There is this story about a king who had a bad dream that troubled him very much, and a very special boy who helped him when no one else in all his kingdom could. Like most of the stories that I tell, I have heard it told many times by different people over the years. And, each telling is colored a little differently by the teller and circumstance, which brought it to mind. It comes from the Hindu tradition, and my kids will remind me that the names are different from the ones they heard me use when I told the story to them as they were growing up. In preparation for this telling, however, I looked up the story in some traditional Hindu works and found that I had been mispronouncing the names. The names my kids are used to hearing have been updated to correspond to the original characters from the Hindu tradition. I trust that these corrections will not interfere with the truth of the story for them, or for you.
***
Once there was a little boy whose name was Ashtravakra, and he had a crooked body. Ashtavakra means "cooked body," but how the boy came to have a crooked body is a story for another time. This story begins one day when Astravakra went to play with his friends, and they would not play with him. When he asked them why they would not play with him, they replied, “We are not allowed to play with the child of a jail bird.”
Ashtravakra went straight home to find his mother. When he found her, he told her what his friends had said, and asked, “Where is my father?”
“Your father is away on a journey,” his mother replied without meeting Ashravakra’s eyes.
Ashtravakra looked up at his mother and asked, “Mother, is my father in jail?”
At this, Ashtravakra’s mother started to weep. After she had wept for a little while, Ashtravakra led her to the settee and had her sit down. After a while, with great kindness, but in a very strong voice, Astravakra said, “Alright, stop weeping now, and tell me what has happened.”
Then, she told him the story, and this is the story that she told.
***
One night King Janaka, who was the king of the whole country in which they lived, went to bed in his own chambers, in his own bed, with his own trusted soldiers keeping guard outside his door.
The night outside was full of a strong storm. The wind blew. The clouds rolled over the trees of the forest that grew just across the field outside Janaka’s castle. The lightning lit up everything in the dark with quick white light. Thunder cracked and rumbled. The storm did not bother the King very much as he lay in his high poster bed, soft and cozy with many pillows and a thick down comforter, and he soon fell asleep.
Sometime later the king awoke in the dark. The candles that lit his bedchamber with soft flickering light when he went to sleep had burned out some time before. He sat up and listened. Something had awakened him. At first he heard the storm banging around outside, making his shutters creak, and trees in the nearby forest moan in the wind. Then, closer, inside the castle, he heard voices rising into shouts and cries of alarm. At first they were in the courtyard far below. As he listened, the voices were joined by clashing of steel swords and armored shields. And… they were coming closer!
Janaka realized that the castle must be under attack. He jumped from his bed and went to the door of his bedchamber. He checked the locks and slipped the bolts into place, and listened with his ear to the thick old wood. He could make out the voices of some of his personal guards over the din of the cries and clatter of weapons at the other end of the hallway. He looked around for a way to escape, but saw nothing in the darkness.
As he listened at the door, it seemed to the king that the sounds were growing louder. Then he remembered his balcony that overlooked a field below. Dressed only in his nightshirt, Janaka quickly took the sheets and blankets from his bed and tied them together to make a rope. He then threw open the heavy curtains to the balcony, and tied the makeshift rope to the rail and lowered it into the dark.
The storm was still raging and by the time the king was ready to climb down his newly devised rope, his nightshirt was soaked through, and he was already starting to shake with cold.
When he reached the ground, the king was afraid for his life and struck out across the field toward the woods. The wind was blowing, driving the rain through his thin, soaked nightshirt and into his skin like tiny arrows. When the lightning burst out of the black sky, it startled Janaka, and the bright flashes made him dizzy. The thunder followed like canon fire. The king could not tell if it was the sound of the storm or the roar of real enemy canons. He staggered across the field toward the woods as fast as he could. The grain had been harvested from the field several weeks before, and the stalks had already been trimmed, leaving a carpet of sharp stubble under his bare feet.
At the edge of the forest, Janaka stopped and looked back down across the field for pursuing soldiers. The night was very dark and the storm continued to rage with sudden flashes and loud booms so that the sky flashed with white light and the ground shook. The king could not tell whether the shadows he saw and screeches he heard were from the storm coming through the trees on the edge of the forest, or from his enemies getting closer in his pursuit. He stood for a moment, shaking with cold and fear, until he decided to seek a hiding place in the woods.
As he pushed into the woods, the king stumbled over fallen trees, and was stung as small branches and bushes whipped across his eyes in the dark. It was not long before he was completely lost. He could not hear any sounds of his pursuers, and the in the depth of the forest he was protected from much of the harshness of the wind and rain. But, it was still very wet and he was very cold. The night passed as he wandered deeper into the trees looking for some kind of shelter. The morning brought grey light, but he was still hopelessly lost. He wandered for many more hours in his torn clothes as the trees dripped on his head. He was bruised and cut from the night before and now very tired and hungry as well.
Finally, he came upon a small clearing with a cabin in its midst. The cabin had a thread of smoke rising from its chimney, and looked inviting to him after his many hours in the forest. He went to the door and knocked.
An old woman opened the door a crack. “What do you want?” she asked.
“Please could I have some food, for I am lost and have been wandering through the forest all night without any rest” the king answered.
The woman was kind to him and said, “I am sorry but I have finished eating all of my food for the day. All I can offer you is some uncooked lentils and rice. You can take my pot and fill it in the stream down that path. You can cook it by the stream and return the pot when you are finished.”
So Janaka took the pot with uncooked lentils and rice to the stream where he washed them, and then set about making a fire on which he could cook them. All the tinder and wood he could find was still very wet from the storm, and he had to lie on the ground and keep blowing on the embers to keep the small fire going. His eyes and his lungs burned from the smoke, but what could he do? This was the only way to keep the fire lit while his food cooked.
Finally, after a great deal of time and effort, the rice and lentils were cooked enough to eat. The king set them aside on a log beside him to cool. Then, while he was sitting there, he heard a loud snorting and bellowing coming through the trees. When he looked up, he saw two water buffalo come fighting down the path toward him. He was able to jump out of their way just in time. But, when he went back to his little campsite, he found his meal trampled into the mud.
This was too much for the poor, tired king. His body was bruised. His eyes stung. His empty stomach groaned with no more hope of being filled. He threw himself on his face in the mud and began to weep. And, it was not long before he, tired and discouraged as he was, fell asleep.
The next thing Janaka knew, he was waking in his own bed, in his own room, in his own castle, in his own kingdom. And he was full of wonder.
“Am I now still in the forest in the mud asleep and dreaming that I am back in my own bed, in my own room, in my own castle? Or, am I really in the same bed that I crawled into last night, and awaking from a long and frightful dream?”
King Janaka assembled his closest and wisest advisors to answer this troubling question. They assured him,
“Oh King, you are certainly awake now in your own castle surrounded by your faithful servants, for here we are!”
But, Janaka was not so easily convinced. “How do I know that I am not dreaming still, and you and your words are not just a part of the dream I am having in the muddy forest?”
None could satisfy the king, try as they might. So, King Janaka had two chairs set up in his throne room, one lower and the other higher. Then he had his messengers carry a decree throughout his kingdom.
The decree promised that whoever sat upon the lower chair and could answer the king’s question about waking and dreaming, could choose any one thing from his kingdom to take home as a reward. If, however, the person’s answer did not satisfy the king, off to the dungeon that person would go until such time as the king’s question had been finally answered.
Further, the decree continued, saying that whoever sat upon the higher chair and could answer the king’s question about waking and dreaming, would receive all that the king had as a reward. If, however, the person’s answer did not satisfy the king, that person would be summarily executed in the public courtyard.
Now, you can imagine that there were many who came to sit on the lower chair to try their luck for a precious trophy from the king’s treasury. And, you can also probably imagine that none were so certain of their answer that they sat upon the higher chair – their heads being more precious to them than all the king’s wealth.
***
Astavakra’s mother finished her story, telling that his father had gone to the king’s court, sat on the lower chair, and was unable to satisfy King Janaka’s question about waking and sleeping. And, now he waited with many others in the king’s dungeon for someone to free them with the answer the king sought.
Without hesitation, Ashtavakra replied, “Dear Mother, I will go and free my father.”
And so he went.
***
Upon his arrival at the palace gates, Astavakra told the gatekeeper why he was there, and gatekeeper began to laugh.
“Why do you laugh?” said Astavakra.
“Because the king’s dungeon is full of many older and wiser than you, who came and announced themselves to me. They went in, but have not yet returned. Now, go away and do not waste the king’s time with your foolish ideas,” was the gatekeeper’s reply.
“You know nothing of my ideas, and the decree says nothing about age or wisdom being required to enter” said Astavakra.
Now the gatekeeper was no longer certain what to do because this boy, though young and misshapen, spoke with clarity and confidence. He told Astavakra to wait while he went to summon the king’s advisors.
When the king’s advisors arrived, they treated Astavakra no better than had the gatekeeper. They laughed and scorned him before he ever spoke to them. When they then tried to question him about his ideas, Astavakra refused to speak to them. They wanted to send him away, but he would not leave and they were afraid to disobey the king’s decree. So, eventually word reached King Janaka of Astavakra’s presence at his gate.
***
When Astavakra was finally admitted to the king’s throne room, he went directly to the high chair and took a seat. This set off quite a clamor among the advisors and on-lookers. Then King Janaka called for silence and asked Astavakra why he would not speak to his advisors.
“Because,” replied Astavakra, “I will not speak with tanners.”
(Now, you should know that in that kingdom no one ate any meat, and animals were held to be sacred. Tanners were the people who made animal skins into leather for shoes and certain other goods, and they were considered by most of the people in the kingdom to be the lowest class of the populace. They were mostly ignored by others. To call the king’s advisors “tanners” was a very big insult.)
“Why do you call my advisors tanners?” asked King Janaka.
“Oh my liege, they only see the skin of things and judge accordingly. They look at my deformed body and young age, and base their opinions on what they see. They have no care for what dwells within this skin, nor what wisdom it might share” was Astavakra’s reply. This caused more murmurs and shuffling among the onlookers, but satisfied King Janaka.
“Now, I believe you have a question for me” Astavakra said to King Janaka.
The king told Astavakra of his dream and his confusion. He could no longer be sure of what was real and what was dream.
“You do not remember whence you came,” Ashtavakra said to the king. “If you did, you would know the difference between what is a dream, and what is real. You would not need to ask anyone else to tell you that you are awake or asleep,” he continued. “What you are looking for is someone who can awaken you to what is real within you. Then you will know for yourself what it is to be truly awake.”
King Janaka felt the power of the young boy’s words, and felt this boy with the crooked back was the one for whom he had been waiting. He felt suddenly very humble before this boy.
“Dear Ashtavakra,” Janaka said, “I feel you have the power to show me what is dream and what is real, if you so choose.” He paused, and Ashtavakra waited quietly for the king to continue. Janaka went on, “Would you please awaken me to what is real?”
At this, Ashtavakra smiled and replied simply, “Yes.” With this Janaka’s lessons began.
Once the king finished his talk with Ashtavakra, his first action was to free Ashtavakra’s father from his prison. All the others who had tried unsuccessfully to answer King Janaka’s question about which was his dream, and which his waking life, were also set free by the king’s decree.
In this way Ashtavakra kept his promise to his mother to free his father, and began to awaken King Janaka from his dreaming.
