The Place of Attainment

When Devahūti had heard her son, the covering of bewilderment fell from her. She bowed to him and praised him. She marvelled that he who holds the whole world within him had been held within her. How can it be, she said, that you, in whose belly the whole world lies, who at the end of the age lie alone on a banyan leaf as a little child sucking your own foot, were carried in my womb? Even an outcaste on whose tongue your name rests is worthy of honour, for those who call your name have already done every austerity, made every offering, bathed at every holy place and studied the Veda. I bow to you, Viṣṇu, Kapila, the supreme Brahman.

Mother, Kapila said, if you hold to this road I have shown you, which is not hard to follow, you will soon reach its end. Trust my teaching. By it you will come to me, where there is no fear. Then, having shown his mother the true road, he took leave of her and went away.

Devahūti stayed in that hermitage on the Sarasvatī and practised the yoga her son had taught her. Her hair grew matted and tawny with constant bathing, and her body grew thin with austerity, and she wore bark. She left behind all the wealth of Kardama's house, which even the queens of Indra might have envied, the beds like the foam of milk, the crystal walls and jewelled lamps, the gardens full of birdsong. Her face grew a little sad with the pain of parting from her son, and though she knew what is real, she was like a cow that has lost its calf. But meditating on Kapila, on Hari, she soon wanted nothing of that house at all.

She meditated on the form of the Lord that her son had taught her, with its peaceful face, first whole and then limb by limb, with devotion flowing, with detachment grown strong, with knowledge rightly practised, until her mind was fixed in Brahman and she forgot her body, as a man who has woken forgets his dream. Austerity had made her thin; but now, when she no longer remembered her body, others cared for it, and it was not thin, for no anxiety touched her. Covered with dust, it shone like fire wrapped in smoke, and the gods guarded it, while her mind was in Vāsudeva, the Lord. And in no long time, by the road Kapila had shown her, she reached the Lord, the supreme Self.

The place where she reached her attainment became the holiest place in the three worlds, and it is called Siddhapada, the Place of Attainment. The body she had shaken off by her yoga became a river, the best of rivers, which gives attainment, and the perfected ones come to it.