The Old Woman, the Snake, and Death

The sages told the Pandavas the tale of the old woman Gautami and the snake - a tale of forgiveness in the face of the deepest grief, and of the great truth about who is truly to blame for our sorrows.

There was an old and pious woman named Gautami, gentle and forbearing, who had a son whom she loved above all things. One day the boy was bitten by a snake, and the venom killed him, and he died. Gautami's grief was terrible, as any mother's would be at the loss of her child. As she sat in her sorrow beside the body of her son, a fowler named Arjunaka came by - and seeing what had happened, he went and hunted down the snake that had bitten the boy, and caught it, and bound it with a cord, and brought it back to Gautami, dragging the helpless serpent before her.

'Here is the wicked snake that killed your son,' the fowler Arjunaka said to Gautami. 'I have caught it and bound it, and now I will put it to death to avenge your boy. Tell me how I should kill it - shall I cut it to pieces, or cast it into the fire? Only say the word, and I will destroy the creature that took your son from you.'

The fowler spoke in anger and in a kind of rough sympathy, certain that the grieving mother would want the snake destroyed, that vengeance upon the killer would be some comfort to her sorrow. He waited for her to command the snake's death, his hand ready to do the deed.

But Gautami, for all her grief, did not want vengeance. And what she said to the fowler turned the whole matter from a simple killing into a deep questioning of where the blame for our sorrows truly lies.

'Release the snake, Arjunaka,' said Gautami. 'Do not kill it. Killing this creature will not bring my son back to life; his death is done and cannot be undone, and the death of the snake will not undo it. It will only add another death to the world, and another stain to my own soul. What good would the snake's suffering do me? It will not lessen my grief, and it will burden my heart with the sin of vengeance. Let it go.'

The fowler was astonished. 'But it killed your son!' he protested. 'It is wicked, and the killing of the wicked is righteous; to destroy one who has done such harm is justice, and it would bring you peace. Why would you spare the very creature that bereaved you? Surely a mother's grief calls for the death of her son's killer.'

'I do not believe it will bring me peace,' Gautami answered, 'nor that vengeance is righteousness. To return harm for harm only multiplies the harm in the world; and forgiveness is a higher thing than revenge. I have lost my son; I will not also lose my own goodness by becoming a taker of life in my grief. Release the snake.' But the fowler still argued that the snake deserved death - and then the snake itself spoke, and began to lift the question to a deeper level.

The bound snake lifted its head and spoke, defending itself. 'O fowler, why do you blame me for the boy's death, and seek to kill me for it? I am not the true cause. I did not come of my own will, nor bite the child out of my own malice or choice. I was sent. I was compelled to bite him by Death - by Mrityu, the Lord of Death himself, who used me as his instrument. It was Death's command and Death's power that drove me to do it; I was only the rod in his hand, the means through which he worked. If anyone is to blame, it is Death, who compelled me, not I who was merely his instrument. Do not punish the instrument and let the wielder go free.'

The fowler considered this, but was not satisfied. 'Even so,' he said, 'you were the one who bit him; you were the instrument, and the instrument too has its part in the deed. You are not wholly without responsibility.' And so the question deepened: if the snake was Death's instrument, was Death then to blame? And as if in answer, Death himself appeared.

Then Mrityu, Death himself, appeared before them, and spoke in his turn, defending himself just as the snake had. 'O snake, you are right that you acted under my compulsion - but you are wrong to think the blame is mine. For I too am not the true cause; I too am only an instrument. I did not send you to bite the boy of my own will or choice. I was myself compelled, directed by Kala - by Time, the great mover of all things. It was Time that ordained the boy's death in that hour, and I, Death, am only the agent through whom Time accomplishes what it has ordained. As you were my instrument, snake, so I am the instrument of Time. The blame, if blame there is, is not mine, but Time's, which set the whole thing in motion and directs us all.'

So now the chain of causes ran back further still: the snake compelled by Death, and Death compelled by Time. Each agent disclaimed the blame, pointing to the one above it. And the question hung in the air: was Time, then, the true cause and the one to blame for the boy's death? And then Time itself spoke, and gave the deepest answer of all.

Then Kala, Time itself, spoke, and revealed the truth that lay beneath the whole chain of causes. 'Neither the snake, nor Death, nor I, Time, am the true cause of this boy's death, and none of us is to blame for it. We are all of us only instruments. The snake was compelled by Death, and Death by me - but I, Time, did not act from my own will either. I acted according to the boy's own karma - his own deeds, in this life and in his former lives.

'For it is the law of all the worlds that every being reaps the fruit of its own actions; that what we sow, in this life and in lives before, we ourselves must one day reap. The boy died in that hour because his own past deeds had ripened to bring about his death in that hour; his own karma was the seed, and all the rest of us - Time, Death, the snake - were merely the means through which his own past actions came to their fruit. None of us chose it or caused it; we only carried out what the boy's own deeds had long ago set in motion. The true and only cause of the boy's death was the boy's own karma; and so there is no one outside himself on whom the blame can justly fall, and no one for Gautami to take vengeance upon.'

When the great truth had been spoken - that the boy's death flowed from his own past karma, and that the snake, Death, and Time were all only instruments, none of them truly to blame - the matter was settled. There was no guilty party on whom vengeance could justly fall; the snake was as innocent, in the deepest sense, as the rod in a hand.

Gautami's refusal to take vengeance was now vindicated, and shown to rest upon the deepest truth: that to blame and punish the snake would have been to punish a mere instrument for a death that flowed, in the end, from the boy's own deeds. Her forgiveness had been wiser than the fowler's vengeance from the very start. The fowler Arjunaka, instructed by all he had heard, gave up his desire for revenge, his anger dissolved by understanding. And the snake was released, set free, unharmed - spared by the forgiveness of the grieving mother and the truth of the law of karma. Gautami returned to her grief, but with a soul unstained by vengeance and enlightened about the true nature of death and fate; and all who had been present were the wiser for it.

The sages drew the lessons of the tale for the Pandavas.

"See, first, the wisdom and the goodness of Gautami's forgiveness. In the depth of a mother's grief, when vengeance would have seemed most natural and most excusable, she refused it - knowing that killing the snake would not restore her son, that vengeance only multiplies the harm in the world, and that to become a taker of life in her grief would stain her own soul. Forgiveness is a higher thing than revenge, even in the face of the deepest loss; and the one who forgives keeps her own goodness whole, while the one who avenges only adds another wrong to the world.

"And see the deep truth that her forgiveness rested upon: the law of karma. The boy died, in the end, not by the malice of the snake nor the cruelty of Death nor the whim of Time, but by the ripening of his own past deeds; and the snake, Death, and Time were only the instruments through which his own karma came to fruit. We reap what we have sown. And this truth, rightly understood, dissolves the very ground of vengeance: for when we see that our sorrows flow, in the end, from our own past actions, and that those who seem to harm us are often only the instruments of our own ripening deeds, then anger and the thirst for revenge fall away, and forgiveness and acceptance take their place. Blame not the instrument; understand the law; and forgive."

And the Pandavas, who would suffer many wrongs and be much tempted to vengeance, took to heart the forgiveness of Gautami and the truth of the law of deeds.