Pañcaśikha
Pañcaśikha is a great Sāṃkhya ṛshi. He appears in the Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 319, as the teacher in the Pañcaśikha-Janaka Saṃvāda (the dialogue between Pañcaśikha and Janaka).
He is a master of moksha-tattva (the truth of liberation). He teaches King Janaka that jarā (old age) and mṛtyu (death) cannot be avoided. No worldly gain can protect any being from them: not wealth, fame, power or long life. He teaches this with the image of the kāla-pravāha, the river of time, which carries all bound beings along.
Who he is
The name Pañcaśikha means one with five crests or five braids. The tradition links the name with a famous Sāṃkhya teacher of great antiquity. He is one of the ancient Sāṃkhya teachers, linked with the passing down of Sāṃkhya from Kapila’s first teaching to the classical period.
In the Mokshadharma Parva he speaks with Janaka in a dialogue of his own. Bhīshma introduces him as an expert in the knowledge of the ultimate, and gives no further explanation of his standing. Janaka seeks him out for wisdom on liberation.
The teaching: old age and death cannot be avoided
Pañcaśikha’s main teaching is that jarā and mṛtyu come to every being. No one who is born into a body can stop what having a body brings. The powerful, the wealthy and the long-lived all follow the course of time. Days do not stop. Nights do not stop. Months do not stop. The one who is alive now will grow old, and the one who grows old will die.
Pañcaśikha does not describe a hopeless view of life. He clears away false beliefs so that moksha (liberation) becomes possible. The freedom he points to is not freedom from death, which is not possible for one who has a body. It is freedom from taking oneself to be what dies.
The river of time
Pañcaśikha uses the kāla-pravāha, the river of time, to show the nature of saṃsāra (the cycle of birth and death). All beings are in this river, and its current carries them. They call to one another and try to help one another. They form bonds and relationships. But every one of them is in the same current, and no one in the river can lift another out of it.
The one who crosses is not the one who swims against the current. It is the one who knows that his deepest nature is not in the river at all. The ātman (the Self) is the ground of awareness in which the river of time flows. It is not a passenger in the river.
Human bonds in saṃsāra
Pañcaśikha also speaks plainly about human bonds. Those we call “ours” are fellow travellers on the same stretch of road. These are the spouse, children, parents and friends. The road was walked before they appeared, and it will go on after they leave. The bond is real, but it does not last.
Equal vision as the path
After he clears away the false hope of protection from death, Pañcaśikha teaches the path of sarvatra-sama-darśana. This means equal vision of the one ātman in all beings and in all conditions. The one who trains in sama-darśana does not meet old age and death as disasters. He does not take himself to be the vehicle, the body and mind, that goes through them. The ātman, seen equally in all, is not touched by birth, ageing and death.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 319