The King Who Declared War on Himself

When Parashurama, Jamadagni's son, had slain the kshatriyas of the earth again and again and still could not stop, the spirits of his ancestors came to him, and to turn him from the killing they told him of a king who had run out of enemies and found a better one to fight.

They spoke of Alarka, a royal sage, who in his youth had done what few kings manage: he had taken every kingdom worth taking. Rival after rival had fallen to his armies or bent to his terms, until there was, by any ordinary measure, nothing left in the world for Alarka to win.

So the king did what restless conquerors sometimes do when the maps run out. He put his great kingdom out of his thoughts, sat down at the foot of a tree, and set out to conquer the one territory he had never bothered with: his own mind.

It went badly from the first hour. He commanded his mind to be still, the way he had once commanded armies to advance, and his mind simply ignored him. It wandered to old battles, to unfinished appetites, to a hundred small itches of memory and desire, exactly as it pleased, exactly as though the great King Alarka were no one in particular.

He was furious in a way conquest had never made him furious, because every other opponent he had ever faced had at least had the decency to be an opponent he could see. So Alarka, being a man who understood only one language for dealing with insubordination, decided to declare war.

Alarka did not simply resolve to concentrate harder, the way a lesser man might have. He held court with himself, alone beneath his tree, and issued a formal declaration of war upon his own mind, in the same language his heralds had once carried to the courts of rival kings.

'Mind,' he said aloud, 'you have disobeyed the throne. I, Alarka, who broke every king who ever raised a hand against me, now raise mine against you. I will loose upon you an arrow whose edge nothing has ever survived, and you will submit as every other enemy of this kingdom has submitted.'

His mind did not submit. 'Those arrows will never pierce me, Alarka,' it answered. 'They will pierce only your own vital parts, and you will die. Look for other arrows.' And it drifted again within moments, this time toward the smell of rain reaching him on the wind beneath the tree, and Alarka realized with some irritation that he could not fight an enemy that had no single gate to storm.

So he narrowed the war. If the mind itself could not be cornered, perhaps its lieutenants could be. He turned first to his own nose, which had just betrayed him with the scent of rain, and declared war on it exactly as formally as he had declared war on his mind. 'Nose,' he said, 'you have led my attention where I did not send it. Submit, or I will loose my arrow upon you as I loosed it upon the kings of the earth.'

His nose answered him with a calm no defeated king had ever managed. 'Great Alarka, loose your arrow if you must. It will never pierce me. It will pierce only your own vital parts, and it is you who will die. Look for other arrows.'

Alarka considered this and, being thorough, moved on to the next offender. He declared war on his tongue, which had spent a lifetime demanding delicacies and had never once asked the king's permission first. 'Tongue,' he said, 'you have ruled where I should have ruled. Submit or die by my arrow.'

The tongue gave the same answer the nose had given, word for word in spirit if not in phrasing. 'Shoot if you like, great king. Your arrows will not pass through me. They will only pierce your own vitals, and you will die. Find some other arrow.'

Undeterred, and increasingly unsettled by the pattern forming, Alarka turned to his eye, which had spent decades chasing every fine sight the world offered, and declared war on it with the same ceremony. 'Eye, you have looked where I did not order you to look. Submit or die.'

The eye answered exactly as the others had. 'Your arrow will never reach me, King Alarka. It will pierce only your own vital parts, and the death will be yours. Look for other arrows.'

By the third answer, Alarka was no longer merely irritated. He was listening the way a general listens when three separate scouts return with the same intelligence from three different roads. Each sense he condemned told him, in almost the same words, that his arrows could not touch it and would wound only himself. Perhaps, he began to think, something behind all of them, some single unseen commander, was sending the nose toward scent, the tongue toward taste, and the eye toward sight, and collecting the pleasure of all three for itself while none of the messengers took the blame.

Alarka pressed on to be certain, because a king who had spent his life verifying intelligence before acting on it was not about to change that habit now that the war was against himself. He declared war on his ear, which had chased music and gossip and the sound of praise for as long as he could remember. 'Ear,' he said, 'you have listened where I did not command you. Submit or die by my arrow.'

'Shoot, then,' the ear answered. 'Your arrows will not cross through me. They will pierce your own vitals, and you will die. Look for other arrows.'

Then he turned to his skin, which had sought warmth and touch and comfort without ever once consulting the king who wore it. 'Skin,' Alarka said, and his voice by now had lost most of its anger and gained something closer to attention, 'you have felt where I did not permit. Submit or die.'

The skin gave the same testimony as the rest. 'Your arrows will not cross through me, great king. They will pierce only your own vital parts, and you will die.' Last of all he aimed at his own understanding, the faculty that weighs and decides, and it too gave him the very same answer.

Alarka sat with one answer repeated from every quarter he had aimed at, mind, senses and understanding alike, and understood at last what a lifetime of conquest had never taught him. The nose, the tongue, the eye, the ear, and the skin were not rebels acting alone. They were messengers, obeying a restless mind that sent them all out and called their obedience desire. And the arrows he knew, the arrows of a conquering king, could never reach that commander. Every one of them would only turn back upon himself.

Having found his true enemy, Alarka did not repeat his old mistake of shooting at it with the arrows of a king, because such an arrow, he now understood, could only ever pierce his own vitals and never reach the commander. He needed a different arrow, and he did not find it quickly.

It did not surrender in an hour, or in a season. He first tried the fiercest austerities and still found no arrow that could reach those seven, the mind, the five senses and the understanding. Only after long reflection did he see that nothing was better than yoga. So he seated himself in the stillness he had once mistaken for weakness, and there, still and single-minded, he slew all his senses with a single arrow, the arrow of yoga. Where his armies had eventually won every field they marched onto, this quieter war of stillness won something armies never had: an enemy that, once conquered, stayed conquered, because there was no rival mind waiting beyond the border to rise up again.

It sounds almost comic, a king solemnly declaring war on his own nose. 'That is exactly why we tell it,' Parashurama's ancestors said. 'Alarka himself sang afterwards that he had spent his years on kingship and learned only later that there is no joy higher than yoga. We want you to notice how absurd it sounds to fight an enemy with a sword when the enemy was never outside the gate. The whole world he conquered, kingdom after kingdom, was a small holding next to the one province he finally learned to govern. A quiet mind held more territory than every throne he had ever taken by force, and it was the only conquest that never had to be defended again.'