Bhikshu Gītā
In the city of Avantī lived a brāhmaṇa who spent his whole life hoarding wealth. He was lost when all his wealth was taken from him. Out of that loss he turned to renunciation, and when people mocked and hurt him he sang a song about the mind. That song is the Bhikshu Gītā.
Bhagavān Kṛshṇa told this account to Uddhava in the Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 11th skanda, chapter 23. Uddhava had asked how a sādhaka (one who follows a spiritual path) can bear the abuse and cruelty of others.
The brāhmaṇa of Avantī
In the city of Avantī there lived a brāhmaṇa who was highly learned but of low conduct. He had gathered great wealth through trade and farming, but he spent none of it. He gave nothing to the devas or the pitṛs (ancestors), and nothing for the five great yajñas that every householder must perform. He gave nothing to guests or to the poor, and nothing even for the comfort of his own family. He lived like a yaksha, guarding treasure for no purpose, taking no enjoyment from it himself and sharing none with others.
His wife, sons, daughters and servants all suffered from his miserliness and his sharp temper. In time they drew away from him in feeling and in daily life. The very devas of the five great yajñas, whom he refused to honour, withdrew their protection.
The fall
His wealth was destroyed from many sides at once.
His angry relatives took a share. Thieves who had been watching the house took more. Disasters of weather, flood and fire, which are spoken of as the work of the devas, destroyed a part. The government took its share. What was left wore away with time: grain stored too long went bad and investments failed.
Soon the brāhmaṇa had nothing. He had no dharma, for he had ignored all religious duties. He had no kāma, for he had denied himself every pleasure. He now had no artha either. And he had no moksha, for he had never asked about it.
He sat in this poverty and wept. Then he thought deeply.
The turning
What came to him was not self-pity but a true search:
Alas! I spent my life gathering wealth and guarding it. I gave up all dharma to get it. I took no pleasure from it. And now it is all gone. What was the use? Nothing of worth was gained. All I got from this wealth was weariness and worry.
He saw that wealth gathered against dharma, and not shared with the five kinds of beings who have a claim on it (devas, pitṛs, ordinary people, guests and all creatures), brings only ruin. He saw also that his firm resolve to hoard, which he had taken for prudence, was a kind of violence against the world.
The only thing that truly purifies and frees is jñāna, the knowledge of the ātmā. The only effort worth making is the effort toward Bhagavān Śrīhari. Everything else, even this body, is borrowed.
With this understanding, vairāgya (detachment) arose in him. He gave up everything, took to the way of saṃnyāsa, and began to wander, owning nothing, owing nothing, and expecting nothing.
The torments of the townspeople
The former miser now wandered through towns and villages as a bhikshu (a wandering beggar). He was plainly old, plainly poor, and plainly careless of how he looked. His age and his thin body made him an easy target.
The people of one town knew him as the miser who had gathered so much and kept it all. Now that they saw him as a beggar, they mocked him cruelly. Some stole his staff and begging bowl and hid them, then showed them again and snatched them away, again and again. When he sat down to eat his bhikshā (the food placed in his bowl), some people passed water on his head and spat on him. Others called him a fraud and a pretender, a man who had failed at everything and now wore a renunciant’s robes to cover his poverty. They tied him with ropes. They blocked his road and would not let him go on.
The brāhmaṇa bore all of this without a word of protest, without a flicker of anger, and without leaving his path.
The Bhikshu Gītā
He had borne this abuse again and again. He sat calmly on the bank of a river after his food had been defiled, and he sang:
“Who is the cause of my happiness and sorrow? Is it these people who torment me? Is it fate? Is it the planets? Is it my body? Is it my karma? No. My teachers say that the mind alone is the cause.
The mind makes all the differences: friend, enemy, one who stands apart. The mind alone throws mitra (friend), udāsīna (neutral) and śatru (enemy) onto other beings, who are in truth none of these. When the mind is conquered, there is no enemy anywhere in the three worlds. And when the mind is not conquered, there is no friend either.
Nor are these people the cause of my suffering. They act according to their nature. They cannot truly harm me, for the ātmā within me is beyond the reach of any human act. What they strike is the body. And the body is made of the five bhūtas (elements), so it belongs to them. Let them do with it what they will.
The fault is not in the planets, not in the body, not in fate, not in other jīvas. The fault is the uncontrolled mind, which takes all these shadows for real and answers as if they were threats. The mind that is not mastered drags the sādhaka helplessly from birth to birth.
So I will master it. Through yoga, through viveka (discernment), through nididhyāsana (deep meditation), through complete śaraṇāgati (taking refuge) at the feet of Śrīhari, I will cross this ocean. The only raft is his feet.”
Kṛshṇa’s closing words
Bhagavān Kṛshṇa ended the account with these words to Uddhava:
“The brāhmaṇa was not broken by those townspeople. He was refined by them. Fate had stripped him of wealth. Now these people were stripping him of the last traces of pride and of the mind that reacts. Without knowing it, they were his last gurus.
One who truly understands the teaching of the Bhikshu Gītā, that neither joy nor sorrow has any cause outside the mind, will not be overcome by the swings of the world. For such a person the pairs of happiness and sorrow lose their power. He walks through all of it like the ākāśa (space), present everywhere and touched by nothing.
The essence of all yoga is this: govern the mind. Everything else, āsana, prāṇāyāma, yajña and dāna (giving), is a support for this one work.”
Sources
- Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 11th Skanda, Chapter 23