(Meditation on the 23rd Chapter of the 4th Canto of Srimad Bhagavatam)
The ancient king Prithu was a legend. Being spiritually educated, he transformed the advice of the celebrated sages into his own reality and became an ascetic. At first, he distributed his wealth to the worthy successors – the last shirt has no pockets, declared an old German song – and like the prospective saints before him, he relinquished extravagance, luxury, comfort, and indeed his entire household, and sought refuge in the hinterland, where soft grass became his bed, the firmament a covering blanket, and his hand a pillow. With cheer, he ate roots, berries, and autumn’s repertoire of dry leaves. When these crude groceries were unavailable, he guzzled stream water and chewed mountain air. He endured the austerities with earnestness, just as he had previously carried out his kingly duties. Though Prithu was an empowered incarnation of God, those were the human roles he chose to play.
Importantly, these exertions were not meant to be harsh for the sake of asceticism, nor mere religious performances aimed at winning public sympathy. Rather, they were gestures of unconcealment – not only to provide insight and knowledge to the experiencer, but to initiate spiritual wisdom, true happiness, virtue, and ultimately to satisfy God, Krishna. Kings enjoy abundant physical and mental privileges. By giving this up, Prithu radically resolved to address the needs of the soul. He had enough of Plato’s cave. His eyes and heart could now face the light: Tamasi ma jyotir gamaya – “Do not remain in darkness; come to the light.” To him, that moment had come, and it will come to all of us. It is the instant when we decide to cross the line, to no longer trust matter, and dive headlong into the untested waters pouring from the spiritual world. Some may think it reckless, but if we do not take that step, at the end of our lives we will once again be, hard-of-hearing, petulant old folks, with pocket-sized memories and corroded teeth, suffering from impossible-to-pronounce diseases with Latin names.
So Prithu retired, but his retirement did not mean day-napping in a hammock and whimsically whirling a glass of pina colada in one hand and a Juan Lopez Gran Patagon – a Cuban cigar – in the other. Following the wise men, he gave up all positions and obligations of the public realm and entered into a simulation of his annihilation – death, a total deprivation of bodily involvement, which for devotees of God means not an end but a beginning: a long-awaited opening of the door, previously blocked by their own disarray, made up of a plethora of desires – for sex, gadgets, clothes, boats and houses, ideas and relationships. It was a yank away from the inauthentic chatter of social identity, where one no longer intends to do something in the world, and comes into the proximity of Krishna.
Impure senses prevent us from seeing things as they truly are. The spiritual knowledge reaches only beyond the false identification of belonging to this world, but is adequately distanced from the bhakti-beginner‘s routine of having an alarm in the morning, feeling relief after pulling down the bead number sixteen, reading a minimum of one hour of Srila Prabhupada’s books – all in order to maintain good consciousness, to guard against the illusory energy: mayar vase, jaccho bhese, khaccho habudubu – to avoid being tossed by the waves of maya.
King Prithu’s departure into the forest was only apparently spatial; in actuality, it was existential. Standing up to his neck in a river during winter, giving up food and sleep, and denying bodily conveniences served as a tool to remove the blocks that hamper hearing Krishna’s voice. This kind of abnegation is sharp and difficult because the ego is loud; it clings to control, to cherish mundane pleasures. Austerity clears the senses and purifies the heart. It is a way of saying: I am willing to meet whatever is beyond myself through this relinquishment. Prithu did not try to intimidate his soul (his real self), nor did he want to blackmail God. With the bodily austerities he was shedding layers of the inessential, revealing the atmosphere in which the soul can be experienced in its primal role as Krishna’s servant.
The strict execution of the devotional rules and regulations, twenty-four hours a day, is equivalent to death in the material world, it is the horizon where one gains spiritual vision. King Prithu´s discipline was not mere negation, but openness. He became an intense listener. His existence became authentic. His unflinching devotion turned into resolve – determination which led him to the realization of his full potential, and would ultimately reveal in his heart an unwavering love and devotion unto the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Krishna. His mind, and his entire being became transcendental and began to constantly think of the lotus feet of the Lord.
We also need to cultivate the desire to quit the world like legends. We want to reach a completion of ourselves, and this time, unlike the millions upon millions of other times, to remain conscious of the discomfort of being anchored in the cycle of birth and death – samsara – and to truly know what it means to be materially dead and spiritually alive. Through devotional austerities, we seek to purify our existence and, in time, erase our fleeting history, the trail of wickedness and gallantries we have left behind while living in the material world – and begin walking solely on the path of pure bhakti, not as mere information, but as a felt-reality of what it means to be.