Nārada
Contents4 of 10
  1. The Serving Woman's Son
  2. The Form He Saw Once
  3. Born Again from Brahmā
  4. Learning That Was Only Words
  5. The Question at Vālmīki's Hermitage
  6. The Boy Who Went to Madhuvana
  7. The Queen in His Hermitage
  8. The Curse of Dakṣa
  9. The Two Trees
  10. The Sage Who Was Not Content

Learning That Was Only Words

Once Nārada came to the sage Sanatkumāra and said, Teach me, sir. Sanatkumāra said, First tell me what you know, and I will tell you what lies beyond it.

Nārada said, Sir, I have studied the Ṛgveda, the Yajurveda, the Sāmaveda and the Atharvaveda as the fourth, the histories and the ancient lore as the fifth, the Veda of the Vedas, the rites for the ancestors, mathematics, the science of omens, the science of time, logic, ethics, the knowledge of the gods, the knowledge of Brahman, the knowledge of spirits, the science of government, astronomy, and the arts of the serpents and the celestial beings. All this I have studied. And yet, sir, I know only the words, the mantras; I do not know the Self. I have heard from people like you that whoever knows the Self goes beyond sorrow. And I am in sorrow, sir. Take me across to the far shore of sorrow.

Sanatkumāra said to him, Everything you have studied is only a name. And step by step he led him on: there is something greater than name, which is speech; greater than speech is mind; and so on, through will and thought and meditation, understanding and strength, food and water, heat and space, memory and hope, to breath, and beyond breath to truth, and to the infinite.

The infinite is happiness, he told Nārada. There is no happiness in the small. Only the infinite is happiness. Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else, that is the infinite. Where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else, that is the small. The infinite is immortal; the small is mortal.

Nārada asked, Sir, where does the infinite rest? In its own greatness, said Sanatkumāra, or rather not even in greatness. Here people call cows and horses greatness, and elephants and gold, servants and wives, fields and houses. That is not what I mean, for then one thing would rest on another. The infinite is below, it is above, it is behind and in front, to the south and to the north; it is all this. The Self is below, the Self is above, the Self is behind and in front, to the south and to the north; the Self is all this. One who sees this, thinks this and knows this delights in the Self, plays in the Self, is united with the Self, has his joy in the Self. He is his own master and moves freely in all the worlds.

So the blessed Sanatkumāra showed Nārada, whose stains were wiped away, the far shore of darkness.