Before you read
Sent to King Janaka, he waits seven days at the gate, seven in the courtyard and seven among the pleasures of the inner palace before the king will see him. What Janaka finally gives him is a confirmation of what he already knows, and that is what sets him free. Vishvamitra tells it in Dasharatha’s court because Rama stands exactly where Shuka stood.
The Doubt That Remained
Rama had finished. He had stood before his father’s full assembly and said, in a clear voice that carried to the back of the hall, that nothing in the world was worth wanting, and the court sat in the silence that follows a prince saying such a thing. The sage Vishvamitra was seated in front of him, and he spoke first, and gently. “Rama, you are the best of intelligent men, and you have nothing left to learn beyond what your own close watching has already taught you. Your understanding is clear the way a mirror is clear, by its own nature. And still your questions do some good. They are the polishing of that mirror, so that its light can reach the rest of us.”
“You have the mind of Shuka, the son of the great Vyasa. He knew the knowable by his own intuition, and he still needed someone’s word to confirm what he knew.” Rama looked up. “How was it, sir,” he asked, “that Shuka, who could not rest assured of his own knowledge at first, came to be settled in it afterward?” “Listen, Rama,” Vishvamitra said. “I will tell you the story of Shukadeva. His case was exactly yours, and the telling of it is a safeguard against being born again.”
“There sits the great Vyasa, on his golden seat at your father’s side.” Every head in the hall turned to the man beside the king, dark as a hill of black coal and blazing like the midday sun. “His son was named Shuka, a boy of great learning and wisdom, with a face like the moon and a bearing as settled as a sacrificial altar.”
“He thought over the emptiness of worldly affairs, as you have, and he grew as indifferent to them as you are. Nothing his father’s house could offer him held his eye for long.”
“That was when this large-minded boy was led by his own discriminating understanding into a long inquiry after what is true. He asked no one. He searched on his own account, and on his own account he found it.”
“And having got hold of the highest truth, he was still unsettled. He could not bring himself to believe that what he knew was certain.”
“His mind lost interest in the passing enjoyments it perceived around it. He became like the Chataka, the bird that will take no water from pond or river and waits with its beak open for the rain; he thirsted only for the dewdrops of a heavenly happiness.”
“One day the clear-sighted Shuka found his father, the sage Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa, sitting quietly by himself, and he went to him with reverence and asked, ‘Tell me, father. Where did this whole commotion of the world have its rise, and how is it to subside? What is its cause? How far does it extend, and where does it end?’”
“Vyasa knew the nature of the soul. Asked this by his own son, he explained to him clearly everything that there was to say on the subject, from the first thing to the last.”
“Shuka listened and thought that he already knew all of it by his own good understanding. The words his father used were the words he had arrived at alone, and because they were already his, he did not think much of his father’s instruction.”
“Vyasa understood what his son was thinking, and he answered the thought. ‘I know the true nature of these things no better than this,’ he said. ‘But there is a prince in this land named Janaka who truly possesses the knowledge of the knowable. Go to him. From him you can learn everything.’”
The Journey to Videha
“Shuka did as his father directed him. He went down to the city of Videha, which lies at the foot of Mount Sumeru, in the country Janaka ruled.”
“The door keeper, the man with the mace who stands at a king’s gate and decides who is announced, carried the news in to the high-minded Janaka: Shuka, the son of Vyasa, was waiting outside.”
“Janaka understood at once that Shuka had come to learn from him. He paid the messenger no attention. He said nothing, and he kept on saying nothing for seven days.”
“Think what that is. The son of Vyasa, whose name opens every door in the three worlds, standing at a city gate while the guard changes and the carts go in and out past him, and no word comes. Shuka stood there seven days.”
“Then the king ordered him brought into the outer compound, and there he had to remain as before, in everything that vexes a man’s spirit, for seven days more.”
“After that Shuka was commanded to enter the inner apartments of the palace. He stayed there another week, and in all that week he did not once see the king.”
“Here Janaka changed the test. He entertained the moon-faced Shuka with an abundance of food, with perfumes, with young women whose business was to be wanted.”
“Neither the slights of the first two weeks nor the entertainments of the third could touch the tenor of Shuka’s mind. It stayed as firm as a rock under the blasts of the wind.”
“He remained there like the full moon, which neither wanes nor grows. His desires were quiet, his tongue was still, and his mind was content. Twenty-one days had gone by.”
Janaka Receives Shuka
“Now Janaka knew that Shuka’s disposition could not be altered, and he had him brought into his presence. He looked at the serenity in the young man’s soul, and the king rose from his seat and bowed down to him.”
“‘You have carried out every duty you had in this world,’ Janaka said, ‘and you have obtained the object of your heart’s desire to its furthest extent. What is it you want now, that you are welcome to at my house?’”
“Shuka put the same question he had put to his father. ‘Tell me where all this bustle of worldly life sprang from. And tell me how it may soon come to rest.’”
“Janaka had been Vyasa‘s pupil. Asked this by Vyasa’s son, he gave him the same teaching he had received from that great-souled father, whole and in order, and Shuka recognized every turn of it.”
“When the king had finished, Shuka said, ‘All of this I came to know long ago by my own intuition, and then from my father’s mouth when I asked him. You, sir, who speak better than anyone, have now said the same thing, and the same is found to be the true sense of the scriptures.’”
“‘That the world is a creation of volition and dissolves when our desires are absent; that it is a cursed and unsubstantial world when all is said: this is the conclusion every sage has reached. Now tell me truly, you with the long arms of a king, what you think this world is, whether it is real or unreal, so that my mind may be set at rest by you and stop wandering the whole world over in search of the truth.’”
“Janaka answered him. ‘There is nothing more certain than what you have known by yourself and heard from your father. There is one undivided intelligent spirit, called the universal soul, and nothing besides it. It becomes confined by its desires, and it is freed by the want of them. You have truly come to the knowledge of the knowable, and because of it your great soul has given up its attachment to the objects of enjoyment and of sight.’”
“‘You must be a hero to have overcome desire from your earliest youth, with the whole lengthening chain of attractive enjoyments pulling at you. What more do you want to hear? Even your father, with all his learning in every science and all his devotion to austerity, has not arrived at a perfection like yours. I am a pupil of Vyasa, and you are his son; but you are greater than both of us, because you have abandoned the taste for the enjoyments of life.’”
“‘You have obtained whatever can be obtained by the comprehensiveness of your mind. You take no interest in the outer and visible world, and so you are liberated from it. You have nothing left to doubt.’”
Knowledge Becomes Repose
“Advised like that by the magnanimous Janaka, Shuka said nothing more. There was nothing to say. His mind settled on the purely supreme object and stayed there.”
“Sorrow left him, and fear. He was released from every effort and exertion and from every doubt, and he went out of Videha to a peaceful summit of Mount Meru to find his final absorption.”
“There he passed ten thousand rainy seasons in a meditation that did not alter, until at last the mortal coil broke and he was extinguished in the supreme soul, as a lamp goes out when its oil is gone.”
“Purified of the stain of transmigration by holding back from earthly desires, the great-souled Shuka sank into the holy state of the Supreme Spirit, as a drop of water mixes with the waters and is lost in the depth of the ocean.” Vishvamitra let the drop fall and turned back to the prince in front of him.
Vishvamitra Turns to Rama
“Rama, it is now your turn to have your mind properly cleansed of its doubts, as it was done for the son of Vyasa.” Then he turned to the assembled sages. “You can all see how perfectly the knowable is known to Rama. His good understanding has learned to feel a distaste for worldly enjoyments as if they were diseases on him.”
“You know well that the fixed mark of a mind that knows the knowable is an aversion to all the enjoyments of life. It is the desire for the fruits that chains a man fast to the earth, and it is the knowledge of the frailty of things here that scatters his darkness. Know this, Rama: the wise call the curtailing of desire liberty, and the fastening of desire to earthly objects is what they call confinement. Spiritual knowledge is easy enough for most men to come by. A distaste for the objects of pleasure is hard to get.”
“The one who fully comprehends a thing is said to know it, and the one who knows what there is to know is called learned; no earthly enjoyment can delight such high-minded men. The mind that has no relish for earthly pleasure, except the glory of deeds done for their own sake, is said to be liberated here, in this life. As no plant grows in barren soil, so no distaste for the world grows in a man until he comes to know the knowable reality. So you may be sure that this upholder of Raghu’s race has truly known the knowable, since knowing it has turned his stomach against his princely enjoyments.”
“And I tell all of you that whatever Rama has come to know by his intuition needs to be confirmed by Vasistha before his mind will be tranquil. All he lacks for his repose is a settled reliance on the One, as the beauty of autumn depends on nothing except the clearness of the sky. Let the venerable Vasistha reason with the high-minded Rama and give him back the peace of his mind. He is the master and family preceptor of the whole race of the Raghus; he knows everything and sees everything, and his sight runs clear through the three times, past, present and what is to come.” Then he turned to Vasistha himself.