Ashtaka Questions Yayati on Paths to the Gods
Ashtaka asks the wise King Yayati how different kinds of people—householders, forest-dwellers, mendicants, and celibate students—should live to reach the gods, noting that many teachers disagree. Yayati provides a detailed map of each path, describing the specific conduct that leads to success in this world and the next.
Ashtaka asked Yayati a direct question: “How should a householder act so as to attain the gods? What about mendicants and those who practise brahmacharya (celibate studentship)? What about the one who is devoted to the right path after retiring to the forest? Those who know have many differing views on this.”
Yayati did not hesitate. He laid out the map for each life.
First, the brahmachari. A successful student, he said, should not be asked to do his preceptor’s work and will study only when asked. He must awake first and go to bed after everyone else. His speech must be soft, his pride absent. He must be devoted to studying and utterly self-controlled.
Second, the householder. When such a man obtains riches according to dharma (righteousness), he must spend it on sacrifices, give alms, and provide food to guests. The rule is absolute: he should never take from others what has not been given to him.
Third, the forest sage. A chief sage who has attained success must live on his own strength in the wilderness. He must give to others and never cause them pain. Every act, every morsel of food, must be controlled.
Fourth, the true mendicant. This one does not depend on any craft for his living. He is always without a home, his senses under control, free from all attachment. He does not live under a roof. He travels with little and light belongings, roaming through many regions, utterly alone. And there is a specific moment for this path: “When there is a night in this world when one has conquered desire and happiness, that is the night when a learned one should become an ascetic.” The reward for such a life in the forest, Yayati added, is vast: a person who performs good deeds there frees ten generations that came before him and ten that will come after—counting himself, that is twenty-one generations lifted.
Ashtaka pressed further. “How many kinds of sages are there and how many who observe vows of silence? Tell us. We wish to hear all this from you.”
Yayati’s answer turned on a paradox. “He is a true sage who lives in the forest and turns his back on the village. He is also one who lives in the village and turns his back on the forest.”
Ashtaka was puzzled. “How can one turn one’s back on the village while living in the forest, or turn one’s back on the forest while living in the village?”
Yayati explained. The sage in the forest uses nothing from the village—no tools, no food, no comforts. Thus, though geographically in the wilderness, his mind and practice reject the world of men. But the true sage who maintains no fire, has no house or clan, and keeps roaming, who wants nothing more than a loincloth and is content with just enough food to sustain life—he may physically dwell in a village, but his inner state has utterly turned its back on the forest. He has given up all desire and deeds. His senses are under complete control. “He is the one who attains success in this world as a sage.”
Yayati then described the one worthy of universal worship: “Who will not worship one whose teeth are washed, nails are clipped, who is always bathed and without dirt and whose deeds are white, though he may be dark in complexion?”
He concluded with the image of the supreme ascetic. “Lean from austerities and emaciated in blood, flesh and bones, such a sage not only conquers this world, but also the supreme one.” The sage who observes a vow of silence and sits in meditation, with indifference between opposites, conquers both worlds. And the sage who eats like cattle and other animals? “All his earlier worlds merge with the eternal at the time of universal destruction.”