The Householder's Hero Journey
Vyadha Gita (The Butcher's Gita)teaches a profound truth: In Indic thought, the householder *is* the hero.
Hello Friends,
Namaskar! Welcome to the fourth edition of my newsletter: Dharma and Dharmasankata: Infrequent Meditations to Discover the Best You Can Be Using Indic Wisdom. To learn more about this newsletter, what it is, what it is not, you can read more here.
To join this pilgrimage that is offered in the spirit of gift economy to understand the essence of Indic wisdom, along with a small community of seekers, please click below.
Once upon a time, there lived a learned brahmin by the name ‘Kaushika’ who had spent many years in the study of the Vedas. One day, Kaushika was sitting under a tree, chanting the Vedas. A female crane, sitting on a branch above, shat on him.
Kaushika was infuriated!
He looked up and flung an angry glance at the crane!
The crane instantaneously turned to ashes and died.
While Kaushika was on a high with his newfound yogic powers, he was also filled with remorse for having been instrumental in the crane’s death. After consoling himself and cleaning up, he went to the nearby village for begging.
He arrived at a certain house. The housewife told him to wait at the gate while she prepared alms for him. She took more time than usual to return and give alms.
Kaushika was extremely irritated at being made to wait so long!
He chastised her and gave her the same angry glance.
"Do you think I am that crane which got burned by your angry glances?”
(The legendary dialogue, “கொக்கெனக் கண்டாயோ கொங்கணவா!” is far more beautiful than my pale translation)
Kaushika’s ego was burned by the housewife’s gentle but firm response. Bowing down in humility, he asked her how she knew about that incident.
“I was late in giving alms as I was attending to my sick husband and cranky kids. If you want to know how I knew about the crane incident, go down the road and meet the butcher in the eastern corner of the marketplace.”
The Kaushika goes to the butcher as instructed, and the butcher tells him to wait, giving him a bemused look,
“Are you that sage who gave an angry stare at a woman who was looking after her sick husband?
After making him wait while he was finishing his day’s chores, he finally summons him at sunset,
“Come, I’ll teach you Yoga”
At first blush, it must be disorienting to think of the ordinary householder as the hero. For the longest time, we’ve looked outside for heroes and heroic myths. And those heroes were heroes because they didn’t have to worry about making a living, or ensuring that their loved ones are well attended to.
As I wrote in Dharma and The Four Axes of Life,
Every tradition assigns a hero myth based on what it values. Every society needs a hero myth for its effective functioning. The beautiful thing about myth is that as the times we live in change, our hero myths also change to keep up with them.
In the Chinese tradition, the wandering monk is a hero. The Chinese tradition is replete with paintings that extol one solitary person walking across a vast land-scape.
In the West, the hero is the strongest who wins by the sword. The weapon could change over time - from sword to rattle gun to computers.
In India, the householder is the hero. The householder king who could answer tough riddles in spirituality was called Janaka - a king who lives in a way that brings together the pragmatic and the philosophical simultaneously.
Living the life of a free agent with my partner (who has also chosen to embrace the life of a free agent in the world of Yoga) in these pandemic times, I often wonder about this question: How does one live the life of a householder, with its pulls and pushes, and stay anchored to the highest wisdom?
Whether you call it the highest wisdom or existentialist truth, it boils down to the same thing: Can you live a life of awareness while living the life of a householder?
My partner and I have been engaging a significant amount of our time with our 3-year-old son, while we carry aspirations of an unschooling journey, letting him explore wherever his interests take him towards.
Parenting my three-year-old son during an ongoing pandemic has been doubly hard.
The entire spectrum of my emotions has been tested. I've seen myself behave like a monster, and I've also seen myself behave (or at least, try to behave) as a conscious parent, who is learning to observe myself and my reactions, through how I interact with him.
One fascinating aspect I discovered in the long babysitting hours over these few weeks is this: A child resists naturally being told what to do, and is far more natural when he encounters serendipity in every waking moment of his.
When I want him to eat, there are ideally two ways -> I follow a mental clock and tell him, "Look, you should now eat". He is wired to resist it and the game of manipulating him to accomplish what I want begins. The other sensible way I am discovering is this- I don't even mention the word 'food' until he naturally feels hungry and tells me his intent to eat.
I've been trying to follow this in almost everything I enjoy doing with him. Going along with his existential curiosities/serendipities is deeply therapeutic for it challenges my parent ego and unlearns me to be in the moment, in the present.
And that’s the challenge: Can you be present for your child, while your mind is clogged with stuff, working hard to pursue your projects and activities in your gigster life?
Few days back, I had a fascinating conversation with a friend who has been unschooling her kids all the way up to their teens. She shared something very profound, during our conversation.
Unschooling is finally about the parent (not the child) observing their own actions, reactions, observing whether they are a) behaving exactly as how their parents did b) behave in the exact opposite way of how their parents did
Both don’t serve the unschooling purpose, as it robs the child of his or her autonomy to make sense of the world.
It’s uncanny to watch these patterns unravel through a strange variant of Newton’s Third Law: Whenever a parent exerts a view on a child, the child exerts an equal and opposite view on the parent.
It's fascinating to watch how the child discovers your emotional trigger buttons and learns to press them at the appropriate time. Having gotten tired from playing these trigger games, I have been using this opportunity to unpack those buttons from inside and see what happens when I don't let those buttons react in predictable ways.
It's amazing to watch how the child develops his biophysical responses to events and contexts around him simply by imitating parents' biophysical responses.
When you "see" this, you see the tremendous responsibility you have as a parent. Parenting is the most challenging self-development project you can undertake in your life.
My learnings and explorations in leading the householder’s path of Yoga will continue!