Mistaking a Saint for a Fool

Namaste. Everybody okay? Okay, so tonight I was going to tell you another very ancient Puranic story. It was about a great saint mistaken for a fool. It begins with a king. He was a quite famous king and extremely powerful and ruled over a great kingdom.

He was a very pious person. He was incredibly just and fair and had all those wonderful qualities. But as was the, you know, in older times people had a really clear idea that my life in this particular body has a beginning and it comes to an end.

And it must serve some higher purpose. If I’m just stumbling upon on in life, just constantly trying to stimulate the senses and experience some pleasurable experiences and think that’s going to cut the mustard, I’m sorry it doesn’t.

And as a result of that, when people stumble through life in this way, their death is quite miserable. But these were people that were, you know, it’s very heroic. They had this real clear understanding about what life was for.

And so as was often the case, this great king, it came to the end of the time where he could rule and he stepped aside. He relinquished his throne and taking nothing, zero, no camping gear, anything, zero.

They leave and go to live in the forest and live out the remainder of their life very absorbed in these very profound spiritual practices. And they did often practice the ashtanga yoga process, which is actually a deeply devotional process, which is absolutely not understood today.

People have got their own idea what that word means. And so, living alone in the forest and deeply absorbed, he built himself a small hut and he would daily engage in sacrificial offerings. They had this way they would perform the lighting of a fire and the offering of oblations and the chanting of mantras.

He would spend the day in meditation and reflection and this chanting of these transcendental sounds. And one day when he went down towards the river, he saw a female deer, a doe, drinking water and at that moment there was this ear-splitting roar from a large jungle cat, tiger, which so startled the deer that it instantly dropped a fawn, a baby that she was in, it was almost time for delivery.

And in her fright she dropped the fawn and leapt into the water trying to cross and was swept away and died. And so he was seeing this little fawn struggling. And it was like, you know, this horrible situation and his heart was overwhelmed with compassion.

He went over and cleaned off the deer and carried it home back to his little hut and began to take care of it out of compassion. But over time he became deeply attached to the deer. In the middle of his meditation he’s kind of like taking a look to see what it’s doing, if it’s okay, and he’s losing the plot.

And he became so deeply attached. to this this young deer that one time it had gone missing and fearing the worst he went looking for it and in his looking for it and his anxiety about it he fell to his death and because this was the last thought on his mind he therefore entered the womb of a deer Because this was his thought this is his absorption at the moment of death But because he had become a very great yogi He was allowed a special Facility that even while within the body of a deer he he was aware of what had happened And so he recounted this whole journey later And he said that having suddenly discovered that he was in this horrible predicament, he realized that there was nothing that he could do other than wait for this life to pass in a deer. So he would often seek out these hermitages of yogis and saints living in the forest and sort of like hang around to hear the vibrations and to soak it up and everything.

And then when that lifetime in a deer body had ended, he took birth in the family of some very religious and pious people. And again, he retained this memory. The reality is that when the living being, the spiritual being, we are covered by two bodies, a gross material body and a subtle body.

The subtle body is constituted primarily by the mind and there’s a couple of other really important elements there. When the living being transmigrates from one body to another, they bring their mind with them so theoretically it’s possible to remember previous births.

But the experience of the time in the womb, death, the time in the womb and the birth experience, one’s memory generally becomes wiped clean. But he was able to remember this and so even as a young child, he was just like freaked out, he’s gone like, I don’t want to do this anymore, I want to finish up my business and not have to take birth again and again.

And so he decided that he would not really participate. in the family. He acted like a like a crazy person. He wouldn’t respond to verbal commands or anything. He was just like, he just wouldn’t pay attention and and again he could remember all of his meditative practices and so he was very absorbed in this way.

His father wanted so much to have him educated, being a very learned person himself. His son refused to learn anything. They thought that he was, he never spoke, he never spoke a word. So they thought he was mute and they thought he was probably deaf and very unintelligent and he couldn’t learn anything.

So he was allowed to just hang out in the house and then when his father died, his elder siblings treated him like an animal and what they would do is confine him to the rice fields and things to shoo away the birds so that they wouldn’t come and eat all the ripe grains prior to harvest.

He lived that way for some time and then just wandered off. And he lived the life of a wandering mendicant, but like an extreme, extreme mendicant. He did not wear clothing. He did not bathe. He was completely absorbed in this meditative state the whole time.

This condition is described in the Vedas as you are an avadhuta. Avadhuta means a person in this condition of constant samadhi even though they are moving about in the world, they are just constantly engaged.

And because he had given up all ideas, I mean, we just cling so strongly to this idea of the body that we have on us. This is how we identify. This is how we relate to the world. This is how we seek affirmation, love, acceptance, everything is through the agency of this body, which of course it doesn’t matter how much somebody shows affection to your body.

You know, you can still feel untouched within. But because he was in this highly renounced state, he had no attraction, nor was he repulsed by anything. He was just like, it was like a big zero to him.

So sometimes he would wander through villages and he was such an odd sight that people would come out, especially children and women, and they would laugh and some people would throw some sticks or some things at him and whatever.

Some people would put a little bit of… kind of food that was almost going off you know and rather than throw it they’d give it to him so he would eat but he would never beg if somebody gave him and he just lived in this extreme renounced condition.

So one day while he was walking on a road a king passed by and the king was borne on a palaquin so he had carriers who are carrying it and of course soldiers and a whole retinue of officials and everything and as they passed a little bit one of the the carriers of palaquin suddenly had a serious hamstring problem or something really went bad and he couldn’t walk anymore and so they were wanting someone else to fill that spot and so not seen anybody around apart from this guy, the general view of many people was such a person was like mad and actually no different than an animal. And so he was forcibly put into service of the king and made, because he was quite strong, and made to carry this palanquin.

There was a little problem though. He had an aversion to causing pain to anyone or anything. And so he would studiously avoid stepping on insects. And of course you can imagine what’s happening. Everybody’s trying to walk in the same rhythm.

And here’s this one who keeps jumping around and all over the place. And so the king’s having this like really, you know. And then he’s just getting totally pissed. And he starts cursing this person and tells him, Jada Bharat, that he has to behave and walk properly, otherwise he’ll be severely punished.

And of course, you know, for us, we’ve lost touch with monarchy. Monarchs were absolute. Their word was law. There was no higher authority, nothing there. I mean, you can’t even imagine what it’s like.

And so when the king is bummed about something, this is like, you know, okay. This can go sideways really, really quickly. And so they resumed. And again, he’s doing the same thing. He’s just not going to crush harmless, little innocent insects.

And so it’s becoming so horrific, the king orders, everything stopped and lowered. And he was berating Jada Bharat. Jadabharat was absolutely unaffected by his words. And now he suddenly spoke, and it was the first time in his lifetime that he spoke.

And he opened his mouth to speak and instantly pinpointed to the king what his problem was. He said, you know that you have this ignorant vision of your position tied to this current status of your body in this life, and thinking all others lower than yourself.

And he began to, the words just flowed from him and it was like astonishing. And the king was startled. And so he began to question him in a bit of a challenging way at first. And Jadabharat discoursed with him.

And then the king was just like so overwhelmed. He suddenly realized, that I had been looking upon this person as being no different than a donkey or a water buffalo, an animal. And now there is this wellspring of infinite knowledge and perfect spiritual vision.

And the king realized that he had, you know, committed a very grave offense against someone that was deeply spiritual because he did not have the vision to see. But hearing, so they’ve got this ancient saying in the Vedas, is that you should learn to see with your ears.

Your eyes will always fool you. But if you are trained in knowledge, when you listen to someone speak, you will be able to see clearly what is in their heart, what is in their mind. You will be able to understand things.

So the king hearing this, he suddenly realized that, you know, and there was this awareness in these more spiritual cultures that a person that has great spiritual knowledge is revered because they play an important part in people’s lives.

Their contribution is actually invaluable. And so the king did something that surprised everyone. He bowed on the ground before Jada Bharat and asked him to be forgiven for speaking to him and dealing with him in this way.

Then he asked him, now you have told me all of this and it’s just like my mind is blown and I realize that I don’t fully grasp everything that you’re saying. Please repeat it to me. And so they went into this conversation a lot more deeply and the king came away with this profound understanding of the equality of all beings, while in this lifetime, due to the different bodies that we may have and the different stations in life, we may occupy the different economic circumstances of individuals, we may see things as higher and lower. But from a spiritual perspective, everyone is on the same platform. We are all equal, as they say, in the eyes of God.

And the king was having this vision and understanding of it at this moment and became completely overwhelmed. So I think this message, even though it is spoken in very ancient times, has incredible relevance still, especially in this time that we live, where technology becomes a magnifying glass.

If you have faults, they become magnified with technology. If you have a wrong way of thinking that becomes magnified. If you have a wrong way of speaking, now you have a bullhorn. So what’s happening, depending upon the individual qualities of people and their consciousness, technology is simply amplifying everything.

And of course, it’s not good. Just because you have a bullhorn, it doesn’t mean that everything that you say is correct. You may be profoundly ignorant. You may have multiple PhDs and still be profoundly ignorant.

That is just what you know, that understanding comes from a very deep and profound understanding of what is the purpose of life and the spiritual nature of each individual, you and I. We have a common spiritual nature.

We have common spiritual needs. Which can only be fulfilled with spiritual sustenance. So after that, there was no real account of what happened to Jada Bharat. But he wandered off and was not to be seen again.

But this was not uncommon. We saw this. There are so many accounts. It’s not that all kings were saintly people. There was a whole period of time and really ancient history where many of them were described as a Raja Rishi.

The Rishis were considered the great sages and the Rajas the king but they were like saintly kings. They occupied the throne. They never just independently made decisions. They always counseled those advisors and there are accounts of advisors that were amazing in more modern times from, you know, well not so modern.

When we look at Vedic history it’s modern. There was a great teacher Brahmana. His name was Chanakya, Chanakya Pandit and he saw the deplorable condition and state. He saw warring, invading foreigners coming from Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Iran, these areas, they all began invading India and occupying kingdoms.

And he wanted to have a king who would protect the old dharma, what’s the old righteous ways. And so he became a minister to a king and trained him in proper thinking and everything. The whole time he lived in a little thatched hut at the back of the palace out on the grounds.

And when he helped guide this king with right thinking to establish a vast kingdom that was based on really fine spiritual principles, he considered his work done. He did not accept even one cent in money.

He offered his respects to the king and left never to be seen or heard from again. But before doing this in the time that he was there he put together, it’s called a nitishastra. This is edicts for political and social life based on spiritual principle.

He left that behind. So it’s a whole different ballgame when people lived life with a really thoroughly spiritual foundation. They functioned as societies and as individuals, but it was very common. They would get up.

There was the story of Yudhisthira, who is the brother of Arjuna, who was in the Bhagavad Gita. Yudhisthira was so loved by his people that if he went out in the street people would prostrate themselves on the ground before him.

They considered him like an embodiment of God almost. He was so pious and righteous and so benevolent. And one night, he had concluded that his time was done doing this. He lived in fabulous wealth. And he just got up and removed all his jewelry and everything, and in his underwear, he left the palace.

And people saw him leaving, and the gods woke everybody, and people freaked, and they ran to him, following him. And they fell at his feet and begged him not to leave. And he didn’t even pay them attention.

He was so deeply absorbed and chanting, he just continued walking. He only stopped once to pick up a torn piece of cloth on the street, which he wrapped around himself and left for the Himalayas, where he also lived like Jada Bharat did when he left his kingdom.

So, I mean, this clarity that comes from a spiritual understanding really makes it so a person can live in this world, but not be of this world. And to live their life in a noble and a kind way, and to leave a wonderful impression on their family, on people that they knew, on their society, and hearing about these things, you know, I think for many people it’s sort of like, wow, it’s inspiring, and we should aspire to regain what has become lost,

to move from leading thoroughly materialistic lives to a life that is actually more happy, a life that is more fulfilling, a life that is actually spiritually founded. Okay? Good enough? Thank you.