Chapter Five
“I Will Not Sentence Him to Death”
One day, in High Court in Bangalore, Karnataka, a magistrate presided over a murder case. The verdict was never in doubt, and the jury was unanimous. When the time came to pronounce the mandatory death sentence, the judge stood up to address the court. His tall, imposing stature brought silence to the courtroom. Before he spoke, he removed his shastri’s shawl, his robes and ornaments. Looking around the courtroom for the last time, he announced, “God created this man. Who am I to decree his death?” Refusing to deliver the death sentence, he solemnly walked away from the bench and was never seen in that region again. §
Years later, he would be found in Northern Ceylon, a swami and spiritual force who deeply changed not only individual lives there, including the future satgurus of the Nandinatha Sampradaya, but the course of that nation’s history as well. What happened between these known events is vague, and stories don’t all agree. Here an attempt is made to intuit the most likely course of events, based on those oral histories and the cultural patterns of the time.§
It is likely that this thirty-something bachelor had little to hold him beyond his work in the courts and that the murder trial provoked deep reflections about life and death, reflections that intensified his naturally spiritual turn of mind. Finally, he made the pivotal decision to seek a satguru and devote the remainder of his life to realization of God and service to his Hindu faith. §
Duty demanded that an Indian judge sentence a guilty murderer to death, but he could not bear that karma. Instead, he removed his wig and judicial robes, stood and walked out of the courtroom, never to return, never to practice law again.
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Speaking to others about his inclinations toward sannyasa, he came to know of the rishi in the tea shop. He was regaled with stories of this remarkable sage, stories that moved him deeply and led him to seek to meet that awakened being in person. The erstwhile High Court judge became a wandering sadhu, following the Indian roads on foot, in search of the rishi, walking from village to village, here and there, looking on the inside, looking on the outside for the man he increasingly knew beyond any doubt was his guru. This was no intellectual certainty, for they had never met. Rather it was a truth, a subsuperconscious knowing, that welled up from deep within him. §
His unusual height and beggar’s way of life attracted attention wherever he went. It was no use trying to blend into the background, and he didn’t try. On reaching a village, his usual method was to stand in the center of the marketplace as if he were waiting for someone. Seeing him there, people would gradually set aside what they were doing and come over to find out what he wanted. He would talk with them for a few minutes and have them laughing and smiling, until a crowd had gathered. Then he would tell all the little boys who were there about the swami he was looking for and send them to ask their parents and relatives, aunts and uncles, everyone they knew, whether the sannyasin had been to their village. §
While they were gone, he would stroll through the marketplace, talking with the buyers and sellers and accepting alms from the shopkeepers. They offered him the best they had. He had a natural affinity for people and a charm that was irresistible. Added to this, he was at ease with people and gifted in his speech. He could communicate readily and fluently and was never at a loss for words. People trusted and befriended him without hesitation, most of them calling him Appar, or “father,” without thinking twice. As the children returned from their errands, they brought him news of every swami, sadhu or pilgrim that had been there in the past ten years. Usually, the rishi wasn’t among them. §
Sometimes, he was. Clues to the rishi’s whereabouts came now and again, from out of the air. At one point the sadhu was directed to the tea shop near Bangalore, where he stayed a while in the aftermath darshan that could still be felt there. But no one knew where the rishi had gone, so the search continued from place to place. §
One day the sadhu had reached a small town just south of Mysore and was asking his way to the marketplace, when he suddenly stopped in front of a large house in the merchant’s quarter. After some time, a young man came out and asked who he was. He explained he was a sadhu, and he was looking for a certain swami, an old sannyasin. Had he seen him? The youth didn’t reply, but stared at him, blinking for a moment before he turned and disappeared into the house again. §
A minute later, his father came out and respectfully invited the sadhu into his home to share a meal. He explained that he and his youngest son had just returned that day from a long pilgrimage to Palani Hills Temple and the welcoming home was still going on in his house. They ate somewhat absently, as their conversation interested both more than the food. §
The merchant had seen, at Palani, the very swami his guest described, an old rishi with dark eyes, matted hair wrapped up in a crown, very thin, but as lively as a boy of six. He didn’t know where he might have gone, but he had seen him there one day. He said the rishi’s face would stay fresh in his memory as long as he lived. “I am sure he is the one you seek,” he said. “You will not meet such a man twice in your lifetime.” After the meal, the sadhu thanked his host and set out on the long trek to Palani, 300 kilometers to the southeast in the state of Tamil Nadu.§
Meeting the Rishi
They finally met at Palani Hills Temple, the famed hilltop sanctuary where Lord Murugan presides as the loincloth-clad yogi. This had been the sacred site of the rishi’s initial vision of Murugan, the experience that took him north to the Himalayas and into a lifetime of sadhana and divine realizations. He had returned to this place of his spiritual beginnings. §
Like the two men, their meeting was not ordinary. The sadhu was engaged in worship when the rishi came up from behind and motioned him to follow. It is said they were together for most of a year, wandering through the Tamil lands from temple to temple, shrine to shrine—at Chidambaram for several days, later at Tiruvannamalai, and as far north as Madras and Nellore. §
People long remembered seeing them, for they were an unusual sight, the rishi and his disciple. Wherever they went, people looked twice or stopped to stare. The rishi walked with long strides and kept his eyes on the way ahead. If people looked at him, he looked away, showing nothing of himself. His towering disciple, though, walked with a long, lumbering gait, one stride for the rishi’s two, his gaze fixed between the clouds and treetops. §
They walked side by side, like old friends, staying each night wherever they happened to be at day’s end—in a village, at someone’s home, a temple or under a tree by the road. A typical day would find them meditating together in the pre-dawn darkness, having sat up most of the night. Before the sun came up, they would bathe at a well or river and stretch a bit, then the rishi would sit down facing the east, his shishya nearby. The rishi talked to his disciple for several hours each morning, then sent him to beg the day’s meal. They would sleep through the hot hours, and in the afternoon move on, covering a few kilometers each day at a leisurely pace. §
Wherever they stayed, people soon gathered, even in a wild spot, a clearing in the jungle, so they never stayed a third day anyplace. On the second day, more people would appear, coming to see, coming for blessings, coming with food—wanting to catch them, the rishi said. When they weren’t staying in a village proper, the sadhu would walk to the nearest hamlet to beg their meal and, as often as not, would return with five or ten of the boys of the village tagging along. They had never seen such a tall man, and they wanted to be with him, so they carried his beggings and umbrella and brought along milk, mangoes and treats from their mothers’ kitchens. When the rishi saw such a parade approaching, he would laugh and laugh. His disciple was really helpless to stop it; there was nothing he could do. Even if he bellowed, the children simply followed playfully a little farther behind. §
Sacred Instructions
It is said that the rishi and his disciple were last together around 1860 near Siva’s classical city of Thanjavur, where they stayed several weeks at a private temple. Our creative narrator peers back through the mists of time to pen the following story, based on the culture of the day. §
Leaving the holy town, on the road south from Madras, the capital, they passed a large estate. A well-dressed man came out from the house and hurried forward to meet them. Saluting them in all reverence, he introduced himself as the landlord and enthused that he had seen his visitors in a dream the night before, the two of them sitting in his family shrine, and had been waiting all morning, hoping they might appear. He begged them to accept his hospitality for as long as they pleased. They walked with him up to the house, a palatial mansion, to be met at the door by a host of excited servants. §
The landlord washed their feet himself, offering handfuls of flowers he had gathered just in case his dream was prophetic. He took his guests inside and introduced his family. Afterwards, he showed the way to his family’s private temple, across a wide courtyard behind the house. It was a pillared hall with a high roof, the outside painted with traditional red and white stripes, the building surrounded by bilva and mango trees. Inside the hall was a small stone shrine. “This temple is as old as I am,” he exclaimed, with a sweeping gesture of his arm. “My grandfather built it while I was a boy. My father worked very hard on it, too.” Within the shade of the portico sat a small stone Nandi, which the landlord bowed to fondly as they passed. §
The shrine was flawless and scrupulously clean. Teak-wood doors swung open to reveal a floor of polished granite and walls almost covered over with superb wooden and plaster carvings of sacred import. The Sivalingam in the sanctum was bedecked with garlands of flowers and crowned with jewels. The pujari had just left, and the air was full of incense. The wealth of the owner was evident. All the puja articles were of silver and gold—the bell, the trays, even the hanging pot above the Lingam. The atmosphere was quiet and sublime, a world unto itself. §
The young sadhu found his guru, Rishi from the Himalayas, at Palani Temple. The two were inseparable, and always on the road, never staying more than two nights in one place, true mendicants, begging for their meals and living under no man’s roof.
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A thin brahmin lad walked in through a side door. He withdrew as soon as he saw them, but the landlord called him back. “This is Ramesh,” he informed his two guests. “His father has been the priest here for many years, and Ramesh will take his place one day.” §
Their host showed them through the rest house he maintained for pilgrims, and offered them anything they wanted from a storeroom full of supplies. Water pots, veshtis, shawls, umbrellas, mats, walking sticks, fans, sandals, trays—every conceivable pilgrimage item was there, from needles to blankets, even a small basket overflowing with large rupee coins. §
“There is no counting the devotees of the Lord that pass this way in the dry months,” he explained. “They go on to Thanjavur and Chidambaram, and often they return through here as well. Our family has always tried to look after them as best we can.” He paused for a moment, then quickly added, “Of course, this is not the pilgrimage season. You will be alone here. No one will disturb you.” §
Outside, he showed them the family well, its wooden bucket hanging above the 12-foot-wide, stone-lined opening in the earth, and again turned to them with folded hands. “It is a very great honor for me to serve you,” he said. “You must rest here for a while. Stay as long as you please. This is a duty given me by Siva to do; you cannot refuse.” Against his childlike sincerity and imploring looks, they could not, and he was elated. He bowed once more, announced that their first meal would arrive in minutes, and marched off to the house without looking back. §
They stayed for a week at this little temple. No one else was there, no one disturbed them. They suspected other guests had been softly sent away. Within the solid stone walls of the shrine, no thought of the outside world, no memory of anything other than Siva could intrude; and in this blissful atmosphere they felt free to undertake the pilgrimage to the heights of consciousness without concern for the events of the day. §
They sat through most of the night and day in deep meditation. Each morning they would bathe at the well—its cold, clear waters poured from the bucket onto head and body—and walk around a bit, after which the rishi would talk to his disciple, giving him strong instructions and insights that would carry him through the rest of his life. After the noon meal, they would sleep for several hours and then return to their meditations as the tropical sun waned. They sat for hours together in deep, inner communion, in perfect harmony. The only words between them were the rishi’s, and those were intermittent. §
On the last day they were together, Rishi initiated his shishya into the great Kailasa Parampara, pouring the light and love of Siva into this new vessel with a simple, but puissant, touch on the knee.
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He told his disciple that he would go to Yalpanam, the northern peninsula of Sri Lanka, but to wait until he received his inner orders. “It is a place where the Saivite path is followed more strictly than anywhere else in the world. Recently there has been a falling away there due to Western influence, but it is not destroyed. With hard work, the path can be reestablished. The people are pure; they cherish their traditions; they live the Saivite path; but they do not know the spirit of Siva. His power and presence sleeps within them. Their lives run on in the orthodox ways, but the depths of things are closed to them. They have forgotten that the strict Saiva culture is a vehicle for spiritual unfoldment.§
“Go there and revive that spirit. Show them. Tell them. Be a worker of miracles. You will have more siddhis than you even know about. You will work wonders, live long and have many disciples. The people there will try to catch you and hold you, but don’t let them. When you have done your work, for their sake, shake them off. There will be many to claim you but few to understand or appreciate what you do for them, and fewer still to ask for what you alone can give. The others will come to you for everything. Give them everything they need. Thus you will leave nothing undone.” §
The rishi spoke of the being who would eventually inherit his disciple’s spiritual mantle. He would be quiet, crystal pure, but he would act as if he were a madman. “Teach others your siddhis,” he admonished, “but give the gems of jnana only to this one. By his guise of madness he will preserve the power of the guru lineage during foreign rule, and pass it along to his disciple.” Each day the rishi would talk like this, giving his disciple detailed instructions. §
The last day they were together, as they sat before a fire before dawn, he smeared vibhuti abundantly on his disciple’s forehead, as is done in Saiva funeral rites, thus initiating him into the renunciatory life known as sannyasa. Rubbing freshly ground sandalwood paste on the disciple’s chest, the satguru spoke out the initiate’s monastic name, Muktiyananda, meaning “he who enjoys liberation’s bliss.” §
The rishi reached over and, with focused intent, touched Muktiyananda on the knee, a touch that was never forgotten, and abruptly sent him on his way, out into the world to do his work. Muktiyananda stood up, prostrated to his preceptor and, as instructed, left that minute, and the rishi remained behind in the temple. §
The rishi stayed at the private temple for a few days longer. Then he went south, stopping briefly at the Subrahmanya Temple in Tiruchedur, then south to Kanyakumari, a Goddess temple at the southern tip of India. He found a niche on the coast and remained there for untold years, experiencing the ever-evolving encounters with samadhi until he finally left his body.§