Shikhidhvaja Alone in Forest - The Trap of Renunciation

Rama returned to an earlier story: "O Sage, you mentioned that King Shikhidhvaja spent eighteen years in the forest performing austerities before Queen Chudala came to teach him. What was he doing all that time? Why did such dedicated practice fail to bring liberation?"

Vasishtha nodded seriously: "This is a crucial question. Many seekers make the same mistakes Shikhidhvaja made. Let me describe his years of fruitless striving."

"He was not insincere?"

"Far from it. Shikhidhvaja was utterly sincere. He had given up his kingdom, his wealth, his comforts, his family. He lived on wild fruits, slept on bare ground, wore only bark. He meditated for hours each day, practiced severe austerities, and longed for liberation with every fiber of his being."

Rama asked: "Then what was lacking?"

Vasishtha explained: "He had renounced the external without renouncing the internal. He had given up his kingdom but not his sense of being a king-turned-renunciate. He had abandoned wealth but not his pride in having abandoned it. He had left his wife but not his sense of being a great spiritual hero."

"So his renunciation was itself an attachment?"

"Exactly. He was attached to being a renunciate. His identity had shifted from 'great king' to 'great ascetic,' but identity itself remained intact. He would sit in meditation and think: 'I am doing such difficult practices. I am making such sacrifices. Surely liberation must come soon.' This very thought kept it away."

Rama frowned: "But is not some sense of practicing necessary?"

Vasishtha continued: "The doing of practice is fine. The problem is the doer who does the practice for a result. Shikhidhvaja sat in his forest, enduring heat and cold, hunger and thirst, all for the sake of attaining something he did not have. He was trying to become liberated, which assumes he was not liberated already. The assumption of bondage created the experience of bondage."

"What specifically was he doing?"

"He would sit and try to empty his mind. But the one trying to empty it was filling it. He would try to be peaceful. But the effort to be peaceful created disturbance. He would try to realize the Self. But the trying assumed the Self was somewhere else to be found. After years of this, he was exhausted, frustrated, and no closer to freedom than when he started."

Rama asked: "Did he never have moments of peace?"

"He did. In moments when he forgot to try, when he simply was, peace arose naturally. But he could not recognize these moments as the goal itself. He thought they were pleasant interludes before the 'real' attainment came. He was waiting for something extraordinary, missing the extraordinary ordinariness that was already present."

"What would have helped him sooner?"

Vasishtha smiled: "If someone had pointed out, very simply, that the one doing all this striving was itself the illusion. That liberation is not something the ego attains but the seeing through of ego. That the one who wants to be liberated must dissolve for liberation to be recognized. But Shikhidhvaja had no one to point this out. His very intensity repelled the teaching."

"How can intensity repel teaching?"

"A person gripping something tightly cannot receive with that hand. Shikhidhvaja was gripping his seeking so tightly that he could not receive the insight that would end seeking. He was a spiritual warrior, fighting for enlightenment—but there is nothing to fight for and no one to fight. The war mentality itself was the obstacle."

Rama reflected: "When Chudala came disguised as Kumbha, how did she penetrate his defenses?"

"Gradually, cleverly, lovingly. She did not attack his seeking directly—that would have made him grip harder. She told him stories. She asked him questions that turned his attention in new directions. She waited for the moments when his grip loosened, then offered pointers. It took time even then, but eventually he saw: he had been looking for himself, as if he were lost. The absurdity of searching for what was doing the searching finally struck him."

Rama asked: "Can sincere effort ever help, then?"

Vasishtha concluded: "Sincere effort prepares the ground, exhausts the mind's strategies, and eventually turns the seeker toward looking at seeking itself. Shikhidhvaja's eighteen years were not wasted—they showed him what did not work. When Chudala arrived, he was ready because he had tried everything else. The failure of effort creates the opening for effortless seeing. But it would have been faster if he had been taught correctly from the start: you are not seeking something you lack; you are recognizing something you cannot lose."