Vedic Literature | Ekamsat | Uddhava-Gita | Varnashrama: Vanaprastha and the Sannyasin
1. He who desires to be a forest-dweller should spend the third part of his life (from fifty-one to seventy-five years of age) in the forest hermitage, leaving his wife to the care of his son at home, or accompanied by her.
2. He should subsist on permitted roots, tubers and fruits available in the forest. For dress, he should use tree-bark, grass or deer skin.
3. He should leave his body untended and uncared for, allowing his hair and nails to grow uncut. Care of the teeth must be minimal. He should bathe thrice a day and sleep on the floor.
4. In the summer, he should practise concentration sitting amidst the heat of five fires – four fires on the four sides and the sun above. In the rainy season, he should observe the vow of abhravakasa consisting in exposure to torrential rain. In winter, he should stay-put in neck-deep water, an austere practice called udakavasa. A forest-dweller should thus lead a life of austere practices.
5. He can eat things cooked in fire, or ripened by time. He can use cereals pounded in mortar or with stones, or merely masticate them with the mortar of his teeth.
6. A forest-dweller should gather material of his food from the forest himself. As far as the conditions of place and time would permit, he should not store material of food got from elsewhere, for use afterwards.
7. He can perform seasonal sacrifices like agrayana enjoined on him with offerings of charu and purodasa made of wild cereals. A forest-dweller should not perform any Vedic rite involving animal sacrifice.
8. The Vedic scholars say that the forest-dweller should perform the ordained rites such as agnihotra, darsa, purnamasa and chaturmasya as before, but with the ingredients available in the forest.
9. Worshipping Me, the embodiment of Tapas (penance), in this way by severe austerities that emaciate him to reveal the contours of all his blood vessels, the forest-dweller reaches Me, stage by stage, passing through maharloka and other spheres.
10. Who can be more thoughtless than the one who utilizes this noble and difficult discipline of tapas which can take one to liberation, for attainment of petty worldly pleasures?
11. When a forest-dweller becomes feeble and tottering because of advancing age, and is unable to perform his obligatory duties (swadharma), he should, through contemplation, withdraw into the heart the sacred fires he has been tending, and then concentrating his mind fully on Me immolate himself in a well-lit pyre.
12. When complete dispassion for life is generated in a seeker by the recognition that all places and experiences are unworthy of living, then such a person is fit to give up his duties of fire-rites and take to the life of a wandering sannyasin.
13. Adoring Me with the prajapatya sacrifice according to the instruction received, giving up all one’s possessions as gifts to the assisting priests, and withdrawing one’s sacred fires into the Self, one should take to the life of a sannyasin without looking for anything to depend upon.
14. But out of jealousy that one, taking to sannyasa, will go beyond their pale of influence and importance, the Devas will at first cause obstructions to such an aspirant, appearing in the guise of children.
15. A sannyasin should have cod-piece alone as dress, and should he wear anything more, it should only be a loin cloth to cover the cod-piece. He should not keep with him any properties of his previous station of life except his staff and water-pot. Nothing-else he should keep except in times of grave danger.
16. He should take paces only carefully, lest he should trample upon any living creatures. For the same reason, he should drink water only after filtering it with cloth; he should speak only what has got the sacred stamp of Truth; he should act only what has been sanctified by proper reflection.
17. Oh Uddhava! A person, merely because he carries a three-pronged staff of bamboo (tridanda), will not become a tridandi-sannyasin, unless he is also equipped with the three staffs of silence, breath control and desireless-ness, which constitute the restraints of speech, body and mind.
18. Except from those given to evil ways of life, he can take bhiksha (holy alms) daily from seven homes of persons of the four varnas, without any pre-determination or selection of the homes or persons to be visited.
19. Going out of the village to a river or tank, doing the purificatory water-rites like achamana and prokshana, and observing silence, he can take all that food, after having offered it to God and to whomever he wants to share it with.
20. He should wander alone in the world, unattached, self-controlled, even-sighted, established in the Self, and having his recreation and enjoyment in the Self.
21. Resorting to the sanctuary of solitude, and purified by devotion to Me, the sage should think of the pervading Self in all as One and as non-different from Me.
22. One should reflect on the state of bondage caused by ignorance, and of liberation resulting from firmly established knowledge. Bondage is the state in which the senses are completely outward directed. Their control is salvation (moksha).
23. Therefore, with the mind immersed in Me, the sage should move about, controlling all his senses, entertaining no hankering after mean pleasures, and finding deep joy in the Self.
24. Entering towns, villages, cowherd settlements and alm-houses only to collecting holy alms (bhiksha), he should wander about the world visiting all holy lands, holy rivers, holy mountains, and settlements of holy men.
25. He should take bhiksha (holy alms) frequently from the settlements of forest-dwellers. For, the food of these hermits, made of grains collected by gleaning the fields, is highly purifying; and those who take it will be purified soon in mind, freed from delusion, and blessed with quick advancement in spiritual life.
26. One should not consider this world of sense experiences as ultimate. For, it is seen to be temporary and fleeting. Therefore, let him renounce, without any lingering attachments, all objects of this world and the next.
27. Rejecting, on the proof offered by dream experience, this whole world including one’s own body, pranas and mind as an insubstantial projection of the atman, one should remain established in one’s self, without even the memory of the world.
28. If one has reached the state of firm establishment in knowledge and absolute renunciation, or if one has abandoned even the desire for salvation, one may give up the external symbols of his ashrama like the staff, and move about as a Paramahamsa without being subject to any commandments.
29. Though wise, one should sport like a child unconcerned about status; though highly intelligent, one should behave like a dull-witted person without any plans; though learned, one should speak like an intoxicated person in order to avoid popularity; though established in the Truth taught by the Veda, one should roam about like cattle with absolute unconcern and abandon for all established codes of conduct.
30. A sannyasin should not be concerned with the eulogistic sentences of the Veda which deal with ritualism, nor should he be an unbeliever in the Veda, or a vain disputant. He should not take sides in purposeless logic-chopping controversies.
31. He should have no cause to fear the populace, and men, in general, should have nothing to fear from the sannyasin. He should put up with criticism and disparagement patiently, but he himself should never insult others. He should not have animosity towards others like beasts, from bodily considerations.
32. For, the same Supreme Spirit dwells in all objects and in all living beings, just as the same moon dwells as reflection in numerous water pots. In respect of their bodies too, all creatures have come out of the same matter.
33. A sannyasin should not feel depressed if he fails to get food at times, nor should he feel any glee when he gets it. For, it is all determined by one’s past karma.
34. It is but proper that one strives for food; for, food is needed for keeping oneself alive. A healthy body enables one to reflect on Truth, leading to realization of the Atman and to liberation from samsara.
35. Food that comes to one by chance should be partaken, whether it is well-cooked or ill-cooked. So also one should accept, without any consideration of being good or bad, whatever bed or cloth one gets by chance.
36. One need not do cleaning, bathing, etc on account of any compulsion or commandments enjoining on one. One need attend to them only as a free-spirit, just as I act everywhere as play in complete freedom.
37. One has no divisive consciousness as it has been obliterated on realizing Me. A semblance of it seen in taking food, etc will last only so long as the body is there. When the body falls, one merges into Me.
38. One may realize that suffering is the final fruit of desires and, by this realization, may develop renunciation for worldly life. One may also have mastery of the senses. But one may yet be ignorant of the highest dharma leading to the attainment of Me. Such a person, in order to be so instructed, must seek a guru who is a muni (sage), and who is fully absorbed in the reflection on the Atman.
There are two types of muni – a sage who observes mouna or silence. One is the rigid ascetic and the other is the liberated sage. The rigid ascetic forcibly restrains his senses and engages himself in dry activities, devoid of wisdom and with fanaticism. The liberated sage, on the other hand, knows the Truth as Truth and the unreal as unreal. He is endowed with self-knowledge and yet behaves like any other ordinary person. What is regarded as mouna or silence is based on the nature and behaviour of the sage concerned.
39. Until one attains to spiritual realization, one should serve the guru with great faith and attention, avoiding all adverse thoughts against him, and looking upon him as Me.
40-41. A man who has not subdued his six enemies, the senses, whose will (buddhi) is perverted by the deep-seated desires, who is devoid of knowledge and renunciation, and yet assumes and displays the triple staff of the sannyasin as a means of livelihood is a traitor to dharma, deceives the adorable Devas, his own self, and Me, the dweller in all beings including himself. With all evil tendencies latent and waiting to come out, he loses this world and the next.
42. The principal dharma of the sannyasin consists in tranquility and practice of universal love; of the forest-dweller in austerity and introspective quest after Truth; of the house-holder in service of all and performance of yajnas; and of the brahmacharin in the service of the teacher.
43. The house-holder, too, should practise, in a way suited to his station in life, such virtues as continence (brahmacharya), austerity, freedom from passions, contentment and friendliness to all. Consorting with one’s wife only at the prescribed time is considered continence for the house-holder. The adoration of the Supreme Being is the duty of all.
44. He who adores Me in this way by the performance of swadharma (prescribed duties) with his mind fixed on Me alone and viewing Me as present in all beings, will attain devotion to Me before long.
45. Oh Uddhava! By that one-pointed and constant devotion will he attain to Me who am the Brahman, the Lord of all the worlds and the Revealer of the Veda – the source, the support and the dissolution of all beings.
46. One who has obtained purity of mind through the observance of swadharma, who has been endowed with the Truth and experienced My Being, and who has fully understood the limitlessness of My Being and power will, without delay, come to Me and attain salvation.
47. The observance of the rules of varna and ashrama in themselves leads one to the world of the pitris. But when it is dedicated to Me out of devotion, it becomes an instrument of liberation.
48. I have now answered your question how a devotee observing his swadharma supported by devotion attains to Me, the Supreme and Transcendent Being.