The King Who Became a Deer

The sages told the Pandavas of Bharata, a great emperor who came within reach of liberation, lost it through a single tender attachment, and won it back at last only by becoming, on purpose, a fool whom the world despised. It is one of the deepest of all the old tales about the danger of attachment and the patience of the soul's long road.

Bharata was a mighty and righteous emperor, a king so great that the land itself is said to bear his name. He ruled long and well, but in his later years he did what the wise of old often did: he renounced his throne and his kingdom and his family, and retired to a forest hermitage to give his remaining years wholly to devotion and the search for the highest truth. There, free of the cares of empire, he lived as an ascetic, fixing his mind upon God, advancing far along the inner path, drawing near to the liberation that is the goal of all such striving.