Manki’s Despair

Rama asked, “Gurudev, if even a sage falls into sorrow, what should he do?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, there was once a sage named Manki, who knew a very long sorrow. His story is a strange one. His path led downward, deep into the sorrow, so deep that the sorrow finally broke of its own weight. Listen.”

The sage

Manki was a sage, and his hut stood on the bank of a river. The river was small, and it ran all year round.

For many years he had practiced tapas, the long austerity. He had recited countless mantras and read countless books. He had performed yajnas, the fire-rites, and he had sat in meditation.

Outside his hut lay a garden where he grew turmeric and ginger. There was a cow, grown very old now, and a dog he had lifted out of a basket years before.

He was content within himself, and this life suited him well.

Then one day, for no reason at all, something changed.

The coming

That morning he woke as he woke every day, and this time there was something strange in the waking, a heaviness. His body was willing to sleep and unwilling to rise.

He told himself it was only for today, that he must not have slept well.

He went to the river, bathed, and recited his mantras, but the mantras had lost the rasa, the inner savor, they always carried.

He returned, prepared his food, and ate, and the food had no taste.

All day he sat in his hut. Now and then he opened a book, and the words did not touch him. Now and then he tried to meditate, and his mind kept running off. Now and then he wanted to work in the garden, and his hands would not lift.

By evening he sensed that this was something else, that it was more than tiredness.

The next day was the same, and the day after that.

The darkness

Then Manki paid attention.

A darkness was descending inside him, for no reason at all.

This darkness did not belong to the body, for his body was healthy. It did not belong to the mind either, for he carried no great trouble. And still the darkness was there.

In the morning he would wake, and the first thing to meet him was this same darkness, as though it had slept all night inside his body and stirred to life the moment he woke.

No taste in the food, no rasa in the mantras, no knowledge in the books, no work in the garden, and no peace in meditation.

Manki kept wondering what on earth was happening to him.

The effort

At first he tried to drive it away.

He increased his tapas. Now he rose early and recited mantras for hours, feeding more wood into the yajna fire. And the darkness only grew.

He changed his books, set the old ones aside and read new ones. And the darkness only grew.

He made a long journey along the riverbank, far and away, and on the way back the darkness was still there, walking step for step beside him.

Then Manki thought that perhaps the fault was his own, that his tapas fell short, that he simply was not worthy of it.

How this thought arrived he never knew, and once it came it settled in and stayed: my fault, I am good for nothing, I have failed.

This thought thickened the darkness, and the more he cursed himself, the heavier the darkness grew.

The inner picture

Each day a very subtle picture formed inside Manki.

He would wake in the morning to an ordinary day outside, and inside he felt as though a very heavy cloud had been laid upon his chest. The cloud was invisible, and its weight was complete.

First he thought the cloud came from some illness, and there was no illness. Then he thought it came from hunger, and there was no hunger. Then he thought it came from some lack, and nothing was lacking.

The cloud was there for no reason at all.

This was the thing that gnawed at Manki: “A cloud needs a cause, and my cloud has no cause at all.” And that thought made the cloud grow larger.

One night Manki saw something remarkable.

He was lying down, trying to sleep, and the cloud lay heavy in his chest. Just then it came to him that the cloud was his own self, his very being, and no separate thing lodged within him.

The thought was strange, and yet it brought a kind of relief. It meant the cloud was his own condition, something native to him, and no outside thing that had come to sit upon him.

Manki said to himself, “Perhaps I should not fight it.” And even so, he went on fighting for many years.

The depths

Many days went by, perhaps months as well, because Manki had stopped counting.

He only sat in his hut, going nowhere, speaking to no one. His beard grew long, his hair tangled, and his eyes sank deep into his face.

His cow was growing weak too, because he kept forgetting to feed her, and the dog had grown thin as well.

One day the dog came to him and laid its head in his lap. Manki looked down and reached out toward its head, and his hand stopped halfway. He thought: I have abandoned even this one. He is here beside me, and I am not here beside him.

The dog sat just as it was. Something stirred inside Manki, and even that stirring belonged to the darkness: I used to love this dog, and now I cannot, and this too is a failure of mine.

One night Manki thought he might as well die.

But even this thought did not come with force, only softly. And then he thought: even if I die, what of it? The darkness that exists will remain, right here with me; my death will hardly kill the darkness.

This astonished him: my darkness is larger than my body, my darkness is larger even than my story.

And Manki sat like that for a long while, doing nothing at all.

The stillness

Then a strange thing began to happen. When he stopped trying, when he stopped cursing himself, when he no longer wanted to do anything at all, the darkness began to lessen.

Manki noticed this: when I fight the darkness, the darkness grows; and when I sit with the darkness, the darkness shrinks.

Now he looked at the darkness, without running, without fighting, without cursing himself. And the darkness simply was.

He put a question to it: “Darkness, what are you?” The darkness stayed silent. “Where did you come from?” The darkness stayed silent. “Why are you with me?” Still the darkness kept its silence.

But one thing Manki did notice, and closely.

When he spoke to the darkness, the darkness grew a little lighter. It meant the darkness liked to be spoken to; all it wanted was to be recognized.

Then Manki thought that perhaps the darkness is only that which has been left unattended, perhaps the darkness is only that which we keep chasing away. And when we look at the darkness, accept it, sit with it, then it keeps its weight, and it does not devour us.

The days

Many days passed, and Manki went on sitting with the darkness.

Then one day, inside that darkness, a light appeared, very small, and unmistakably real.

The light had no particular place, not in his chest, not in his head, not in his belly. It was simply an understanding: the understanding that darkness too is a road in its own right. Whoever fights it, it destroys; and whoever sits with it, it carries across.

Then Manki made a decision: from now on I will neither frighten the darkness nor flee from it. I will stay with it every single day, until it leaves of its own accord.

Rising

The next day he turned to the very first task.

He rose, bathed the dog, fed it, and gave the cow her fodder. The darkness was still inside him while he did all this, and by now he had given up fighting it.

He went to the river and bathed, and he did not recite the mantras, because the rasa had not yet returned to them. Then he came back, prepared his food, and ate it; there was no taste, and he ate all the same.

All day he lived as he used to live, with one difference: the darkness now walked alongside him instead of against him.

In this way many days, many weeks, many months went by.

Manki took up the rhythm of his days again, slowly, a little at a time.

One day he found a faint rasa in the mantras, one day a faint taste came back to the food, and one day he laid his hand on the dog’s head and felt love for it again.

These changes were very slow, and they were real.

Wisdom

Many years later Manki had become a very different sage. His hut was the same as ever, and his cow had grown old and died, and a new cow had come. His dog had died too, and before it died it had left several pups, and one of those was now at his side.

Manki had begun to read his books again, and the way he read was no longer what it had been. Once he had wanted knowledge from a book; now he sat with the book.

Slowly people began to come to him, a few at first, then more, and then a great many.

Many of those who came carried their own darkness, each his own. They came to Manki because they knew that Manki would understand them.

A woman came whose husband had died. She said, “Rishi, I weep every day, and my weeping simply will not end.”

Manki said, “Sister, weep, and remember one thing. Do not fight your weeping. Sit with it, recognize it, speak to it.”

The woman asked, “How do I speak to it?”

Manki said, “Ask it who you are, where you come from, what you want from me. Ask these questions. The answers may not come, and the weeping will slowly grow calm.”

A man came who had everything, and yet inside him there was a heaviness. He said, “Rishi, I have everything, and still I am not happy.”

Manki said, “Brother, this is no fault of yours.”

The man asked, “Why not?”

Manki said, “Because the ‘everything’ on the outside cannot fill the emptiness on the inside; that is the rule. You will have to do something from within. First accept your heaviness. Do not try to remove it. Sit with it, and then see what it says.”

In this way others kept coming, and Manki said the same thing to each of them, a little differently each time, and the heart of it was always one: do not fight your darkness, sit with it, and it will become the road itself.

For many years he kept up this tapas.

The people who came to him carried darkness inside them too, and to each one Manki said the same words: “Friend, do not fear the darkness, sit with it, and it will become the road itself.”

One day a small child came to him and said through tears, “Rishi, my mother is very sad.”

Manki said, “Child, tell your mother that sadness is a friend, and that if she sits with it, it leaves on its own.”

The child asked, “A friend?”

Manki said, “Yes. Every heavy feeling is a friend, and we mistake it for an enemy, and that is our error.” Hearing this, the child went back home.

Then many years went by. Manki grew old, and one day he passed away in peace. The people looked after his hut, preserved his books, and made a small statue of him.

And for many generations, whenever darkness descended inside someone, people would say this: “Do as Manki did. Do not fight the darkness, sit with it, and it will become the road itself.”

Rama asked, “Gurudev, will darkness ever come inside me as well?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, darkness comes inside everyone. Only, when it comes, do not fight it, sit with it, and it will become the road itself.”

Rama thought for a while, then said, “Gurudev, I feel that one day I will understand this as something very great.”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, on that day remember this story, the story of Manki.” Rama nodded.

Then Rama said, “Gurudev, there is one particular thing in Manki’s story.”

Vasishtha asked, “What?”

Rama said, “He spoke to his own darkness. He asked it who you are, where you came from.”

Vasishtha said, “Yes.”

Rama said, “This struck me as strange, because we never speak to our feelings at all.”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, this is the real lesson. We fight our feelings, or we ignore them, and we never speak to them. And if we do speak to them, they grow calm, because every feeling is like a small child, and only when the child is recognized does it settle.”

Rama said, “Gurudev, I too have some old feelings, a fear, very many years old.”

Vasishtha asked, “A fear of what?”

Rama was silent for a while, then said, “I do not know. But somewhere inside there is a kind of fear, that I am not enough.”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, this fear lives in many princes.”

Rama asked, “Why?”

Vasishtha said, “Because the father is very great, and the son wonders how he could ever grow to be so great himself.”

Rama said, “Gurudev, I feel this too.”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, speak to this fear.”

Rama asked, “How?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, tonight sit alone, close your eyes, and call your fear to you. Then ask: Fear, who are you? Ask: Fear, where did you come from? Ask: Fear, what do you want from me?”

Rama asked, “And will an answer come?”

Vasishtha said, “Perhaps it will, perhaps it will not, and your fear will certainly grow smaller.”

Rama said, “Gurudev, tonight I will do just this.”

Vasishtha said, “Very good.”

Rama gazed at the water for a while, then said, “Gurudev, Manki’s story is for every single person. Inside many people there must be Manki’s darkness.”

Vasishtha said, “Yes.”

Rama asked, “And me?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, it will come to you as well, one day. When it comes, remember Manki.” Rama nodded.

Then Rama asked, “Gurudev, what did people say about Manki?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, at first people called him weak.”

Rama asked, “Why?”

Vasishtha said, “Because he stayed sorrowful for many years.”

Rama asked, “And then?”

Vasishtha said, “Then he changed, and people called him a sage.”

Rama asked, “And what did Manki say?”

Vasishtha said, “Manki said: I was the same all along, only people’s way of seeing me changed.”

Rama said, “Gurudev, this is very true. People see one way first, and another way later.”

Vasishtha said, “Exactly.”

Then Rama asked, “Gurudev, I have a question. Will this happen in my life too, that people will see me one way first, and another way later?”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, yes, many times over. First they will see you as a prince, then as a king, then perhaps as something else; and within, you will remain the same.” Rama nodded.

Then Rama was silent for a while.

Outside, night had come down, and Rama gave a soft yawn.