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Sree Guru Charitra
Index
Chapter 16
Namadharaka said, “Sir, the more I listen your account of Sree
Guru’s divine acts, the more I long to hear further”. The zeal of
Siddha was whetted by the former’s noble yearning and he went on:
“Son, at Mahurapura, there lived a wealthy Brahmin named Gopinath.
However much he could live in luxury and comfort, he was as
depressed as though he had no cause for happiness; for he was not
blessed with children at all. In fact, several children were born
to him, but some of died soon after their birth, while the rest
expired after living for a few days. With a keen desire for
offspring, they took to the worship of Lord Dattatreya. After
sometime, he was blessed with a son who survived. In gratitude to
the Lord, they named him Datta. Under the lavish affection of the
parents, the child grew up to be a handsome boy, endowed with all
noble qualities. He was distinguished for his cultured mind and
his peaceful demeanour. In the joy of bringing up the sweet boy,
the parents forgot all the former grief. The boy soon grew up,
like the moon in the brighter half of the month.
When Datta attained the age of eight, his parents performed his
sacred-thread ceremony at an auspicious hour and put him on the
course of Vedic studies. After he attained the age of 16, he was
married to a girl name Savitri who was well-matched to him in
beauty and noble qualities. Like the mythical divine pair Rathi
and Manmatha they were bound to each other with the strongest ties
of mutual love and devotion. They were a passionate pair like the
pair of mythical Chakravaaka birds, and were unable to bear
the briefest separation from each other. They trod the path of
righteousness, being prompted by the utmost care for each other’s
welfare. Such was her zeal in the service of her beloved that any
number of hours of the hardest work did not tire Savitri in the
least. She could not bear to be separated from him even for a
short while. In his absence, such comforts, luxuries and things of
beauty like the flowers, the silvery light of the full moon,
ornaments and even delicious food, proved unbearable to her as she
could not share them with him. Flower garlands were like thorns to
her and delicious food was like poison.
As though the wicked goddess Fortune could not bear the sight of
their perfect pair love and harmony for so long, young Datta was
afflicted with tuberculosis. His parents were very anxious about
his deteriorating health and tried all kinds of medical treatment
they could provide. But, to their utter disappointment, nothing
seemed to help. Finally, all medical men declared that his ailment
was incurable. As days and months passed, young Datta was getting
pale and emaciated, even like the moon waning towards the approach
of the new-moon day. All the time, he was very much troubled by
incessant shortness of breath, cough and phlegm. In addition to
the disease, the young man was very much worried (about the
happiness and health of his young wife and her bleak future if he
were to die). This worry further beclouded his vitality. Soon he
was reduced to a bundle of bones with hardly any flesh. Young
Savitri too was very much worried about his condition and lost all
her appetite and sleep. She could not bear to eat or sleep more
than her beloved did and soon she too was reduced physically and
mentally into a mere shadow of her husband. The fetid smell that
emanated from poor Datta was unbearable and even the physicians
who treated him. No one except him wife could bear to be by his
bedside, or to attend upon him in any other manner. All the time,
she was immersed heart and soul in keeping him as clean and
comfortable as possible, by applying the finest scents to his
foul-smelling body, massaging his aching limbs and administering
medicine at the appointed hours. Besides, she arranged for special
prayers and worship for his recovery, with the help of learned
priests. She even gave away valuable gifts to pious and the poor
for the love of God. But in spite of all this, the terrible
disease did not abate even by a hair’s breadth. Only the zeal of
Savitri in the observance of the vow of Paativratya was
growing more and more intense, as days passed. Everyone who came
to see and console the unfortunate couple and the aged parents of
Datta said the jealous Fortune was working havoc with their life
of happiness and love. Unable to bear the sight of happy
countenance of young Savitri in the prime of her youth, wicked
Fortune, they said, has chosen to eclipse her radiant moon-like
face.
Gopinath and his wife, in the forenoon of their life, could not
bear the sight of their sinking son and, what was worse, the
plight of the young daughter-in-law. Having despaired of his
recovery and even of his survival, they felt it cruel to permit
the young house wife to subject herself to such a terrible ordeal
as serving her sick husband. They warned her to keep away from him
and protect herself from the pestilent and pernicious infection,
but she would not relent. Her young husband’s health being so
helplessly consumed by the raging disease, she felt she had
nothing else to safeguard and protect, not even her health, beauty
or life.
At last, one day, young Datta said to his parents, choking with
sorrow, “This fell disease that consumes me must be the result of
my wicked deeds in a former life. As such, I shall bear it
stoically with fortitude and patience, and accept the proper
culmination. Henceforth, you need not worry on my account in the
least”. Turning to his young wife, he said, “In a previous life, I
must have been your sworn enemy, wreaking my vengeance in this
fashion. It is time you accept truth and forsake me. Go home to
your parents and try to live as happily as you can and forget all
about me”. The tender heart of the young housewife broke out in
unrestrained sorrow and she said, amidst tears, in a choking
voice: “You are the Lord of my life, master of my destiny and the
only joy of my life. I have none beside you to live for. For a
true wife, her husband is everything, but not her parents. I can
no longer live as a separate individual; the moment I leave your
company, the spark of life will no longer hold my soul and body
together. My deserting you will thus amount to my committing
suicide, which is said to be the most unpardonable of sins from
which I shall never be saved.
There still haunts in the innermost recesses of my being, the hope
that divine mercy is all-powerful and can work the seemingly
impossible miracle of saving your life for my sake. I firmly
believe that the more I heartily exert myself in your service, and
consume the brightness of my countenance in loving watchfulness in
your attendance, the brighter the vital spark in you will grow. I
believe that of God blesses a soul which is drowning in the ocean
of misery, it shall, in a trice, be transported to the very
pinnacle of joy and health. Such a Merciful Lord is indeed only
refuge and he is all powerful.”
With a stern resolve, she then humbly bowed and touched the feet
of Datta’s parents in reverence and said: “I learn that at
Gandharvapura lives a saint, a very holy and powerful sannyasi
named Sree Nrisimha Saraswathi. Something tells me from within
that with his blessing and grace, my beloved will once again be
restored to his former health and strength. If you accord your
kind permission, I shall take my husband there. Gopinath and his
wife too discovered a new strength and hope in her words and said:
‘If you have such unflinching faith, do take him there at the
earliest possible. May the Lord bless you’. The young couple once
more bowed to them, received their blessing and at once started on
their final enterprise.
The noble lady Savitri took all possible care to conduct her
husband comfortably to Gandharvapura. She arranged a
soft-cushioned palanquin for him and instructed the bearers to
walk slowly and steadily so as not to jolt her ailing lord. She
lovingly held him against soft pillows and walked beside the
palanquin. After trekking like this for several days, across hills
and forests, the party reached the neighbourhood of their holy
destination. But to her utter disappointment, she found that her
husband was dead! Her only hope being thus thwarted and the only
basis of her existence knocked out, she found nothing to live for.
With the flames of suppressed grief raging in her heart like a
volcano, she took the final resolve to end her own life too. The
natives of that place who were helpless witnesses of her dire
misfortune, had some how managed to dissuade her from such a
precipitate act of despair. She was shocked to the very core of
her being and did not know what else she should do next. Such a
forlorn existence seemed utterly meaningless and unbearable for
her. Soon the imprisoned grief burst out thus in loud wailing:
‘My dear, why have you deserted me like this? Wither have you
left? If you do not return to this body and give us cheer and
comfort, neither your father, mother nor I, your dear wife, can
survive and you will incur the sin of killing us all. Is it not
said in the Sastras that if you have no sons, your sacred
debt to your ancestors would go un discharged? Besides, you have
not even instructed me as to where I should spend the remaining
days of my widowed life. What is more, how can I see your parents
with my widowed countenance? Now that I am a widow, people
henceforth consider the very sight of my face as ill omen. Alas!
My plight is like that of a creature which has come to a river to
slake it thirst but which is, instead, devoured by a cruel
crocodile on its very banks! Or like a weary traveler who was
crushed to death by the sudden fall of a tree underneath which he
sought to repose; or like a cow that, having come to gaze, was
killed by a tiger; or like a devotee who was crushed to death by
the fall of the shrine to which he came to seek divine protection.
I have come for the darshan of Sree Guru and to seek his
protection for my ailing husband, but I lost my husband even as I
approached the place!
O! Sree Guru, fearing that you will be constrained to grant health
for my ailing husband, have you chosen to rob him of his life’s
spark even sooner? If you mean that it is not in your power to
ward off my husband’s fell disease, to whom else shall we turn for
protection? Have you achieved any greatness or glory by such a
deed as this? Now I shall carry the news of this great achievement
of yours to the other worlds. O Mother, goddess Gouri, have you
chosen to forget all my vows which I assiduously observed all
through my life in your honour? What has happened to your power
and mercy that can annihilate the misfortune of widowhood? Alas,
all the suspicious signs of a house-wife have been heartlessly
robbed from me by death. As the ship of my life danced blissfully
on the bosom of the ocean of life, the terrible whale called death
has gulped the very bark of my holiness as a housewife’. Wailing
thus, she again and again recalled every word and gesture of her
late dear husband and sank ever deeper in grief and fell on his
cold, dead body in boundless fondness.
As Savitri thus was lost in the depths of grief, an ascetic
wearing rudrakshas and vibhuti, and holding a
trident in his hand, with long matted hair, approached her from
among the crowd and addressed her thus: ‘My daughter, why do you
wail so sorely? Quiet yourself! Don’t you know that the dead will
never return despite all our grief and wailing? After all, death
is natural to all creatures and our worldly relations are only
tentative and transcient. It is like two birds coming together on
a tree for a night’s rest and the next morning, each of them goes
its own way. So too, souls come together in this life just by an
accidental coincidence of circumstances. Such indeed is the
relationship of a wife and her husband too. Else, if there be any
abiding relationship between the two, you should be able to say
whose wife you were in your previous life. If you reflect deeply,
you will realize that no one in this world is essentially related
to any other in any manner whatsoever. For, the spirit within us
which is our essential Self, is all pervading, beyond birth and
death. When it is associated with the physical structure made of
the five material elements, it loses sight of its true nature and
wrongly identifies itself as an individual and claims someone as
it husband and some other as its father and so on. When, you
consider deeply, you will at once realize that all such feelings
and emotions are merely our mental creations, projected by our
basic ignorance.
In itself, the individual soul is without form. When it is
associated with the three modes of nature, Sattva, Rajas and
Tamas, the soul is individualized. It falsely identifies itself
with the material structure which it enlivens, and thus gets
caught in the web of joys and sorrows. But when you consider these
with discrimination, it will be clear to you that the birth of the
body is not the birth of the soul, nor does the death of the body
constitute the death of the soul. When an individual is endowed
with a perfect intellect, he will be able to penetrate beneath the
web of illusion and thereby break it as under. Such a one will no
longer be subject to any kind of sorrow. One may mistake a flower
garland for a snake in semi-darkness but once a light is fetched
to examine it, that illusion ceases and the true nature of garland
is revealed. Similarly, till one attains true wisdom, the
phenomena of birth and death seem real and, in its turn, the soul
seems to be subject to the pairs of life experiences like joy and
sorrow. Therefore, one must pull together one’s own intellectual
strength of steadfast understanding and thus cross the delusion of
sorrow and suffering once and forever. Such a crisis in life as
this is the most opportune occasion for it. If, by our
inadvertence, we let slip the priceless opportunity, namely, this
human birth, it is hardly possible to get such another again’.
Grief-stricken Savitri passively listened to his discourse and
when he concluded, she put forth her own argument: ‘I have set out
on the long trek to this place, leaving all my kith and kin at
home, in great hope of my husband’s recovery. But even on the way,
he breathed his last. Now I am utterly helpless and you are my
only guide. Show me a way out of my dire calamity!’
The compassionate Sadhu replied, ‘A devoted wife needs no complex
form of Sadhana or spiritual discipline to attain the true
object of life i.e., wisdom of the Self. Loving service of and
devotion to her husband is in itself the supreme path for her.
Sage Brihaspathi has taught thus: “The whole of the phenomenal
existence will come under the control of a Pativrata. The
lady who every attends on her husband like a shadow and serves him
with all her love and looks upon such loving service of
self-dedication as her spiritual vow; she who, in loving
reverence, spontaneously partakes of the washings of her husband’s
feet as the holy water of Ganga and cannot relish any food other
than her husband’s left over as consecrated food; she who receives
his orders as the holy writ, such a one never loses her composure
whenever he gets angry, but on the other hand, calms him down with
all the love she can command. Such a one is Pativrata.
There is nothing she cannot accomplish in this world. Such a one
never fritters her precious time in light and frivolous
courtesy-calls on her neighbours and acquaintances. She never
communicates anything to her own kith and kin without the
knowledge of her husband. Even if he happens to be weak, poor or
even given to immoral ways, such a Pativrata never wavers
in her faith that he is the embodiment of the divine, but serves
him accordingly. The customary and auspicious accessories of a
housewife like turmeric and kumkum are to her the most
precious and dear ornaments. For, they are said to be the most
conducive to her husband’s well being. She knows no comfort of her
own beside his happiness and comfort. On the other hand, a woman
who opposes and contradicts her husband will be born in her next
life as a bitch. A housewife who abuses him will be born as an
owl. She who cares to appease her palate with delicious food of
her own liking and is unmindful of her husband’s tastes will be
born as a pig. The wife who speaks angrily and harshly to her
husband will be born dumb in her next birth. She who threatens and
warns her husband will be reborn as a tigress. An adulterous and
unfaithful wife will be reborn as a worm or insect.
My daughter, Sastras lay down that the ideal duty of a
housewife on the death of her husband is Sahagamana i.e.,
putting and end to her own physical existence through
self-immolation on the funeral pyre of her husband. Or, as an
alternative, she may live on, strictly observing the vows of
widowhood: it consists in shaving off her hair, sleeping on bare
earth, taking food only during the day and abstaining from the use
of such luxuries as the betel and nut, and the use of materials
enjoined by the Sastras for a housewife. She must wear only
a white garment at all times. During the holy months of
Kaarthik, Maagha and Visaakha, taking the
special holy bath everyday, and observing the vow of
Chaandraayana, she must spend the rest of her life in
listening to devotional accounts of the divine acts of the Lord.
She must scrupulously protect her chastity and also her natural
charms from the notice of others. I have just recounted to you
only the regulations that were laid down by Sage Brihaspathi. You
may choose Sahagamana if you like. For, thereby you will be
able to save your husband from the kingdom of death (yamaloka)
and elevate him along with you to heaven. Even the gods will
honour and obey the wish of such a great Pativrata.”
Savitri listened attentively and said, ‘Revered Sir, I am in the
prime of my youth and hence it is safer for me to perform
Sahagamana.’ The sadhu was very much pleased and said: “Pious
one, you have well said. As you have come a long way for the
darshan of Sree Guru, first of all, pay your respects to him.
Then take a holy dip in the river, put on a clean garment and then
give away the materials that should be used by a housewife to
pious couples as tokens of your heartfelt repentance for the sins
of a former life which have brought you now to such a plight. Take
these rudrakshas and wear them round your neck. Take this
holy ash and apply it to your body. Then besprinkle your late
husband’s body with the holy washings of Sree Guru’s feet. And
then perform Sahagamana’. So saying, he gave her some
rudrakshas and holy ash and then went away.
Then, accordingly, Savitri gave away the said gifts to pious
Brahmin couples and then said to her companions: “Go home!
Henceforth, Parameswara (Lord Shiva) and his consort, goddess
Parvati, are my parents. I shall join them only, but don’t divulge
to the aged parents, of my sad calamity. Else, they would at once
die of the grief. Tell them that both of us are faring well here”.
After sending them away, she picked up the fire for her husband’s
funeral and her own Sahagamana and boldly walked at the head of
the bearers of the dead body. With all her beauty of youth, and
steadfast religious devotion to her late husband, which informed
her moral courage and zeal to commit Sahagamana, she looked
like Parvati of yore, proceeding for her tapas to win the hand of
Lord Shiva in eternal union of marriage. All the amazed spectators
marveled at her boldness and paativratya. They felt that
she who had not fully enjoined the bliss of wedded life and who is
still in the bloom of her youth was surely blessed in that she is
sure to uplift even her entire race in public esteem. They
accordingly glorified her virtue. She arrived at the cremation
ground, bowed before the sacred fire and duly worshipped the
housewives who had assembled there. Then she reflected deeply on
the teaching of the sadhu and wore the rudrakshas round her
neck. She then besmeared her body with the holy ash given by the
sadhu and took the blessing and permission of the Vedic pundits.
Chanting verses in praise of Sree Guru, she then proceeded to the
Sangama. All along the way, she mentally addressed Sree
Guru thus:
‘O thou Supreme Spirit! You are the bestower of everything, the
owner and Lord of Creation, the sole refuge of all pious souls,
and the ocean of mercy. You are manifest as the holy Trinity.
Hitherto, countless mortals like me have been getting all their
wishes fulfilled, just by an iota of thy grace. Now I too shall
fulfill my object and take your fame even to the very heaven. Till
now, many dead people were raised, restored to health by the power
of thy presence. Many that were caught up in terrible crises could
thus win wealth and the ignorant ones gained knowledge. In such a
holy place as this, today, I shall attain spiritual identity with
you, along with my husband, through Sahagamana.’ Glorifying
the Lord in this fashion, she quickly arrived at the Sangama and
bowed to the divine feet of Sree Guru.
Sree Guru greeted her with a smile and blessed her saying, ‘May
you be blessed with a long life of a housewife; may you give birth
to eight children who would become as famous as the Astha
Vasus!’ The assembly of devotees who were all amazed at the
impossible blessing, and compassionately informed him of the young
lady’s plight. Sree Guru said, in a stern voice: ‘My word shall
never go in vain! Fetch the dead body here!’ in the meanwhile some
Vedic pundits arrived and worshipped the Master, chanting Rudra
mantras. Soon after, the dead body was fetched and kept on the
ground in front of him. Sree Guru cast a searching glance at it,
muttered the Rudra mantras and sprinkled holy water on it. At once
it was revived and young Datta sat up like one awakened from deep
sleep! Young Savitri was beside herself with joy and wonder. Her
eyes filled with tears of joy, she at once prostrated to Sree
Guru, ran up to her dear husband and recounted to him all that
happened. Datta too was immensely happy and he, along with his
wife, heartily glorified the divinity of Sree Guru. All the people
who had gathered there loudly hailed the Master.
However, one among the crowd was jealous and cunning in his
skepticism. He wryly remarked: ‘Why glorify this sannyasi? God’s
decree that was subtly written on the brow of Datta is being
realized at the proper time; he came back to life only as per that
divine writ. How can this sannyasi be now credited with such a
miracle?’ Sree Guru turned to the man and said: ‘In fact, the
Creator had ordained only thirty years as the span of Datta’s life
in the present birth. He shall live a hundred years in his next
birth. Now I have exchanged the one for the other, so that Datta
can live for 100 years in this life and only for 30 years in his
next birth.’ So saying, by his mere look, he granted the mystical
knowledge of three-fold time to this skeptic and enabled him to
see for himself, that original divine writ of the Creator. When
the man was convinced, all the people around, once again hailed
Sree Guru. The latter turned to he happy young couple and blessed
them saying, ‘May you live long together with wealth and universal
fame!’ Pleased with the blessing, the young pair took their holy
bath at the Sangama and duly worshipped the Master. Just then, the
sun set. The Master attended to his twilight prayers and returned
to his muth, with the devotees.
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