The Son Who Taught His Mother

The sages told the Pandavas of Kapila, the sage who was born as a son to teach his own mother the highest wisdom, and of Devahuti, the mother who learned liberation at the feet of her child - a tale of the love between mother and son made into the door of the deepest knowledge.

Devahuti was a woman of great virtue, the wife of the sage Kardama. For long years she had served her husband faithfully through his austerities, and at last, his penance complete, he had granted her wish for a son and then departed to the forest to seek liberation, as was the way of sages, leaving her alone. But the son born to Devahuti was no ordinary child: he was Kapila, an incarnation of the Lord himself, come into the world in the form of her son, born to be the teacher of the sacred knowledge and, above all, to lead his own mother to the freedom she longed for. So the child she cradled was, in truth, the Lord, come to be her son and her guru both.

When her husband had gone to the forest and her divine son Kapila had grown, Devahuti, alone now and advancing in years, turned her heart toward the one thing that remained to be sought. She had lived a full life of duty - as a faithful wife, as a mother - and had served and given and waited; and now she longed for the highest thing, for liberation, for the knowledge of the truth that would free her from the round of birth and death, and from the sorrow and bondage of worldly existence.

So Devahuti came to her son Kapila, knowing him now for what he was - not merely her child, but the Lord come as her teacher - and humbly besought him to instruct her. 'My son,' she said, 'I have grown weary of the world and its endless round of desires and sorrows; I long to cross beyond it. You are come, I know, as my teacher no less than my son. Teach me, then, the way to freedom; show me the truth that liberates, that I may be released from the bondage of this fearful worldly existence.' And Kapila, glad that his mother sought the highest, agreed to teach her.

Kapila began his teaching by showing his mother the true root of bondage and of freedom alike. 'Know, mother,' he said, 'that it is the mind that binds the soul, and the mind that frees it. When the mind is attached to the objects of the senses, to the things of the world and the desires they kindle, then it binds the soul fast in the round of birth and death, and to that very world it clings. But when the mind is turned away from the world and fixed upon the Lord, then that same mind becomes the cause of freedom, and leads the soul to liberation.

'The soul itself, in truth, is pure and free, untouched, only a witness; but through false identification it imagines itself bound, taking the body and the mind and the changing states of nature for itself, and so it suffers and is bound. The whole bondage lies in this false identification, this forgetting of one's true nature; and the whole of freedom lies in undoing it - in withdrawing the mind from its attachments, in ceasing to mistake the changing nature for the changeless self, and in turning the heart wholly to the Lord. Bondage and freedom are both the work of the mind; govern the mind, and you govern your destiny.'

Kapila taught his mother that the surest path to freedom, gentler and higher than the dry discipline of mere analysis, is the path of loving devotion to the Lord. 'The mind is hard to control, mother,' he said, 'and to free it by force of will and bare knowledge alone is a steep and difficult road. But there is a gentler and a surer way: to fix the mind upon the Lord through love. For when the heart is given to the Lord in devotion, when it delights in hearing of him, in serving the holy, in dwelling on his deeds and his beauty, then the mind is drawn from the world not by force but by a greater love, and is fixed upon the Lord without strain.

'Such loving devotion, offered without desire for any reward, seeking the Lord for his own sake alone and not for any gain, is the most powerful of all means to liberation; it melts the bondage of the heart as nothing else can. The devotee who serves the Lord with such pure love, asking nothing in return, comes by that love to dwell ever in his presence, and crosses beyond the world of sorrow. This path of love, Kapila taught, is open to all, gentle and sweet, and carries the soul home more surely than the hardest austerity.' And he taught her, too, the disciplines that steady the mind and the discernment that distinguishes the changeless soul from the changing nature, that her devotion might be founded in true knowledge.

Kapila unfolded for his mother the discernment between the soul and the world of changing nature. 'All this world that you see,' he said, 'the body and the senses and the mind, and all the objects they grasp, are the unfolding of nature, which is ever-changing, made of its qualities, arising and passing away. But the soul, the true self, is other than all this: it is pure consciousness, the unchanging witness, that looks on at the play of nature but is not itself a part of it, as the sun looks on at the world it lights but is not touched by what it sees.

'The soul's bondage is only this: that it forgets its own nature as the free witness, and identifies itself with the changing nature it beholds - saying I am this body, I am this mind, this is my joy, this my sorrow - and so is caught up in the play and suffers it as its own. And freedom is to recover the truth: to know oneself as the witness, distinct from all the changing show of nature, untouched and free. To one who truly sees this difference - who discerns the changeless soul amid the changing world, and rests in that - the bondage of nature falls away, and the soul abides in its own freedom, serene amid the play it no longer mistakes for itself.'

Devahuti received her son's teaching with a full and devoted heart, and put it into practice. She turned her mind from the world and fixed it upon the Lord; she meditated on the truth Kapila had taught her, discerning the changeless soul from the changing nature; and above all she gave her heart in loving devotion to the Lord, who was her own son and teacher. By this devotion and this knowledge together, steadily practiced, her attachments fell away one by one, her mind grew pure and still, and the false identification that had bound her was undone.

And so Devahuti attained the very liberation she had longed for. Her bondage dissolved, her soul recovered its freedom, and she crossed beyond the world of sorrow and birth and death, attaining the highest goal, union with the Lord. The mother who had served her husband and raised her son, and then turned in her later years to seek the truth, was led by that very son to the deathless freedom; and she who had given the Lord a mother's care received from him, in return, the gift of liberation. Her long life of duty was crowned at the last by the highest attainment, taught to her by her own child.

There was in the tale a sweetness the sages were glad to dwell on: that the Lord himself had come as a son to teach his own mother, and that the bond of mother and child had been made the very door of liberation. For Devahuti had cared for Kapila as a mother cares for her babe, not knowing at first all that he was; and he, in return, had become her guru and led her to freedom, repaying her mother's love with the highest gift a teacher can give. The love between them, natural and human, had been the channel through which the deepest wisdom flowed.

And there was in it the teaching that the highest knowledge may come through the nearest and most ordinary bonds, if the heart is open to it; that one need not go to far forests or distant teachers to find the truth, for the Lord may teach through a son, a mother, a friend, whoever is near; and that the love we bear our own kin may itself be lifted up and made the road to liberation, when it is joined to devotion and turned toward the truth. The mother learned freedom from her child; and the tale held this up as a sign that the bonds of love, rightly turned, are not obstacles to the highest goal but may be the very means of reaching it.

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

'See, first, the teaching of bondage and freedom: that it is the mind that binds and frees the soul, and that the soul itself is pure and free, only seeming bound through false identification with the changing nature. Freedom comes by withdrawing the mind from its attachments, discerning the changeless self from the changing world, and turning the heart to the Lord. The tale teaches that we are not the body or the mind or the passing states we suffer, but the free witness behind them; and that to know this, and to rest in it, is to be free.

'And see the gentleness and power of the path of loving devotion. Kapila taught his mother that to fix the mind on the Lord by force of will alone is hard, but to fix it by love is gentle and sure; that devotion offered without desire for reward, seeking the Lord for his own sake, melts the bondage of the heart and carries the soul home. And see the sweetness of it all: that the Lord came as a son to free his own mother, and that the bond of love between them became the door of liberation. Learn, then, that the highest wisdom may come through the nearest bonds; that love, turned toward the truth, is the surest road; and that devotion to the Lord, pure and selfless, frees the soul more surely than the hardest austerity.'

And the Pandavas, who knew the deep bonds of family and the longing for truth, took to heart the tale of the son who taught his mother the way to freedom.