Sulabhā and Janaka
Sulabhā is a woman sannyāsinī (a renunciate). She is perfected in yoga, she keeps celibacy, and she wanders freely. The Sulabhā and Janaka dialogue is one of the longest in the Śānti Parva of the Mahābhārata, in the Mokshadharma Parva (Chapter 320).
In it Sulabhā uses yoga to enter the mind of King Dharmadhvaja Janaka and test how deep his jñāna (knowledge) really is. The king objects. Sulabhā answers each objection and teaches him about the kshetrajña, the knower of the field.
The setting: King Dharmadhvaja Janaka
Bhīshma tells this as an ancient itihāsa (history). The Janaka in this account is King Dharmadhvaja Janaka of the Janaka line of Videha. He ruled Mithilā. The account says he reached the full fruit of moksha (liberation) while still living as a householder and king.
He had mastered the Vedas, the moksha-śāstra and the art of ruling (rājanīti). He kept full mastery over his senses. Learned people in the three worlds praised him as a king who knew.
Sulabhā decides to test him
Wandering sannyāsis praised Janaka to Sulabhā as a brahma-vid (a knower of Brahman) who lived in the world without attachment. She decided to find out whether this was true jñāna-nishṭhā (steady establishment in knowledge) or only a famous name.
By her yogic siddhi (power) she changed her form into that of a beautiful brāhmaṇa woman, one who could enter the royal court without raising suspicion. She travelled to Mithilā.
Sulabhā enters Janaka’s mind
Sulabhā then practised cetaḥpraveśa, entering another’s mind. She entered Janaka’s mind directly, through his own consciousness. The account presents this as one of the few times in the Mahābhārata that a named yoga-siddha does this.
Through this entry she could know the true state of Janaka’s inner life, and not only the outward show of detachment.
Janaka’s objections
Janaka became aware that a woman had entered his mind without being invited. He raised four objections.
- It is improper. A woman who enters a man’s mind uninvited breaks the propriety of dharma, as if she had entered someone’s house without leave.
- Her lineage is unknown. A true brāhmaṇa, and so a true sannyāsinī, would name her gotra, her lineage and her guru before beginning a philosophical talk. Who is this woman?
- Doubt about her āśrama. Does she follow the right path of āśrama-dharma? Did she renounce in the proper order (brahmacarya, then gṛhastha, then vānaprastha, then sannyāsa), or did she take sannyāsa too early?
- A charge of impurity. By coming into the king’s mind as an attractive woman, has she broken brahmacarya for both of them?
Sulabhā’s reply
Sulabhā’s reply is the largest part of the dialogue. She answers the objections one by one.
On lineage and identity. She asks what lineage can mean for the ātmā, which has none. The ātmā is nirguṇa (without qualities) and nirjāti (without caste or lineage). A man who asks “Whose lineage are you from?” still stands in nāma-rūpa (name and form), the field of ahaṃkāra (the sense of “I”), and not in the realisation of Brahman. If Janaka truly sees the ātmā in all beings, who is asking the question about lineage?
On impropriety. She asks whether the body with which she entered his mind was male or female. The ātmā has no gender. If Janaka feels her consciousness in his mind as an intrusion because she is a woman, he is treating his mind as his own property, and that is itself a fine form of ahaṃkāra. A liberated mind has no inner space that anyone can trespass on.
On the ātmā as kshetrajña. Sulabhā gives a long teaching on kshetra (the field) and kshetrajña (the knower of the field). The body and mind together are the kshetra. The ātmā is the kshetrajña. The kshetrajña does not own the kshetra. It only watches it. A knower who claims his inner space as his own has mistaken himself for the kshetra and is not established in the kshetrajña.
On the order of the āśramas. She teaches that the śruti itself says:
Yad ahar eva virajet, tad ahar eva pravrajet.
“On the very day that dispassion arises, on that very day one should renounce.” The step-by-step order of the āśramas is the usual path for people in whom dispassion grows slowly. But a person in whom vairāgya (dispassion) and jñāna arise together, from the work of a past life, may rightly renounce at once without passing through each stage. She shows that her own renunciation belongs to this kind.
On purity. She entered his mind to test his realisation. It was a kind act of inquiry and no wrong. A being without attachment cannot make another impure. The question of pure and impure arises only where there is rāga (attachment). Where there is no rāga, no impurity is possible.
What Sulabhā saw in Janaka’s mind
Through cetaḥpraveśa Sulabhā saw that Janaka, for all his famous knowledge, still held a fine ahaṃkāra: the sense of being “the king who knows”. He was “the king who has reached jñāna“, a mix of royal identity and the identity of the knower. For this reason he met her entry with objections. A person who is truly realised has no protected inner ground to defend.
Sulabhā as renunciate
The account presents Sulabhā as a fully realised woman sannyāsinī. She is not a wife or a devī, and she is not a lesser figure in someone else’s story. She has reached yoga-siddhi, she wanders freely, and she meets the most famous knower of her time as a philosophical equal and more. Her tridaṇḍa (triple staff) is mentioned, which shows that she follows the formal path of sannyāsa.
The account also shows cetaḥpraveśa as a way to know a person’s true state and not the state he performs, used here in the service of inquiry.
Sources
- Mahābhārata, Śānti Parva, Mokshadharma Parva, Chapter 320