A TALE

This is a tale of long long ago, when human being were in competition with the gods. The gods, ever fearful of defeat in their life-and-death struggle with the demons, did not hesitate to request the help of mere mortals like Dadhichi and Dasharath. But whenever any of these inferior mortals aspired to become gods through penance, the gods grew wary of their erstwhile allies. That is why the gods sougth to destroy the penance of people who abandoned all worldly pleasures. their most successful emissaries of destruction were celestial nymphs.

In those dats, one man realized that supreme knowledge could not be found in cities and villages. Among men, he felt, the path to godhood was blocked by social obligations and by the love of family and friends. So, to win supreme knowledge and godhood, he went to dwell alone in a remote jungle.

He lived in a small clearing surrounded by lofty trees. He ate wild roots and berries and drank water from the sparking river that flowed by his hut. The air was filled with the songs of birds and the gentle murmur of the river. In short, if a man could transeced his earthly condition anywhere on earth, that clearing was the place.

To triumph over the flesh, he squatted in front of seven-tongued fires in summer and plunged into ice-cold water in winter. He fasted for many days. Eventually, after much labor, he conquered his flesh and mind and lost his soul to God, achieving a state of unceasing meditative trance.

Now one full moon followed another. The seasons changed. The trees lost their leaves, put on new leaves, flowered, and lost their leaves again. Wild flowers blossomed and withered. The grass around him grew tall while the grass beneath him died. Termites built their nest in his legs. Yet the sage went on sitting motionlessly, in a deep meditative trance.

The leopards and cobras, the deer and the hare, surrounded him in perfect harmony. The fawns pressed through the ring of lions to cubble up with him. Anxious not to break the tranquility of the holy place, the tigers and bears tiptoed meekly by. Only the young animals frolicked in the clearing.

Suffused by inner light, he achieved a state of unending ecstasy. He felt the brilliance of a thousand suns exploding within him. Has his goal then been accomplished?

When the sage’s penance started to threaten the seat of heaven, and while he was still immersed in his long trance, Indra, the king of the gods, sent the comeliest and adroitnessnymph of his court to the hermitage.

The nymph stripped off her clothes and stepped into the river, playfully sprinkling its water. She looked as vibrant, as majestic and enchanting, as a Himalayan peak touched by the first rays of the sun. Knee-deeo in the river, she stooped to fill her hands with water, appearing as pure and chaste as the rajanigandha flower. Loveliest of all were her breasts, pointing downwards towards the water like twin raptors ready to pounce on their prey.

At that very moment, while the nymph was still in that spellbinding posture, the sage’s eye’s involuntarily opened. He did not see the changes around him; he did not notice the overgrown clearing, nor the termite hill which rose up to his chest. Instead, his gaze fell on the nymph.

The sage perceived no disparity between his inner peace and the maiden who was now quivering like a willow sapling against the current. She was the living image of his last stage of penance, or the incarnation of his undying passion.

Slowly, the sage rose. Still fully experiencing his inner state of bliss, He advanced towards the glistening maiden. Soon after, they married in the jungle and made preparations to return to society.

Just then, a great king and his entourage came to pay homage to the famous recluse. But, upon seeing the sage’s young wife, the pilgrims turned away in dismay and shock.

The sage and his wife built a house in village. Like their neighbors, they tilled the soil and led a simple domestic life. In the course of time they become the parents of two boys. They helped their neighbors in any way they could, nursing their sick, feeding their hungry, and bestowing upon them innumerable acts of kindness.

But their neighbors could never forgive his fall. They eyed with suspicion the erstwhile saint erecting a cow shed. At the sight of his wife carrying water from the well, they thought, “Is she an evil seductress who caused the saint’s downfall?”

And yet the sage never ceased to experience the ecstasy and bliss he felt in the jungle.