Cūḍālā
Contents4 of 14
  1. The King and the Princess of Surāṣṭra
  2. What Am I?
  3. You Speak like a Child
  4. The Powers She Did Not Show
  5. The King Goes to the Forest
  6. Eighteen Years
  7. The Boy from the Sky
  8. Kumbha's Teaching
  9. The Fire in the Hermitage
  10. Still as a Rock
  11. A Woman by Night
  12. Heaven Refused, and the Lover
  13. I Am Cūḍālā
  14. The Return

The Powers She Did Not Show

Much time passed. One day, in play, a wish rose in Cūḍālā, who was always content and wanted nothing, to go and come through the sky. She went to a solitary place and sat alone and for a long time practised the yoga of the breath, and she gained the powers that begin with becoming as small as an atom.

She travelled through the sky, went down into the depths of the ocean, and ranged over the earth like the Gaṅgā. She entered wood and grass and stone, wind and fire and water, as a thread enters a pearl. She wandered over the peaks of Meru and the cities of the guardians of the quarters, and met with gods and nāgas, the serpent people, and with vidyādharas and siddhas, the perfected beings who travel the sky. And all the while, like Lakṣmī, the goddess of fortune, who dwells in every kingdom, she was everywhere, and yet she never for a moment left her husband's side, or his heart.

Again and again she tried to awaken him, and he did not understand. To him she was only his wife, skilled in the arts, and a young girl. Because he had not come to rest in the Self, she never showed him her powers.