Numb, nothing

हिरनThe deer

Bharata had been a king and a sage. He had given up his kingdom for the forest, and there, out of pity, he raised an orphaned fawn. He came to love it so much that his practice slipped away from him, and he died with his mind on the deer, and was born a deer. But he remembered. Grieving, he saw exactly how he had fallen, left his mother doe, and lived quietly near a holy place until that life was done. 5.8.26 to 31

मूर्खThe fool

Then he was born the son of a learned brahmin. He remembered all his lives, and he was afraid of being caught again by the love of his own people. So he kept his mind on the Lord, and to the world he showed himself as mad, dull, blind and deaf. 5.9.1 to 3

His father tried to teach him, and he got everything wrong, on purpose, in front of him. When the father died, his brothers gave up on him. People called him mad, dull, deaf, dumb, and he answered them in the same way. He did whatever work anyone set him, for pay or for nothing. He ate whatever came, much or little, good or rotten, as if it were nectar. He lay on the bare ground in sun, wind and rain, unwashed, covered in dust, and the Bhāgavata says he was like a great jewel whose light the dust hid. His brothers set him to guard their fields, and he did not know whether the ground was level or not. And all the while, inside, he was in the joy of his own self, which nothing outside had given and nothing outside could take. 5.9.4 to 11

One night robbers took him from the fields to offer him to the goddess Bhadrakālī. He sat before her, bound, with the sword raised over him, and was not afraid. The goddess herself burst out of the image and turned on the robbers. A man at peace, the Bhāgavata says, is guarded on every side. 5.9.12 to 20

पालकीThe palanquin

King Rahūgaṇa of Sindhu and Sauvīra was travelling along the river Ikṣumatī, and his men were short of a bearer. They saw a young man, well built, strong enough, they thought, to pull a load like an ox, and they seized him and put the king's palanquin on his shoulder. He carried it. But he walked looking an arrow's length ahead, so as not to tread on any living thing, and the palanquin went unevenly. 5.10.1 to 2

The king grew angry and mocked him. Oh, poor brother, you must be so tired, carrying this all alone for so long, you who are not fat, not strong, and so old. He said nothing, and carried on as before. The palanquin jolted again, and the king shouted: What is this? You are a dead man walking. Do you defy your master? I will cure you, as a judge cures a criminal, and bring you to your senses. 5.10.5 to 7

वे बोलेHe speaks

Then, for the first time, he spoke, as if smiling, though there was no pride left in him to smile with. What you say is true, he said, if the load were mine to carry and the road were mine to walk. The wise do not say a man is fat because of the heap of flesh he walks in. 5.10.8 to 9

स्थौल्यं कार्श्यं व्याधय आधयश्च क्षुत्तृड्भयं कलिरिच्छा जरा च।
निद्रा रतिर्मन्युरहं मदः शुचो देहेन जातस्य हि मे न सन्ति॥Bhāgavata 5.10.10

Fat and thin, sickness of body and of mind, hunger, thirst, fear, quarrel, desire and age, sleep, pleasure, anger, pride, intoxication and grief: these belong to the one who is born with a body. They are not mine. 5.10.10

उन्मत्तमत्तजडवत्स्वसंस्थां गतस्य मे वीर चिकित्सितेन।
अर्थः कियान्भवता शिक्षितेन स्तब्धप्रमत्तस्य च पिष्टपेषः॥Bhāgavata 5.10.13

I have gone into my own state, like one mad, or drunk, or dull. What would your cure do for me, hero? What would you teach me? To punish one who is past it is to grind flour that is already ground. And having said that much, he took up the palanquin again, and carried it. 5.10.13 to 14

तुम कौन होWho are you

The king heard, and something in his heart came untied. He jumped down from the palanquin, put his head at the bearer's feet, and asked forgiveness, all his pride as a king gone. 5.10.15

कस्त्वं निगूढश्चरसि द्विजानां बिभर्षि सूत्रं कतमोऽवधूतः।
कस्यासि कुत्रत्य इहापि कस्मात्क्षेमाय नश्चेदसि नोत शुक्लः॥Bhāgavata 5.10.16

Who are you, going about hidden among the twice-born, wearing the sacred thread? Which of the free ones are you? Whose son, from where, and why here? I fear nothing, not Indra's thunderbolt, not Śiva's trident, not Death's staff. I fear only having dishonoured one like you. You move about like a dull man, unattached, your knowing hidden; your words are beyond what my mind can open. 5.10.16 to 19

धूल के नीचेUnder the dust

Some nights a Jyotirgana feels nothing at all. Not anger, not fear, not grief: a flatness, as if he had been emptied. He may have been called dull, useless, half dead, a load that has to be carried. He may have come to believe it.

This story does not say that his numbness is peace. Jaḍa Bharata's dullness was a hiding, chosen, with the joy of the self underneath it; the flatness after years of a substance is something else, and the story does not pretend otherwise. What it does say is this: what looks like nothing from outside is not the measure of a man. Under the dust was a great jewel, and the dust did not make it less.

And nothing was lost even in his fall. A king and a sage loved a deer too much and became a deer, and he came out of it remembering, and the memory was what made him free. The one everyone took for a fool was the one the king got down on the road to ask: who are you?

This lamp is for the night when nothing is there. It does not ask him to feel anything. It asks him only to sit, and to let what is under the dust be there, seen or unseen.

The story: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, 5.8.26 to 31, 5.9 and 5.10.1 to 19, read in Sanskrit in the GRETIL e-text (Ulrich Stiehl); the verse numbers are that text's. Much of the fifth book is prose; the Sanskrit shown is its verse. The telling in English is ours, and so is what it means for him.