from the tower. Blood, fat and flesh are the plaster of the wall, the veins and arteries are the strings that bind the bamboo of the bones together, and the thick bones are the posts that hold the house up.

“Two tender nerves, Ida and Pingala, stretch along the two sides of this building. There are three pairs of lotus-like organs formed of soft flesh, which stand one above another in the body and are joined to a single stalk, an artery that connects them. The air drawn in through the nostrils waters these lotuses, as if it poured water at their roots, and makes them put out soft leaflets that shake gently with every breath. The shaking leaves stir the vital air, as the moving leaves of a forest increase the force of the wind, and the swollen air passes on and fills every pore and canal of the frame from top to bottom.

“Those who are skilled in the science of the airs give them different names according to their courses: prana, apana, samana, udana and vyana. All the vital powers reside in the triple lotus of the heart and extend up and down and on every side from there, like beams from the disk of the moon. The learned say that prana, the air of life, sits in the lotus of the heart, and that it is prana that moves the eyelids in their blinking. Sometimes it takes the form of touch; sometimes it is the breath blowing through the nostrils; sometimes it sits in the stomach to cook the food; often it gives utterance to speech. What more shall I say? It is our lord the air that moves the whole machine of the body, as a mechanic works everything by his machinery.

“Among them there are two principal airs, prana and apana, which take their two different courses, upward and downward; one is the breath of life and the other the spent air that is let out. It is by watching the course of these two that I remain quiet in this place and bear the heat and the cold that fall to the lot of birds. The body is a city and the mind is its ruler; the two airs are the chariot and the wheel of the body, egoism is the monarch of the city, and the eight members are the horses yoked to the chariot. By watching the motion of these airs through the whole of my life, I find the course of my life as interminable as the continuity of my breathing. The airs serve the body alike in waking, in dream and in deep sleep, and they divide into a thousand threads as they pass through the canals of the body, as fine as the white fibers inside the stalks of lotuses. By watching the incessant course of the vital airs, by attending to the course of time and the train of one’s thoughts, and by attempting to restrain their course through the habit and practice of pranayama, a man is sure to lengthen the duration of his life in this world, and to attain his eternal life in the next.”

Vasistha interrupted him there. “Tell me how, and of what nature, is the course of the vital airs.” “You know everything, and you ask me this as if it were a joke,” Bhushunda said. “But since you ask, I must tell you all I know. The vital breath is a moving force by its nature, always in its own motion, and it pervades the inside and the outside of the bodies it animates; the apana likewise, in its downward or receding direction. It is good for living beings to restrain these breaths in both their waking and their sleeping states, and I will tell you how it is done.

“The inner vital air, the prana, extends from the lotus of the heart to the crevice in the skull, and its effort to come out is what the wise call rechaka, the exhaled breath. The meeting of breaths at a distance of twelve inches from and below the nostrils is called puraka, the inhaling breath; and it is also called puraka when the breath passes in from outside, enters the inner apana without any effort, and fills the inside from the heart to the brain. When the apana has subsided in the heart and the prana does not circulate in the breast, that is the state called kumbhaka, and it is known to the yogis alone. All three are perceived at the place where the apana takes its rise, twelve inches outside the tip of the nose.

“The adepts have gone further. The apana stretching to the distance of twelve inches opposite the tip of the nose is perceptible to the yogi, as the outer part of a pot planted in the earth is visible, and they call it kumbhaka. The exhaling air that rises from the heart to the tip of the nose is the primary external puraka, and there is a secondary external puraka from the tip of the nose to twelve inches beyond it. After the prana has set outside the nostrils, and before the apana has yet risen, that interval in which both have stopped entirely is the state of perfect balance, the external kumbhaka. The intelligent man who meditates day and night on the eight ways of the prana and the apana is never born again on this miserable earth.

“Restraining these airs, in waking and in sleep, in sitting and in walking, brings liberation. Fleeting as they are, a good understanding restrains them even while a man is at his work or at his meal. The man who practices kumbhaka, the suppression of his breath within himself, cannot be employed in any action; he must remain calmly in that suppression, giving up all outward thoughts and acts. A few days’ practice of this yoga, with every outward object put out of the mind, brings a man to oneness with the one being there is. Intelligent men have no fondness for worldly things; they hold them in the aversion a holy Brahmin feels for sweet milk kept in a bag of skin, and they stay regardless of visible objects, their eyes closed against them, as a blind man takes no heed of outward appearances. They possess everything, the sum of all that is worth gaining, and whether awake or asleep, walking or sitting, they never lose sight of the true light that leads to the other world. Those who have come to know the course of their breathings have got rid of all delusion; busy in the world or sitting idle at home, they are always at rest, following the course of their own respiration.

“I know the exhaling breath rising from the lotus of the heart and stretching twelve inches out of it, where it sets, and the apana taken in from the same distance and deposited in the cup of the lotus in the heart. The prana runs toward the open air in the form of a flame, and the apana turns inward and goes down like a current of water. The apana is like cooling moonlight, and refreshes the body from without; the prana is like sunshine, and warms the inside. Every moment the prana warms the region of the heart as the sun inflames the sky, and the apana, breathed in, washes the heart like a flood and refreshes the whole inside in an instant.

“When the last digit of the moon-like apana is swallowed by the sun of the prana, the man comes into sight of the supreme spirit, and has no more cause for grief. And when the last portion of the sun-like prana is swallowed by the moon-like apana, the same visitation of Brahma comes within him, and the soul is freed from further transmigration. He who sees the seat of his soul in the mind within his heart, at the confluence of the sun and moon of prana and apana in the kumbhaka, is no longer subject to be born and to die. That light never fades; it dispels the darkness of the heart, and produces the siddhi of the meditative mind.

“When the moon of the apana sets in the cavity of the heart, the sun of the prana rises at once to gush out of it, as the sun of day ushers in his light when the shadow of night has gone. As the prana expires in the open air, the apana rises and rushes in that same moment, as deep darkness follows the light that has fled the horizon. Know this: the apana becomes extinct where the prana is born, and the prana is lost where the apana takes its rise. When the prana has ceased and the apana has its rise, a man supports himself on the kumbhaka, the retained air, and does not depend on the two passing breaths; relying on the kumbhaka held within himself, he is spared pain and sorrow. By depending on the rechaka, and practicing the suppression of the kumbhaka at the great distance of sixteen inches from the apana, a man has no more to be sorry for anything. When he sees his prana devoured by the apana, or his apana by the prana, within himself and without, together with his sense of time and place, his mind has no more to be reborn on earth. The interval between the two breaths is common to every animal, and known to yogis alone. The kumbhaka that takes place of itself on the outside is known as the divine state, and when it comes of itself on the inside, without any effort on the part of the adept, it is called the state of the most supreme.

“As fragrance lives in the flower, there is an essence living within the vital breath, and it is neither the prana nor the apana; it is the intellectual soul, which I adore. As taste lives in water, so there is an essence immanent in the apana, and it is the intelligent soul, which I adore. What lies at the end of the extinction of the prana and beyond the limit of the exhaustion of the apana, in the interval between the two, I ever adore. What is the breathing of breath and the life of life, the support and bearer of the body, is the intellectual spirit, which I ever adore. What causes the thinking of the mind and the reasoning of the understanding, and the self-sense of the ego, is the intellectual soul, which I have learned to adore. What is the light of lights, the holy of holies, and unchangeable in its nature, is the intellect I adore.

“I adore that pencil of pure intellectual light which rises at the juncture of the setting of the apana and the springing up of the prana. I adore the intellect that plays on the tip of the nose, at the point where the prana sets and the apana has not yet taken its rise; that rises when both breaths have stopped and neither has risen; that appears before the yogi and supports him at the point he has reached when prana and apana set, within him and without. I adore the intellect that is the force of all forces and rides in the chariot of the prana and the apana when both are compressed in the yogi’s heart. I adore the essence of that intellect which is attained by reflection on the breathings, the cause of causes, the mainspring of the swinging of the vital airs, the giver of the joy that comes from the vibration of breath. I adore that prime and supreme Being, Brahman, before whom the gods bow, who makes himself known to us by his own power, and who, in the particles of the vital breaths, goes under the name of Spirit.”

The hymn ended. The crows had not moved. Vasistha had come for the age of a bird and had been given the whole of a discipline, and the bird was not finished; what remained was to say what that discipline had done to the one who kept it.

A Mind That Does Not Leave the Present

“This is the tranquility of mind,” Bhushunda said, “that I have attained by degrees, by meditating on the nature and course of the vital breath in myself. I sit quiet at all times, with my view fixed on the movement of my breath, and I never stir a moment from my meditative mood, though Mount Meru may shake under me. Awake or asleep, moving about or sitting still, I never lose this meditation, even in dream. The breeze may cease to blow and the waters may stop flowing, and nothing will prevent my breathing and my meditation on it. By attending to the course of my inhaling and exhaling breaths I have come to the sight of the soul, and seeing the prime soul of all souls, I have been freed from sorrow. The earth has been sinking and rising repeatedly since the great deluge, and I have watched beings perish and be produced again, without any change in the calm of my soul and my mind.

“I never think of the past and the future; my sight is fixed only on the present, and my mind sees the remote past and the future as ever present before it. I do the work that comes before me, and I never care for its toil or for its reward. I live as one in sleep, and solely with myself. I examine all that is and is not, and all our desires and their objects, and finding them frailties and vanities I do not chase them, and their cares do not trouble me. I watch the course of my inspiration and expiration and see the presence of the supreme at their confluence; and by that I rest satisfied in myself, and enjoy my long life without sorrow or sickness.

“‘This good thing I have gained today, and that better one I shall have another day’: those are the ruinous thoughts of mortal men, and they are unknown to me, and this has made me long-lived and free of illness. I never praise or dispraise any act of my own or of others, and this indifference of mine to every concern has brought me to this happy state of long life without care. My mind is neither lifted by success nor cast down by adversity, and this has brought me to this state. I have taken up my renunciation of the world and my indifference to all things at all times; I have given up the desire of a life of the senses and of the things of the senses, and this has set me free of death and disease. I have freed my mind of its faults of fickleness and curiosity and set it above sorrow and anxiety; it has become deliberate, calm and quiet, and this has made me long-lived and free of sickness. I see all things in an equal light, a beauty or a ghost, a piece of wood or a stone, a straw or a rock, air or water or fire, and this evenness of mine has kept me sane and sound in every state of life. I do not think about what I have done today or what I shall have to do tomorrow, and this has kept me forever sound. I am afraid neither of death nor of disease nor of old age, and I am not elated at the idea of getting a kingdom; this indifference of mine to good and to evil is the cause of the length of my life.

“I regard no one as a friend or as a foe, and this equal view of all persons is the cause of my long life and my freedom from complaint. I regard all existence as the reflection of the self-existent one, and I know myself as the very intellect, and this is the cause of my long life without disease or decay. Whether I get or give something, walk or sit, rise or breathe, sleep or wake, I always take myself for the pure intelligence, never for the gross body, and this has made me durable forever. I think of myself as fast asleep, and I hold this world with all its bustle to be nothing in reality, and this has made me long-lived and undecaying. I take the good and the bad accidents of life, coming at their appointed times, to be all alike to me, like my two arms, both of which serve me; and this has made me imperishable. With my fixed attention and the cool clearness of my mental vision I see all things in their favorable light, even and equal, and this view of them in one light has kept me lasting and unwasted. This material body of mine I never look on as my ego, and this has made me undying. Whatever I do and whatever I eat, I never take it to heart; my mind is freed from the acts of my body, and this freedom has kept me long-lived and undecayed.

“Whenever I come to know a truth I never feel proud of my knowledge; I want to learn more of it, and this growing desire for knowledge has increased my life without its infirmity. Though possessed of power, I never use it to do wrong or injury to another; though wronged by anyone, I am never sorry for it; and though ever so poor, I never crave anything of anybody; this has prolonged my life and kept me safe and sound. I see in these visible forms the intellect that lives in all bodies, and because I look on all these bodies in one equal view, I enjoy an undecaying length of days. My mind is so composed that I never let its faculties be caught in the snare of worldly desires and expectations, nor let those so much as touch my heart, and this has given me the bliss of an unfading long life. I examine both worlds as two globes placed in my hands; I find the visible world as non-existent as it is to a sleeping man, and the spiritual world as fully open to my view as the world is to a man awake, and this sight has made me as immortal as the world of the immortals. I see the past, the present and the future set before me, and I see all that is dead and decayed, all that is gone and forgotten, presented anew in my presence, and this prospect of everything keeps me alive and fresh to all of it alike. I feel myself happy at the happiness of others, and I am sorry to see the misery of other people, and this feeling of mine for the joys and the sorrows of my fellow creatures has kept me alive and fresh at all times. I stay unmoved as a rock in my adversity and am friendly to everyone in my prosperity; I am never moved by want or by plenty, and this steadiness is the cause of my long undecayed life.

“That I am neither related to nor belong to anybody, nor anyone related or belonging to me, is the firm conviction that has laid hold of my mind and made me live long without feeling sick or sorry for another. It is my belief that I am the one Ego with the world, and with all its space and time, and that I am the same with the living soul and all its actions. It is my belief that I am the same Intelligence that shows itself in the pot and in the picture, that dwells in the sky above and in the woods below. So it is that I reside amid the three worlds as a bee abides in the cell of a lotus flower, and I am renowned in the world as the perennial crow Bhushunda. I am destined to dwell here forever, to watch the visible world rising and falling in its tumultuous confusion in the infinite ocean of the immense Brahma, taking its various forms like the waves of the sea, for all eternity. I have told you what I am and how I am situated in this place. It was only because you asked that I let myself speak so long to one who understands far more than I do.”

“What you have told me of yourself is a marvel,” Vasistha said, “a jewel to my ears. Blessed are the great souls who have the good fortune to see you, who in age are second to none except the lotus-born Brahma himself. Blessed are my eyes that have seen you today, and three times blessed my ears. I have gone all about the world, and I have seen the grandeur of the knowledge of gods and of learned men, and nowhere have I met so holy a seer as you. We rarely find the grain of a precious pearl in the hollow of a lonely bamboo, and it is rarer still to come across a holy person like you in any part of this world. Now go into your nest, and be well in this place. It is the hour of midday devotion, and the duties of my noon service call me to my seat in heaven.”

At that Bhushunda rose from his seat of boughs and held out a golden twig of the tree with the two hands he had made for himself. He made a vessel of his beak and his hands, and filled it with the snow-white leaves and the flowers and pistils of the kalpa plant, and put a brilliant pearl in it, as an arghya worthy of the divine sage. Then the ancient bird took the arghya, with some water and flowers, and sprinkled and scattered them over Vasistha from his head to his feet, with as much veneration as men show when they worship the three-eyed Shiva. “That is enough,” Vasistha said. “You need not trouble yourself to come after me.” He rose from his seat and lifted into the air, as a bird puts out its wings for flight.

Still the bird followed him a few yojanas through the sky, until Vasistha stopped him going farther and made him turn back, after the two of them had shaken hands. The chief of birds looked up for some time as the sage soared upward, and then he went back, reluctantly, because it is hard to part from the company of the good. They lost sight of one another in the air between, as the sight of waves is lost when they sink into the sea. Vasistha, full of the thoughts of the bird and his sayings, went on upward to join the sages, and arrived at last at the sphere of the Pleiades, where his wife Arundhati received him with honor.

“It was in the beginning of the Satya Yuga, Rama, the golden age, after two hundred years of it had passed, that I was at Bhushunda’s and sat with him on the tree on the summit of Sumeru. That golden age has gone by now, and the Treta, the silver age, has taken its place; and it is in the middle of this age that you are born to subdue your enemies. Only eight years ago I met him again on the same mountain, and found him as sound and the same as I had seen him long before.”

“Now I have told you the whole of the exemplary character of Bhushunda. As you have heard it with patience, so consider it with diligence, and act according to his sayings.”