with this conundrum. I haven't figured it out yet so i thought of
handing it over to you all. Enjoy :)
Sri Sri:
We will begin with a story, the greatest and most effective way of
conveying knowledge. Once upon a time, long ago, all the munis and
rishis approached Lord Vishnu to tell him that even though He
(incarnated as Lord Dhanvanthari) had given them the means to cure
illnesses through Ayurveda, people still fell ill. They also wanted to
know what to do when people got sick. Sometimes it is not just
physical illness, but mental and emotional illness too that needs to
be dealt with. Anger, lust, greed, jealousy etc. How does one get rid
of all these impurities? What is the formula? Vishnu was lying on the
bed of snakes the serpent Adishesha with a 1,000 heads. When the
Rishis approached Him, he gave them Adishesha, the symbol of
awareness, who took birth in the world as Maharishi Patanjali. So
Patanjali came to this earth to give this knowledge of yoga which came
to be known as the yogasutras. Patanjali said he was not going to
discuss the yogasutras unless 1,000 people got together. So 1,000
people gathered south of Vindhya Mountains to listen to him. Patanjali
had another condition he would put a screen between him and his
students and told them that nobody was to lift the screen or leave.
Everybody had to stay in the hall till he finished. So Patanjali
stayed behind the curtain and he transmitted his knowledge to the
1,000 gathered. Each of them absorbed this knowledge. It was an
amazing phenomenon and even amongst the students, they could not
believe how they were getting this knowledge, how the master was
making each of them understand without uttering words from behind the
curtain. Everybody was amazed. Each one of them experienced such a
blast of energy, such a blast of enthusiasm, that they could not even
contain it. But they still had to maintain the discipline. But one
little boy had to go out to attend natures call. So he left the room.
He thought to himself that he would go quietly and return quietly.
Another person became curious. What is the Master doing behind the
curtain? I want to see. He got so curious that he lifted the curtain
to see the Master. But just as he did so, all 999 disciples were burnt
to ashes. Now, Patanjali became very sad. There he was, ready to
impart knowledge to the whole world and all of his disciples were
burnt. At this moment, that one little boy returned. Patanjali asked
him where he had gone. The boy explained and asked his forgiveness.
Patanjali was compassionate and felt that at least one of his
disciples was saved. So he gave him the rest of the sutras, the rest
of the knowledge. But the student had violated the law and Patanjali
was not willing to forget that. So he said, Since you have violated
the law, you will become a Brahmarakshasa, a ghost and hang on the
tree. And the only way he could liberate himself from the curse is to
teach one student. Saying this Patanjali disappeared. Now
Brahmarakshasa, hanging on a tree, would ask everyone who passed by
one question and when they could not answer he would eat them. He had
no choice and for a few thousand years this was the story. He could
not find a single person to whom he could teach the yogasutras. So he
remained in the tree as a Brahmarakshasa (the lesson here being that
for the one who has great knowledge, and who does something wrong, the
state of Brahmarakshasa will come. An intelligent person becoming a
criminal becomes more dangerous than an innocent person becoming a
criminal. If a person, who knows all knowledge and then turns a
criminal, it is much more dangerous). So the Brahmarakshasa was
hanging there and waiting for relief. Then out of compassion,
Patanjali himself becomes a disciple and comes as a student to
Brahmarakshasa who told him all the sutras, which Patanjali wrote on
the palm leaf. The story goes that to redeem one disciple, the Master
became the disciple of a disciple. Patanjali wrote the sutras sitting
on the top of the tree as that was where the Brahmarakshasa sat. Also,
Brahmarakshasa worked only in the night. So he dictated the sutras at
night and Patanjali wrote them on the leaves. He plucked all the
leaves and made a small scratch, drew blood and wrote. This went on
for seven days. At the end of it, Patanjali was tired and put
everything he had written on a piece pf cloth and set it down and went
to bathe. But when Patanjali returned, he found that a goat had eaten
most of the leaves. Patanjali then took the cloth bag and the rest of
the leaves and walked away. In this story, there is a lot of depth.
The puranas do not give any explanation. They just give a story and it
is for us to unlock the meaning. So what is that you all have to find
out? (1) How did the master convey the knowledge to everybody without
uttering a word? (2) What was the significance of the veil and when it
was lifted why did everybody burn down? (3) Why was the one boy
forgiven? (4) What is the significance of the goat? (4) What is the
significance of this story? You should think about all this and come
up with your own answers. This is the first in a series on yoga sutras
Sent from SriSri iphone App
Sent from my iPhone
20 comments: