The Boy Who Became the Pole Star

The sages told the Pandavas of Dhruva, the small boy whose hurt pride drove him into the forest to seek God, and who won, in the end, the one fixed and unmoving place in all the turning heavens - the pole star that never sets.

There was once a king named Uttanapada who had two queens. The elder was Suniti, gentle and good, but neglected and out of favor; the younger was Suruchi, proud and beautiful, and the king doted upon her. Suniti had a little son named Dhruva, and Suruchi had a son named Uttama. Though Dhruva was the elder son, his mother's lack of favor cast its shadow over him, and the proud younger queen could not bear to see the child of her rival honored in any way. The little boy grew up in the shadow of this jealousy, loved by his quiet mother but slighted in the splendid court of his father.

One day the little Dhruva, perhaps five years old, came into the hall and saw his father with the favored queen's son Uttama upon his lap, and in his innocence he ran and climbed up to sit on his father's lap as well, wishing only for his father's affection.

But the proud queen Suruchi saw it and was filled with scorn. She took the little boy and pulled him down from the king's lap, and spoke to him cruel and cutting words. "You have no right to sit upon the king's lap," she told him. "That place, and the throne, belong to my son, not to you, for you were not born from my womb. You are the son of the other queen. If you wish to sit upon your father's lap and one day upon his throne, then you must be born again from me - and for that you must go and worship God, and pray to be reborn as my son. Only then can you have what you reach for. Until then, this is not your place."

The king, dominated by his favorite queen, sat silent and said nothing in his little son's defense, and let the harsh words stand. And the small boy, deeply and grievously wounded, climbed down and ran from the hall.

Dhruva ran weeping to his mother Suniti, and through his tears he told her everything - the proud queen's scorn, the words that he had no right to his father's lap or throne, his father's silence. Suniti's heart broke for her child, for she had no power in that court to right the wrong done to him, and she could not even promise him the honor he had been denied.

But she was a wise and devout woman, and she turned her son's hurt toward the only thing that could truly heal it. "My child," she said gently, "it is true that I cannot give you the throne, nor make your father favor you, nor strike down the proud words of the queen. Your mother is helpless in these things. But there is one who is never helpless, one who can give what no king and no queen can give - the Lord himself, Narayana, the refuge of all. The queen herself told you, in her cruelty, to go and worship God; let her cruel words become your wisest counsel. Seek the Lord. Worship him with all your heart. He is the only true refuge for one who has been wronged, and the only giver of a place that no one can ever take away. Do not seek a higher seat from men, who can deny it; seek it from God, who alone can grant what truly lasts."

The little boy listened, and something in him took fire. He resolved, with a determination far beyond his years, that he would do exactly that: he would go and find God, and win from him a place higher than any his proud stepmother could deny him.

And so the little boy, scarcely more than an infant, did a thing astonishing in one so young. He left the palace and all its comforts, walked out of the city, and went alone into the deep forest to seek God by penance - a tiny child setting out to find the Lord of all the worlds.

Upon the road the divine sage Narada met him, and was amazed to find so small a child going alone into the wilderness with so fierce a purpose. Narada tried, at first, to turn him back, testing his resolve. "You are only a little child," he said. "The forest is hard and full of dangers, and the penance that wins God is the labor of great sages, austere beyond what grown men can bear. Such things are not for a small boy who has been hurt by a careless word. Go home, play, and let go of this; seek these heights when you are grown."

But Dhruva would not be turned. "I have been wounded to the heart," the child answered, "and I will not go home until I have found the Lord and won a place that no one can take from me. Teach me, holy one, how to reach God, for I will not give up, whatever it costs me." And Narada, seeing that the boy's resolve was unshakable - firmer than that of many a sage - marveled, and gave up trying to dissuade him. Instead he blessed the child, taught him the sacred name and prayer by which the Lord is approached, and instructed him how to perform his penance.

Then the little boy gave himself to a penance of a severity that astounded the worlds. He took the sacred name Narada had given him and fixed his whole mind upon the Lord, and he stood in austerity in the forest with a concentration that no child, and few sages, had ever shown.

Month by month he made his discipline harder. At first he ate only fruit, then only leaves, then only water, then nothing but air, and at last he stood drawing breath alone, motionless, balanced on one leg, his entire being gathered into a single unwavering thought of God. He bore the heat and the cold and the hunger and the loneliness without the smallest wavering, his small body wasting away while the fire of his concentration grew ever more intense.

So complete and so powerful did his meditation become - the whole force of a wholly undivided heart fixed upon the Lord - that its heat began to press upon the very heavens. As the child stood breathing in his single thought of God, the worlds themselves were troubled by the power of his penance, and the gods grew anxious, for such concentration in one so young and so pure could shake the foundations of things. The cry of that small, fierce, undivided devotion rose all the way to the Lord.

At last the Lord Vishnu himself, pleased and moved beyond measure by the devotion of the little boy, came down and appeared before him in his radiant divine form, standing before the child in the forest.

Dhruva, who through all his penance had held the image of the Lord fixed in his heart, opened his eyes and beheld the very God he had sought, shining before him - and the sight filled him with a joy and a love so overwhelming that, for a moment, the small boy who had labored so hard could not even find words to praise him. The Lord, in his grace, touched the child with his conch, and at once the boy was given the power to speak, and he poured out his heart in praise of the God he had won.

And in that moment a wonderful change came over Dhruva. He had set out into the forest burning to win a high seat, a place greater than his stepmother could deny him, a throne above his half-brother's - all the wounded pride and ambition of a slighted child. But now, standing in the actual presence of the Lord of all the worlds, drowned in the love and joy of that vision, all his old worldly longing simply melted away. The kingdom, the throne, the high seat he had come to demand seemed suddenly small and unimportant. He found that he no longer wanted them; he wanted only the Lord himself.

The Lord, knowing the boy's whole heart - both the wound that had driven him and the love that had grown beyond it - granted him, in his grace, far more than he had come seeking, and gave to his ambition a fulfillment purified of all its hurt.

"Child," said the Lord, "you set out to win a place higher and more lasting than any other, and you shall have it - but not a mere earthly throne, which passes. First you shall return and rule your father's kingdom long and gloriously, honored by all, the slight you suffered turned to honor. And then, when your reign on earth is done, I will raise you to the highest and most lasting station in all the heavens. I will set you in the sky as the fixed star, the unmoving pole around which all the other stars and all the heavens forever revolve. While every other light in the sky rises and sets and circles and changes, you alone shall never move and never set, fixed and constant and supreme, the still point of the turning heavens, honored above the very seven sages, for as long as the worlds endure."

So the boy who had been told he had no place, who had been pulled from his father's lap and denied a seat, was given by God the one seat in all creation that can never be taken away, never be lost, never even move - the eternal, fixed, highest station, the pole star itself.

Dhruva returned from the forest to his father's kingdom, and all was changed. His father Uttanapada, who had grieved bitterly after the boy ran away, came out to meet him with joy and remorse and embraced him; even the proud queen Suruchi was humbled and reconciled. In time Dhruva was made king, and he ruled long and righteously over a great kingdom, honored and beloved, his early sorrow long since healed.

And when at last his long and glorious reign on earth was ended, the promise of the Lord was fulfilled, and Dhruva was raised up into the sky and fixed there as the pole star - the one star that does not move, around which the whole vault of heaven turns night after night, age after age. There he shines still, the highest and most constant of all the lights, the still center of the wheeling stars, exactly as the Lord had promised.

To this day, when people look up and find the unmoving northern star around which all the others circle, they remember Dhruva, the little boy who was pulled from his father's lap, and who went alone into the forest to seek God, and who was given for his reward the one fixed place in all the changing heavens.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas, and there were several.

"See first the power of a firm and undivided resolve, son of Pandu. A small child, wounded by a careless word, set himself a goal that grown sages would have called impossible, and held to it through a penance that would have broken strong men - and because his resolve never wavered, he reached the very Lord of all and won the highest reward. The name Dhruva means 'the fixed, the constant,' and the boy earned it: by the firmness of his heart he gained the fixed star itself. There is no obstacle that an undivided will, fixed upon its goal, cannot overcome.

"See, too, how a hurt was transformed. Dhruva set out in wounded pride, wanting only to be raised above those who had slighted him. But in the seeking he found something far greater than the revenge he began with: in the presence of God his small ambition melted into pure love, and he no longer wanted the throne, only the Lord - and so was given both, the lesser and the infinitely greater. The wound that drove him into the forest became the doorway to the highest blessedness. And remember, finally, the mother's counsel that started it all: that when men deny you your place, the truest refuge is not in struggling against them for a seat they can always take away, but in seeking the one place, given by God, that nothing in all the worlds can ever take from you."

And the Pandavas, slighted and denied their own throne, looked up that night at the one star that never moves, and took heart.