The Mountain Logs Day 8B: Kedar - The field

The Char Dham means “The Four Stations”. Why “The Four Stations” is because it is not just a reference to the four places in Geography. It is also a reference to the four stations of artha, kama, dharma and moksha. The four stations of a well lived life namely acquiring of prosperity or means, fulfillment of desires and passions, living a life of coherence with Nature, Nature out there and one’s own nature, and finally the station of transcendence where you get established in your own sense of being. 

On this pilgrimage, the four geographical stations of Gangotrti, Yamunotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath, the pilgrimage seeks to get insight into the truth of these four stations of life through a combination of physical and mental effort, emotional aliveness, openness to the spirit and surrender to Nature. 

It’s quite beautiful, profound, intense and transforming. It’s unique as a pilgrimage, as an experience and breathtaking in its conception. 

In the following Episodes, Dr. Bharat Thakur takes you along this pilgrimage over 10 days, sharing the daily logs and some insightful blogs that will have you want to experience the Yatra for yourself.  

Transcript

Day 8 Blog: Kedar -  the field 

Buried 

Along the wildest of earthy streams 

In the middle of a freezing grassland 

Where a storm is always at hand 

Invoking 

The destroyer of the doer of deeds  

We plant our primal seeds 

As an offering to the terminator of needs 

Kedar 

The one field on this sacred earth 

An end to the repeating cycle of birth

A farmer of our destiny - is Kedarnath

According to legends, the five victorious princes of the epic Mahabharata came here to seek the blessings of Kedarnath, the Lord of the field but the Lord didn’t seem pleased at the way the war was waged by the righteous princes. Since they were the ones fighting for justice, how could they deceive, cheat, just to win, even if it was for a just cause.

When the princes came to this barren stretch of grass land, expecting to find him, to ask for absolution from the sins they had committed in the war, he eluded them. They searched everywhere and yet, he was not to be found. The search itself had stirred up the warrior in them, especially in the second prince, the strong one.

Among the cattle near GuptKashi, he found one bull that had striking features. It was not normal at all, as he locked his eyes with the magnificent beast, he knew, that it was the Lord of Kedar in disguise and as the bull saw a flicker of recognition in the eyes of the prince, it ran with the five princes hot in pursuit.

This was pure instinct at work. The princes had forgotten that they had come here to fall at his feet and beg for absolution. Their warrior instincts had been roused. The strong one caught hold of the bull by its hinds along the banks of Mandakini river, on a stretch of land that was surrounded by magnificent high peaks and there ensued a tug of war.

It seemed strange to the wise eldest prince that the Lord who is invincible is having to give a tough fight to his mortal brother. All the while it had seemed that the Lord was in no mood to grant them an audience and was going to great lengths to avoid them. The Lord could have easily disappeared to a realm where he could never be found by anyone but he didn’t do that, he allowed himself to be recognised.

Presently, the bull, not willing to be subdued was thrusting violently into the earth and was boring through it. The fight now seemed to have become mad with the bull threatening to take the prince with him to the bowels of the earth and the great warrior prince too was not willing to give up. The brothers and their wife were now in a state of utter turmoil, the sight was bloody, gory, wild, catastrophic. The cries of the prince and the bull thundered against the icy mountain slopes. They were gut wrenching, heart rending, soul stirring, the violent and filthy grappling was getting bloodier and bloodier. With the prince now committed to a life and death fight and the bull’s hinds torn at many places, bleeding all over, it was a madding churn. It was as if the guts of all the princes would spill out, so loud were their shrieks and wails, so terrible was their collective cry.

At last the unthinkable happened. The bull bore through the earth and the prince was left with the rear half of its body, buried in the earth. Its back rising from the ground as a hump. The fierceness of the bull was such that it bore through the earth and its frontal parts emerged elsewhere.

Is this what the Lord of the fields wanted? If the princes were not worthy of an audience, if they had indeed sinned, why did he not just burn them to ash? Why this bloody struggle between man and the divine, why this gory theater?

As the brothers lay on the earth, dazed, numb, senseless, the eldest, the wise one spoke, “brothers, I feel empty. I feel we have just been cleansed. We thought we came here for absolution from our sins but the Lord of the fields, he is a physician, the healer. He had us deal with our pain”.

“We thought we needed his blessings, we needed to repent but he knew better what we really needed. We needed the touch of the physician, the surgeon, alchemist, the Lord knew and he has done what it takes”.

“We didn’t need absolution from our sins, we needed to heal and to heal, we needed to vomit out our sense of guilt. Arjuna got instructions from our Master on the battlefield that he must fight and not feel remorse at the thought of killing his brothers and family”.

The great archer Arjuna said,  “our charioteer Lord had said that the enemy had already been slain, the deed was done. All we needed to do was to become his hand. We needed to just be the instrument, go about the job like a executioner in a prison does. The man on the death row doesn’t hold him responsible for his death nor do we hold the jailor or the King who passed the judgment or the minister who made the case or even the soldiers who caught the convict responsible. They were mere instruments of the law and yet, we don’t blame even the law for the law acts without motive, each of the instruments are meant to act without any personal motive or sense of judgment. It is because they act in this manner without feeling that it is they who are the doer that they incur no guilt”.

“We feel guilty brothers, we carry a sense of hurt because we wanted revenge. We somewhere wanted to punish them and not act without motive as mere instruments of the law, we felt we did it. and so we feel guilty”.

The brothers and their wife were all quiet now. The hind portion of the bull had got set on the ground. A dog had appeared from somewhere as if to witness the whole event.

A great swordsman from the far east was asked once, if he killed an attacker in the process of defending himself from being mugged, would he plead guilty. The warrior  had said, “no I wouldn’t. I have trained so much that my response will be automatic. It would not be my response at all. I would say, it was the attacker’s action that drew the response, “and so I would plead ‘not guilty’ ”.

The princes came to the Lord on their road to liberation and therefore, the very root of the guilt had to go. A blessing would not do. They had to heal completely to proceed. The poison of guilt had to be exorcized, an intense churning was needed. Kedarnath means “the lord of the field”, this is a field where all seeds are burnt.

It was not the animal in them that was the problem, it was their evolved sense of right and wrong, their subtle pride in being just that made them feel they needed to meet out justice. They owned the war of Kurukshetra, as the good side, they did not feel like instruments of the law and that was at the root of their guilt and the very object they adored as the symbol of righteousness, they had to in the end tear that very symbol apart. It was their own sense of being righteous that they were tearing apart. In tearing apart the bull, their lord, liberation was from their sense of pride and self importance.

The Lord of the fields, the healer does what it takes to heal. The lord enacts the drama where his body as the bull was ripped apart. It took a  terrible terrible struggle seeing their lord bleeding, torn apart. The princes relieved their battles. It was a catharsis in the Yoga Sutra this process of reliving is called ‘rebirthing’ or ‘prati prasav’.

The princes camped at Kedar, built a temple around the mound of the bull Kedar Nath  and meditated, till they felt clear to move onwards.

Next we go to Badrinath, which is the last station in our journey considered the very doorway to liberation. In our next katha, we will see that the seers of Badrinath

called Nar Narayan. It was they who had requested the Lord of the Fields, Kedarnath to station himself there. They did it because to enter Badrinath Dham, you have to be completely empty.

Lots of Love 
Bharat Thakur