The Saint’s Transformation! | Life School Pune

The Saint’s Transformation! | Life School Pune The young sannyasi Kaushika who is an expert in the Vedas goes to a forest, where he meditates and practices spiritual austerities for a long time. One day while sitting under a tree, dry leaves fall on his head because of a fight between a crow and a crane. Kaushika’s meditation is broken. This makes him angry. The angry sannyasi Kaushika through his austerities had developed yogic powers and burnt the birds with merely his look of ‘anger’. He sees the power he has harnessed and his arrogance increases.

Shortly thereafter when he feels hungry, he goes to the nearby village for Bhiksha (begging for food). Here, he comes across a housewife who was nursing her sick husband. She requests the sannyasi to wait. To this, the sannyasi Kaushika thinks, “You wretched woman, how dare you make me wait! You do not know my power yet. I can burn you to death”, to which the housewife says that she is neither a crow nor a crane, to be burnt. She also calmly adds, his anger cannot touch her as his anger was not born out of righteousness but born out of arrogance. She added to his stunned silence by remarking, “his knowledge of the Vedas has been wasted as he has not yet mastered himself.” 

Kaushika feels insulted and humiliated at the same time. He also feels his arrogance drained away. Not able to control his curiosity he asks her how she came to know about the birds? How she could read his thoughts? How she had developed this power? What are the austerities she had performed? How long had she meditated? Who was her guru? 

The housewife said that she did not practice any austerities. By doing her duty with cheerfulness and wholeheartedness, she had become illuminated and thus could read his thoughts. She redirects him to a dharma-vyadha (meaning, the righteous butcher) in the town of Mithila and says that the dharma-vyadha would answer all his questions on dharma. The sannyasi Kaushika is shocked at her suggestion. He is a brahmin. How can he go to a person of a lower caste and that too a butcher! Above all, how could the butcher teach him, a brahmin, about ‘Duty’.

Overcoming his initial hesitation and reluctance, he goes to see the vyadha. The surprised sannyasi asks the vyadha as to how he could became illumined by doing a “filthy, ugly work”. The vyadha advises, “no duty is ugly, no duty is impure” It is only the way in which the work is done, determines its worth. Kaushika listens to the Dharam-vyadha’s teachings, which is referred to asVyadha Gita—and puts them into practice.