Punya and Pavan: Two Brothers, Two Ways of Seeing

Evening was settling over the Sarayu. Behind them a woman was calling her child home, and for a long while the boy went on flinging pebbles into the water from the river’s edge, then turned back at his mother’s voice. The sand was wet beneath his feet.

Rama watched all of it, then turned toward Vasishtha.

“Gurudev, when my father is one day gone, what will I do?”

Vasishtha looked at Rama. Rama’s eyes were not wet, yet his face carried the weight that shows when someone is admitting an impossible thing into his life for the first time.

“Rama, why has this question risen in you today?”

“My father was ill for some days, and he is well now. But while he was ill, for the first time I imagined my life without him, and it shook me.”

Vasishtha was quiet for a while, then spoke.

“Rama, there is a story of two brothers. On a single day both lost their parents. One wept a great deal, the other did not weep, and both were right. But the first brother’s tears came before knowledge, and the second brother’s stillness came after it. Listen to this story.”

The home

Punya and Pavan were two brothers.

The elder was named Punya, the younger Pavan. Ten years separated them. Both were sons of the same rishi and his wife. The parents were devout, both of them, both calm, both absorbed in their work.

Home was a hut by the river. A field lay in front, a garden behind. In the garden grew turmeric, ginger, and a few flowers as well, which the mother had planted with her own hands.

Outside the hut stood an old neem tree whose shade stayed cool through the noon hours. In summer everyone sat beneath it. The father recited scripture, the mother pounded something in her mortar, Punya listened to the recitation, and Pavan played close by.

In childhood the two brothers played together.

The elder taught the younger to bathe in the river. At first Pavan was afraid, but Punya would take him by the hand and lead him into the water.

The elder taught the younger to climb trees. Pavan fell many times, but Punya set him back up again and again.

The elder taught the younger to recite, because the younger forgot everything so quickly. Punya repeated it patiently, over and over, and one day Pavan would finally understand.

For Pavan, Punya was the equal of a father. This never had to be said. It simply was.

The years

The years went by. Punya grew up, took instruction from a guru, and learned the inquiry into the self.

One day the revelation for which there is no explanation opened inside him. He recognized who he was. But he told no one of it, not his mother, not his father, not his younger brother.

On the outside he was the same old Punya. Within, a steady peace had come to rest, and he kept it behind his eyes.

Pavan was younger, still learning his own life. He too had studied the scriptures, but that revelation had not opened within him.

He loved his parents deeply. He still liked the comfort of his mother’s lap, though he had turned twenty. His father taught him every evening, and Pavan waited all day for each evening to come.

Punya had tried more than once to explain something to Pavan.

Punya said, “Pavan, the love you have for our parents is a very good thing. But learn one thing. Alongside the love, hold a steadiness too, a steadiness that will remain even on the day they are gone.”

“Bhaiya, do not say such things.”

“Pavan, I say it because one day they will go. Everyone goes. That is the law.”

“But for now…”

“For now, all is well. But the preparing begins now.”

Pavan had turned his face away. He did not even want to think about it.

Winter

One winter the father fell ill. First a light cough, then a heavy one, and then trouble drawing breath.

He no longer rose from his bed, his breathing had grown faint, and the mother sat beside him day and night.

The two brothers took turns in his care. Punya took the night watch, Pavan the day.

Punya sat by his father through the night, kept a bowl of water near, and now and then laid a hand on his forehead to feel whether the fever had come.

Pavan helped his mother all day, gave her a little rest, brought warm water for his father, and pressed his feet.

One night, in a very faint voice, the father called Punya.

The father said, “Punya, my time has come.”

No tears came to Punya’s eyes, yet a tenderness descended within him.

“Father, I am here. Speak.”

“Take care of your mother. Take care of Pavan.”

“Yes.”

“And one more thing. Whatever my death will give Pavan, do not spare him from it. Let him weep, let him break, then let him rise on his own. That will be his teaching.”

“Yes, Father.”

The father looked at Punya for a while, then his eyes closed. In one watch of the night his breath stopped.

The mother

The mother looked at the father’s face.

She laid her hand on his forehead and held it there for a long while. Then she drew her hand away.

The mother said, “Punya, there is nothing left here for me either.”

Punya looked at his mother.

“Mother, sit down.”

“No, Punya. My time was bound to his. His body is here, and I will stay here beside him.”

The mother took her husband’s hand in her own and closed her eyes. Punya said nothing.

By morning the mother’s breath had stopped as well.

Pavan

Pavan came in the morning. He saw his mother and father together on the mat, both faces calm, both sets of eyes closed. At first he could not take it in, then he understood, and he fell to the ground.

Punya lifted him up. Pavan was weeping, not loudly, in a deep quiet sob, and his body shook.

Punya drew him against his chest and said nothing. Pavan wept for a long time.

Punya did not try to take him anywhere, and let him stay there beside their mother and father. After a long while Pavan grew still.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, both mother and father? Together?”

“Yes. Father went first, in the night. Mother left her body after him.”

The last rites

The last rites were performed. Punya managed everything, and though Pavan’s hands kept trembling, he was still able to do some of the work. Two pyres were built on the river bank.

Punya set fire to the father’s pyre, Pavan to the mother’s. Both pyres burned, and both turned to ash.

The ash was given to the river.

Pavan watched the ash spread through the water, forming a kind of current, then vanishing. Pavan wept again.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, where have they gone?”

“Pavan, do not ask yet. Weep first, and then we will talk.”

On the way back Pavan saw his mother’s garden, the vines of turmeric and ginger. Pavan stopped short.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, Mother watered these yesterday. And today she is gone.”

“Yes.”

Pavan’s eyes filled again.

“And tomorrow? Who will water them tomorrow?”

Punya laid a hand on his shoulder.

“Pavan, tomorrow we will, you and I.”

The empty house

The house was empty.

Turmeric and ginger were growing in the garden. The marks of the last watering the mother had given were still on the ground. On the father’s mat lay a book he had been reading until the day he fell ill.

Pavan picked up the book, and in his hands the book began to tremble. Punya took the book from him and set it aside.

“Sit.”

Pavan sat.

Punya gave Pavan water, and Pavan drank.

“Anything else? Food?”

“No, Bhaiya, no hunger.”

“But you must eat.”

“No, not now.”

Punya did not press him.

Night came. Pavan did not sleep, and Punya sat beside him. Now and then Pavan would rise, call out for his mother and father, then remember, and weep again. Punya kept hold of his hand.

The days

Several days passed.

Pavan went on weeping, sometimes hard, sometimes softly, but always weeping. He did not eat properly either, his eyes had swollen and his hair had come loose. Punya watched over him, yet for the first several days he said nothing.

Punya did the garden work alone, watering the turmeric and ginger, gathering the neem leaves. He cooked the food as well, very plain, but he cooked it. Pavan sometimes ate a little, then began to weep.

One night Pavan asked Punya a question.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, why do you not weep?”

“Pavan, my weeping is different from yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“The ones you weep for, I weep for them too. But my weeping is on the inside, not out where it can be seen.”

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, tell me one thing.”

“I will.”

“Are they somewhere? My parents? Now? Anywhere?”

Punya looked at him for a long while, then spoke.

“Pavan, sit. I will tell you something.”

The brother’s teaching

“Pavan, what we call life is a flowing of consciousness. This consciousness enters a body, stays some years, then leaves the body, and passes into another body. The consciousness does not die. The body dies. Consciousness only changes its story.

“Our parents’ consciousness is still here, but now it has a story of its own. They are perhaps in another home, in another body. It may be that they have already forgotten us, because in a new birth the old story falls away. But they are.

“Now listen, this story does not end here.

“You do not know for how many births you have been with this consciousness. You think you belong only to this one life. But your consciousness has worn many bodies before. In every body you had parents, in every body you lost them, and in a new body you found new parents. The ones you weep for today had others like them before, and there will be others like them after. This order has been going on and on.

“So were they not special?

“They were, Pavan, they truly were. The parents who come in any body are the most special beings for that body. But beyond the body there is a consciousness that watches every body as a witness. For that consciousness, the weeping of each body is necessary, and drowning in each weeping is not.

“Your weeping is right, Pavan, entirely right. But now you must also see your own consciousness, the one that is weeping yet stands apart from the weeping, the one that is watching all of this.

“Sit, close your eyes.”

Pavan closed his eyes.

“Now look inside yourself. The one who is weeping, who is that?”

“It is I.”

“And the one who sees that you are weeping, who is that?”

“That is I as well.”

“How can the two be one? One is weeping, one is watching. If the watcher is the weeper, then how is he watching himself?”

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, are the watcher and the weeper separate?”

“Yes.”

“Then which one am I?”

Punya said, “Pavan, you are the one who watches. The weeper is your body, your feelings. But the watcher, present in every moment, witness to every joy and sorrow, that is you.”

Pavan was quiet for a while.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, and our parents?”

“They too were not their bodies, they too were consciousness. Their bodies turned to ash, but their consciousness was not separate from yours. What you are, that is what they are, one and the same consciousness.”

Pavan opened his eyes and looked at Punya.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, something is changing inside me.”

“Let it be, do not stop it.”

A slow change

Pavan sat quietly for a while, then looked at Punya.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, will I still weep?”

“You will, Pavan. For many days, perhaps many months. But each time you weep, remember the watcher too. He will stay with you. Behind your weeping there will be a steadiness that is not weeping. Hold on to that, and all the rest comes and goes.”

Many days passed. Pavan wept less, though he did not stop entirely, and Punya did not stop him either. Sometimes at night, in his sleep, Pavan would call out for his mother. Punya slept close by, and he would lay a hand on Pavan’s back, and Pavan would grow calm.

Little by little Pavan began to eat, a little at first, then a little more.

One day he cooked a meal himself, with turmeric and ginger from the garden, just the way his mother had.

Punya said, “Pavan, you are remembering Mother’s cooking.”

“Yes.”

One day Pavan was working in the garden, and his attention fell on a new shoot of ginger that had come up.

Pavan looked at it and thought. Mother sowed this seed, she is gone now, yet a shoot is rising from the seed. What Mother made is still here, only Mother’s body is not.

Pavan called Punya.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, Mother sowed this seed, and now this shoot is coming up.”

Punya said, “Pavan, you are beginning to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Mother and Father are gone, but what they made remains, in the form of us, in the form of the garden, in the form of their teachings. Even having gone, they have not gone. They are within us.”

Becoming a sage

Many years passed. Pavan slowly wept less, though he never stopped entirely.

One night Pavan said to Punya.

Pavan said, “Bhaiya, I will not weep anymore.”

“Why?”

“Because I feel that I have understood now.”

Punya said, “Pavan, the one who has understood will weep too. But now his weeping will be different. Weep as much as you like, that weeping will no longer devour you.”

The two brothers stayed on there.

They kept the garden, grew turmeric and ginger, and studied the scriptures.

Then one day Pavan too became a sage, and people began to come to him. Many of those who came had lost the ones they loved. Pavan taught them.

Pavan would say, “Weep first. The sorrow that is in you, do not keep it inside, let it out.”

“But I cannot weep.”

“Try even so. Close your eyes, remember them, and then weep.”

“And after weeping?”

“Then look inside yourself. See the one who was weeping, and recognize the watcher. The watcher does not weep.”

In this way more people kept coming, and Pavan said the same thing to each one, weep first, then watch, then understand.

And Pavan held one thing within himself. My brother taught me this, and my father had taught it to my brother, many years before, before his own death. Father had said to my brother, “Whatever my death will give Pavan, do not spare him from it.” My brother did not spare me, he let me weep, then told me to watch. By this very road I came to knowledge.

Pavan said to himself, “I too will not spare my students.”

For many years he lived as a sage and taught many people. Then one day his own time came. Before he left, he gave his hut to his dearest student.

Pavan said, “Son, this hut has a garden, turmeric and ginger. My mother planted these, many years ago. You must look after them.”

The student bowed his head.

“Gurudev, thank you.”

“No. This is your right.”

Pavan closed his eyes. One last time he saw his mother’s face within, then his father’s face, then his brother’s face. Then he too departed.

Rama was quiet for a long while, then spoke.

“Gurudev, am I like Pavan?”

“Rama, every person is first a Pavan, then slowly moves toward becoming a Punya. This journey is not the work of a single night. But it begins when Pavan has once wept fully. First weep, then watch, then understand. Do not rush what lies between.”

Rama said, “Gurudev, and when my father’s time comes?”

“Then you will weep as Pavan wept, and even as you weep you will find that inner watcher too. The two will be together. This is the true meaning of love.”

Rama looked toward the river. There was no sun on it now, only a blue light. Behind them the child’s mother was feeding him bread now, and the child’s laughter could be heard.

Rama listened to the child’s laughter for a long while.

Rama said, “Gurudev, that child too will one day become a Pavan. And one day a Punya.”

“Yes.”

Rama said, “And I?”

“Rama, you too.”

“But I am afraid of losing my father.”

Vasishtha said, “Rama, this fear will remain, for many years. Then one day it will take the shape of Pavan and stand before you. And on that day you too will weep. But even as you weep you will find that inner watcher too. The two together.”

By now an even deeper blue light had spread over the water. The child’s laughter was fainter now, perhaps he had fallen asleep.

Rama looked toward the Sarayu. A glimmer of something rose in the water there, as though a woman had waded into it many years before.

But that glimmer lasted a moment, then vanished.

Rama said, “Gurudev, may I go now.”

“Go, Rama.”

The two rose and set off toward home.