An incident from the life of Bharat Chakravarthi who ruled six continents at one time. He had many queens and lived surrounded by all the luxuries. Hundreds of kings were under his rule who served and obeyed him. Even with all this, Bharat Chakravarthi lived an abstinent life. One day his minister Vipra Dev asked the king –
“O King, If you are an ascetic then why do you live in the palace. If you are living in the palace then are you really an ascetic? How do you remain abstinent in the middle of all the lavishness, passion, and pleasure? Don’t you ever get the temptation of doing sinful activities out of desire and pleasure?
King Bharat replied –
“You will get answers to all your questions but first you need to do one work of mine.”
“O King, Please command. I’m your servant and it is my duty to obey your orders,” replied Vipra Dev.
“Please take this bowl filled with oil to Antahpur (a place where queens live) where you will see all my pretty and beautiful queens. You have to come and tell me who is the most beautiful of them all.
But wait, there is one condition, you will not spill a single drop of oil from the bowl. You will be accompanied by two soldiers with naked swords in their hands. If you spill even a single drop, they will slay your head right there.”
Vipra took the bowl carefully and walked towards Antahpur along with the two soldiers. He entered Anantapur where queens were standing on both sides, there was music, dance performances, fun, and frolic. Fragrance and beauty had filled the entire place. However, his focus was completely on the bowl as he went around Antahpur.
When he returned, he was panting and sweating profusely. The King asked,
“So tell me whom you found the most beautiful of all the queens?”
“O king, you are asking about the queen, which queen? whose queen? I did not see anyone. I was only seeing this bowl in my hand and death behind me.”, replied perturbed Vipra.
“Dear Vipra, this is the answer to your curiosity and to your question. The way you were seeing death not the queens or their beauty and there was no desire or lust in your mind, likewise, I see death every moment. I can hear the footsteps of death behind me. That is how I’m able to stay like a bloomed lotus in the pond above the sludge. Luxuries, pleasures, lust do not influence me or my thoughts.”
Wisdom Bite
To keep our lives clean, lucid, as is then there is only one Sutra for living a revolutionary life and that is awareness of Death. We do not know the time of our death. It can come anytime, any day. But If we live life more consciously, we will free ourselves from desires, lust, and possessions of this materialistic world.
Our ultimate objective should be to attain a higher level of consciousness which leads to freedom from the cycle of life and death. And the way to achieve it is to live like a lotus in the pond.
