The Gleaner Who Refused Heaven

In the years of exile, when the Pandavas lived on little and longed for much, a sage came to their forest hermitage and found Yudhishthira troubled by the smallness of their portion and the largeness of their loss. To steady the king's heart, the sage told him of a man who had lived on almost nothing at all, and had been richer in peace than any emperor.

"Let me tell you, son of Kunti," he said, "of the sage Mudgala, who lived at Kurukshetra by gleaning fallen grain like a bird, and who was so free of greed and anger that he gave away even the little he gathered, and was content. The gods tested him with abuse, and then offered him heaven itself - and what he did with that offer is the heart of the tale. Listen, and learn what true contentment is worth."

And Yudhishthira, who knew the weight of want, leaned in to hear the story of the gleaner who refused heaven.

There lived once at Kurukshetra a brahmin sage named Mudgala, a man of perfect truthfulness and self-control, who supported himself and his family by the hardest and humblest of livelihoods. He lived by gleaning - by the practice called uncha-vritti, gathering up the stray grains of corn that the harvesters had left fallen in the fields and on the threshing-floors, picking them one by one as a pigeon pecks scattered seed.

With this meager harvest, gathered grain by grain, Mudgala fed himself, his wife, and his son. It was barely enough to keep them alive. And yet from this little, Mudgala gave. He was devoted to the rite of hospitality, and whenever a guest came to his door he would share his painstakingly gleaned food gladly, holding nothing back. He performed his sacrifices faithfully on what little he had. And by a quiet grace, however much he gave away, there was always just enough - the small store of grain renewing itself so that he and his family never quite starved, however freely he shared. He lived on the edge of nothing, and he was serene, free of anger, free of greed, content with his lot as few rich men are content with their abundance.

The fame of Mudgala's virtue and his boundless, uncomplaining generosity rose even to the heavens, and the gods wished to know whether his serenity was as deep as it seemed - whether a man living so close to hunger could truly give without resentment, and be abused without anger.

So they sent to test him the sage Durvasa, who was famous throughout the worlds for his fearful temper and his terrible curses, a holy man whose wrath had laid low kings and gods alike. Durvasa came to Mudgala's humble dwelling not as a dignified guest but in the guise of a filthy, naked, raving madman, smeared with dirt, shouting insults, behaving as offensively as he could contrive - the very hardest kind of guest for any host to bear, and most of all a host who had so little to give.

Mudgala had just returned from his long labor of gleaning, bringing home the small store of grain that was to feed his family. Durvasa fell upon it. The raving sage devoured all of Mudgala's painstakingly gathered food, every grain of it, leaving nothing for the household. And not content with that, he smeared what remained upon his own filthy body, scattered and spoiled what he could, and heaped abuse and mockery upon his host, reviling him with foul words.

Mudgala, his family's whole sustenance eaten and fouled before his eyes, did not show the smallest flicker of anger. He felt no resentment at all. On the contrary, he was glad - glad that a guest, however strange and offensive, had been fed from his hand and had taken his fill. He bowed to Durvasa with a serene and cheerful heart, thanked him for the honor of his coming, and bore his own family's renewed hunger without a word of complaint. There was not a trace of irritation in him, not a shadow of grievance.

Durvasa came again, and again, harvest after harvest. Six times he returned to Mudgala's door, and six times he did the same: he devoured all the grain the sage had labored to glean, fouled what was left, abused his host, and left the family to hunger. He came when Mudgala was most weary and most in want, choosing always the worst moment, doing always the most provoking thing, watching for the anger that any ordinary man - any saint, even - would surely show at last.

But it never came. Through all six trials Mudgala remained exactly the same: calm, glad, grateful, untroubled. Hunger could not embitter him; insult could not stir him; the loss of his family's whole food again and again could not wake the least resentment in his heart. He served the cruel guest each time with the same cheerful reverence as the first, content in himself, anchored in a peace that nothing from outside could reach or disturb. His serenity was not a mask worn over swallowed anger; there was simply no anger in him to swallow.

At last Durvasa was overcome - not by anger, for once, but by wonder. He had come to break this gleaner's calm, and he had failed utterly, and in failing he had found something he honored above all the penances he knew.

"Mudgala," he said, casting off his mad disguise, "there is no one in all the worlds like you. I have done my worst to you, again and again, at your hungriest and your poorest, and you have met me every time with nothing but gladness and grace. Your patience has no bottom; your contentment cannot be shaken; your generosity does not falter though it costs you your bread. The greedy and the proud, who have everything, are never at peace. You, who have almost nothing, are never not at peace. You have conquered the two great enemies, desire and anger, more completely than any ascetic I have known. Blessed are you, and blessed is the discipline that made you so."

And the fame of Mudgala's virtue, now proved by the hardest test the heavens could devise, shone the brighter, and the gods themselves took note of him.

In reward for so rare a virtue, the gods sent down to Mudgala a celestial messenger with a shining chariot of heaven, come to carry the gleaner up bodily to the world of the gods, to dwell among the blessed in the paradise that his goodness had earned.

"Mudgala," said the heavenly messenger, "your patience and your generosity and your unshaken peace have won you the highest of rewards. Mount this chariot. It will bear you to heaven, to swarga, where you will dwell in delight among the gods, freed forever from the hunger and hardship of this poor life. You have earned it many times over. Come."

It was the offer that every ascetic strives and starves and suffers for - heaven itself, the goal of a thousand penances, held out freely to the humble gleaner. But Mudgala, wise as he was serene, did not simply climb aboard. Before he would accept so great a gift, he wished to understand exactly what it was. And so he asked the messenger a question that few who are offered heaven think to ask.

"Tell me truly, messenger," said Mudgala, "what manner of place is this heaven, and what are its virtues and its faults? For I would not go anywhere, however bright, without knowing what it truly is."

The celestial messenger, being honest, told him the whole truth. "Heaven is a place of great delight," he said. "There the blessed enjoy every pleasure, free of toil and hunger and grief, in the company of the gods, each according to the merit he has earned. But since you ask for its faults, I will not hide them. Heaven is a reward, and like every reward it is measured out and finite. One dwells there only so long as the merit that purchased it lasts. When that store of good karma is spent - and spent it must be, for nothing is gained there, only enjoyed - then the soul falls. It is cast down again from heaven, back into the world of birth and death, to begin once more. And there is this sorrow too: the blessed in heaven can see the higher and the lower stations, and feel the pang of those above them, and the dread of the fall they know is coming. Heaven is glorious, but it is not the end, and it is not forever. It is a high place from which one must, at last, come down."

Mudgala listened, and then he made his choice. "If heaven is a place from which one must fall when one's merit is spent," he said, "then it is only a longer, sweeter turn of the same wheel of coming and going, of rising and falling, that binds all creatures. I thank you, messenger, and I thank the gods for their kindness. But I will not mount your chariot. I do not want a happiness that ends, nor a height that I must one day be cast down from. I will seek instead the one good that does not pass away - the supreme peace beyond all returning, the liberation from which there is no fall."

And the messenger, honoring his wisdom, returned to heaven alone, the bright chariot empty. Mudgala gave up even his gleaning then, and renounced all desire for any reward in any world, high or low, and devoted himself wholly to the search for the imperishable. By that complete renunciation, freed of the craving even for heaven, he attained at last the highest and most perfect peace, the liberation that does not come and go.

The sage finished the tale and looked at Yudhishthira. "There is contentment, son of Kunti. Mudgala had almost nothing and gave away even that, and he was so free that when heaven itself was offered to him, he could weigh it clearly and let it go for something greater. The man who needs little and clings to nothing cannot be robbed, cannot be shaken, and cannot, in the end, be kept from the highest good. Your kingdom was taken from you; but no one can take from you the peace of a heart that has learned, like Mudgala's, to be content." And Yudhishthira was quieted, and held the gleaner's example in his heart through the long years of his want.