Ātman in the Forest

The Padma Purāṇa, in the Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, gives an allegory about the ātman (the self) that wanders in a great forest, enters a womb, forgets its own nature, and at last finds the way back. The ṛshi Kaśyapa Maharshi tells it to Diti, his wife. The allegory explains why beings enter saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death) and how they find their way out of it.

Kaśyapa’s teaching to Diti

The dānavas have been defeated. Diti, the mother of the great daityas, among them Hiraṇyakaśipu, comes to her husband Kaśyapa in grief. She asks the deepest questions. Why does suffering exist? What is the nature of the ātman? How does a being become bound in saṃsāra?

Kaśyapa answers with philosophical teaching and with this long allegory. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Ch. 7)

The five elements tempt the ātman

In the allegory, Ātman is pure and shines by its own light. It has no hunger and no fear. It wanders in a great forest, and the forest stands for the world of manifest existence.

The five mahābhūtas (great elements) are earth, water, fire, air and ākāśa (space). They come to Ātman in the form of attractive companions. Each offers something that looks desirable: solidity, nourishment, warmth, movement and space.

Two great ṛshis, Jñāna (knowledge) and Dhyāna (meditation), stand beside Ātman and warn it. They say: “Do not keep company with these five. They are not your kind. Your nature is nirguṇa (without the guṇas) and complete in itself. If you join the guṇas, they will draw you into bondage and you will forget your own nature.”

Ātman hears their words, but it is taken by the rich show of the elemental world. It goes against the advice of Jñāna and Dhyāna, moves toward the five elements and welcomes their company. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Ch. 7)

Entry into the womb and the forgetting

Through this company, Ātman is drawn deeper and deeper into the net of māyā (the power that veils the truth). At last it enters a garbha (womb) and is born.

The moment of birth is also the moment of complete forgetting. All the jñāna that Ātman had before its wandering is lost. It forgets its own pure nature, the warnings of Jñāna and Dhyāna, and the truth of its being.

The Bhūmi Khaṇḍa uses this to explain why beings in the world live as if they have no knowledge of ātma-svarūpa (the true form of the self), although the ṛshis say that the ātman shines by its own light and is always present. The forgetting does not destroy jñāna for good. It is only a cover that birth draws over it for a time. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Ch. 8)

In the world: Vītarāga, Viveka and Dhyāna

After birth, Ātman is a jīva (a being in a body) living in the world, and it goes through the experiences of life. At some point in this wandering it meets three figures who turn its course around.

Vītarāga, also called Vairāgya (dispassion), is renunciation in person. Vītarāga does not argue philosophy. He shows the jīva that everything it holds to will not last. The pleasures it chased led to nothing that stays. The body grows old and falls. Loved ones leave. Everything the world offered has already proved empty.

Viveka (discrimination) is the power to tell the real from the unreal, the lasting from the passing, the ātman from the anātman (what is not the self). Viveka reminds the jīva what it really is. It is not the body, not the prāṇas (life breaths) and not the mind. It is the witness behind all of these.

Dhyāna (meditation) is the direct path back. Vairāgya has woken the jīva and Viveka has made its sight clear, so the jīva takes up Dhyāna as the practice by which its first jñāna is won back. Dhyāna is the friend who was there before the wandering began, whose earlier warning was ignored. He takes the jīva back without reproach. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Ch. 9)

The path of liberation

Kaśyapa draws out what the allegory means. The jīva’s exile in saṃsāra is not a punishment. It follows from a choice, the choice to ignore jñāna and keep company with the elements.

The way back is the reverse of the way in:

1. Dispassion (Vairāgya) loosens the hold of the elemental world.
2. Discrimination (Viveka) makes clear the difference between the self and what is not the self.
3. Meditation (Dhyāna) brings back the first, direct awareness.

The whole arc runs from the ātman’s first purity, through its wandering in the forest, into the womb, through the forgetting at birth, and back to Vairāgya, Viveka and Dhyāna.

Kaśyapa uses it to console Diti. The dānavas who were defeated and are suffering are Ātmans who went deep into the company of matter. The path back is always open. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Ch. 9)

Kaśyapa’s teaching on karma

Beside the allegory, Kaśyapa also teaches Diti directly about karma (action and its result) and non-attachment. The ātmā gathers karma through action that rests on the false belief that it is the body. The way to break this cycle is not to stop acting. It is to act without the sense of ahaṃkāra (the “I am the doer”), and to offer the action to Parameśvara as yajña (a sacred offering) instead of claiming it as one’s own.

Diti had lost her sons in the wars between the devas and the asuras. Little by little she accepts this teaching and is consoled. (Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Chs. 6–7)

Sources

• Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Chapters 7–9
• Padma Purāṇa, Bhūmi Khaṇḍa, Chapters 6–7 (Kaśyapa’s teaching on karma and non-attachment)