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Parable

five holy men

Once in Haridwar I met a sadhu lying on a bed of nails. I went to him and asked, “To what end do you wound and torture yourself so?” He answered:

You are a sadhu yourself. Do you not know why I do this? It is my penance. I am destroying the flesh and its desires. I serve God in this way, but I still feel all too clearly the pain of my sins and the evil in my desires. Indeed, the pain of them is far worse than the pain of these nails. My goal is to kill all desire and so to find release from myself and oneness with God. I have been exercising this discipline for eighteen months, but I have not yet reached my goal. Indeed, it is not possible to find release in such a short time; it will take many years, even many lives, before I can hope for release.

I considered the life of this man. Must we torture ourselves through many lives in order to find true peace? If we do not reach our goal in this life, why should there be another chance in another life? Is it even possible in thousands on thousands of lives? Can such peace ever be found through our own efforts? Must it not be a gift from God? Surely we must seek the life of God, not the death of flesh.

I met another sadhu doing penance. His feet were tied with a rope and he was hanging upside down from the branch of a tree. When he had ended his exercise and was resting under the tree, I asked him, “Why do you do this? What is the purpose of such torture?” He answered:

People are greatly amazed to see me hanging head-down from a tree, but remember, the Creator sets every child head-down in the mother’s womb. This is my method to serve God and do penance. In the eyes of the world it is folly, but in this exercise I remind myself and others that all of us are bound by sin and lead lives that are, in God’s eyes, upside down. I seek to turn myself upside down again and again until in the end I stand upright in the sight of God.

It is true that the world is upside down and its ways are perverted. But can we ever hope to right ourselves through our own strength? Must we not turn instead to God, who alone can set right what is wrong and free us from evil thoughts and desires?

Later, I met yet another sadhu. In the hot summer, he would continually sit within the five fires – that is, with four fires around him and the burning sun overhead. In winter he would stand for hours in the icy water. Yet his whole expression was marked by sadness and despair. I learned that the man had been undergoing this exercise for five years. I approached him and asked: “What have you gained from this discipline? What have you learned?” He answered sadly, “I do not hope to gain or learn anything in this present life, and about the future I can say nothing.”

The following day I went to see a sadhu who had taken an oath of silence. He was a genuine seeker after truth. He had not spoken for six years. I went to him and asked him questions: “Did God not give us tongues so that we can speak? Why do you not use yours to worship and praise the Creator instead of remaining silent?” Without any hint of pride or arrogance he answered me by writing on a slate:

You are right, but my nature is so evil that I cannot hope for anything good to come out of my mouth. I have remained silent for six years, but my nature remains evil, so it is better that I remain silent until I receive some blessing or message that can help others.

Once in the Himalayas I learned of a Buddhist hermit, an old lama who lived in a cave in the mountains. He had closed off the entrance of the cave by building a stone wall – leaving only a small opening for air. He never left the cave and lived only from the tea and roasted barley that devout people brought and passed through the small hole. Because he had lived so long in utter darkness, he had become blind. He was determined to remain in the cave for the rest of his life. When I found this hermit, he was engaged in prayer and meditation, so I waited outside until he had finished. Then I asked if I might speak with him, and we were able to converse through the hole in the wall, although we could not see each other. First he asked me about my spiritual journey. Then I asked him, “What have you gained through your seclusion and meditation? Buddha taught nothing about a God to whom we can pray. To whom do you pray, then?” He answered:

I pray to Buddha, but I do not hope to gain anything by praying and by living in seclusion. Quite the opposite, I seek release from all thought of gain. I seek nirvana, the elimination of all feeling and all desire – whether of pain or of peace. But still I live in spiritual darkness. I do not know what the end will be, but I am sure that whatever I now lack will be attained in another life.

I then responded:

Surely your longings and feelings arise from the God who created you. They were surely created in order to be fulfilled, not crushed. The destruction of all desire cannot lead to release, but only to suicide. Are not our desires inseparably intertwined with the continuation of life? Even the idea of eliminating desire is fruitless. The desire to eliminate all desire is still itself a desire. How can we find release and peace by replacing one desire with another? Surely we shall find peace not by eliminating desire, but by finding its fulfillment and satisfaction in the One who created it.

The hermit closed our conversation, saying, “We shall see what we shall see.”

maya • illusion

The sunlight speckled with jungle shadows paints leopard spots on the hermit’s yellow robe. The hermit, the old sadhu, the holy man sits cross-legged on a leopard skin, one with the skin, one with the leopard, one with the jungle.

At the feet of the sadhu sits Sundar, a boy fleeing maya – illusion – and hungry for certainty and knowledge – jnana. The boy is devout. He is a Sikh, a devout Sikh, a devout among the devout, a lion among the lions. But he is restless.

Sikh priests have taught him all they know, but he is not satisfied. He can recite the entire Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of the Sikhs, but it does not quench his thirst. He can recite the Upanishads, the Darsanas, the Bhagavad Gita and the Shastaras of the Hindus; the Qur’an and the Hadis of Islam are known to him by heart. His mother fears God and sees in him a pilgrim; she sees in him the making of a sadhu. His father is worried. He asks Sundar: “Why do you torment yourself over religious questions? You will twist your brain and ruin your sight.” The boy answers, “I must have santi. I must have peace.”

In his quest, the boy has come to the old sadhu in the jungle:

Sadhu-ji, you say my hunger and my thirst are illusion, tricks of maya. Only Brahma is truth. Brahma is the divine source of all things, you say; Brahma is God. You say I will see that I am part of Brahma, and that once I do, my needs will cease to concern me. Forgive me, Sadhu-ji, and do not be angry with me, but how can this be? If I am Brahma or have even a part of it, how then can I be deceived by maya? How can illusion have power over me? For if illusion has power over truth, then truth is itself illusion. Is then illusion stronger than truth? Is illusion stronger than truth?

Sadhu-ji, you say I must wait. You say I will gain knowledge of spiritual things as I grow older. My thirst will be quenched. But can it be so? Is not food the answer to hunger? Is not water the answer to thirst? If a hungry boy asks for bread, can his father answer, “Go and play! When you are older, you will understand hunger and you will not need bread?” If you, Sadhu-ji, have found the understanding I seek, if you have found certainty and peace, please tell me how I can find it. If not, then tell me so, and I will continue my search. I cannot rest until I have found peace.

Something is wrong. Why do the Shastaras no longer come alive before my eyes? Why does our holy book now seem so distant? Why do I return from the peace of yoga meditation to find my heart still burdened with unrest?

An adolescent boy struggles to hold onto all that his mother taught him. It was so natural and so simple while she was alive, but since her death the spiritual exercises require so much effort. Faith has become clouded by doubt. The words of the old sadhu in the jungle sound like hollow promises, with boldness he questions the sadhu’s teaching. The words of the Vedas and of Guru Granth Sahib no longer answer his seeking. Instead, question after question stumbles over one another, and all is confusion. The lives of those around him seem fraught with hypocrisy. Where is the fire and clarity of the early Sikh believers? And now Christian missionaries bring still another truth, but their arrival brings Sundar only further, deeper confusion.

This is not the truth of my mother, of our ancestors, of our culture. This is a foreign truth, one brought to us by outsiders who do not understand our ways. But why then does Father make me attend the Christian school? I would rather go to the state school at Sanewal. I am ready to walk the six miles through the desert. I am a Sikh. I will show them. I will show Father what I think of these colonialists and their western ways, their foreign faith…

When the elders come to him, Sardar Sher Singh cannot believe his ears. There must be some mistake. Quiet, respectful Sundar throwing stones at his teachers, disrupting classes, and mocking the missionaries – impossible! When Sardar Sher Singh goes to see for himself, he cannot believe his eyes. Yet there, in the courtyard of his own house, a group of teenage boys gather around his son, who first tears the Christian’s holy book to shreds and then, in a frenzy of rage, hurls it into a fire. Never in the history of the village has anyone publicly burned a sacred book of any faith! And his own son! He rushes out in confusion and anger. He seizes Sundar:

Are you insane? Why would you do such a thing? Is this the respect for sacred things you learned at your mother’s breast? Is this your thanks to those who teach you? You will not commit such blasphemy in my presence. As your father and head of this household, I command you to stop such insanity. There will be no more book burning here!

Peace is gone. No one is left. Mother is dead. Father is shamed. The sadhu in the jungle has no more to say. The holy writings are remote and foreign. Meditation offers escape, but no resolution, no realization. The ritual bath cleanses the body, but all is still dark within. The familiar words of the scriptures whirl in his mind. There is Guru Nanak: “I cannot live for a moment without you, O God. When I have you, I have everything. You are the treasure of my heart.” And there is Guru Arjim: “We long only for you, O God. We thirst for you. We can only find rest and peace in you.” That is the only hope. If there is a God, then let him reveal the way to peace. If there is no God, then there is no point in living.

The fifteen-year-old boy rises long before the sun. With solemn ritual he bathes and chants the ancient invocation as he has done every morning for as long as he can remember, just as his mother taught him. This morning will be the last time. He thinks of his mother and wonders if he will find her in the world beyond. At 5:00 a.m. the express train to Ludhiana will pass. It will pass over the tracks near the edge of Sardar Sher Singh’s property. It will pass over the body of a desperate, confused young man. It will crush all doubts and drive all questions from his heart and head.

The prophecy of the Sikh priest nears fulfillment, for had he not said to Sardar Sher Singh: “Your son is not like the others. Either he will become a great man of God, or he will disgrace us all by going insane.”