The Twin Sages

The sages told the Pandavas a tale that touched the very heart of their own age - the tale of Nara and Narayana, the eternal twin sages, and of how they are reborn together in every age for the good of the world, and who they had become in the time of the Pandavas themselves.

In the holy hermitage of Badarikashrama, high in the Himalaya where the sacred rivers rise, there dwelt from ancient times two sages who were always together, inseparable companions: Nara and Narayana. They were no ordinary sages, but partial descents of the Lord Vishnu himself into the world - twin forms of the divine, Narayana the Lord and Nara his eternal companion, the perfect man and devotee. Together they performed penance of immense and unending severity, age after age, not for any gain of their own, for they desired nothing, but for the welfare of all the worlds. Their austerity was so great and so pure that its power upheld the order of things and troubled even the heavens.

As the penance of Nara and Narayana grew ever more powerful, Indra, the king of the gods, became afraid - as he so often did when a great penance gathered strength upon the earth. For Indra feared that any being who accumulated such spiritual power must be seeking his throne, the kingship of heaven, and might by that power displace him. He could not believe that the twin sages did their penance only for the good of the world and desired nothing for themselves.

So Indra resolved, as he had against so many sages before, to break their austerity - to disturb their penance and so diminish the power he feared. And he chose the weapon he so often used against the discipline of sages: the beauty of the celestial nymphs, the apsaras, sent to seduce the ascetics and shatter their concentration with desire. He summoned the loveliest of the apsaras and sent them down to Badari, with all their arts and all their beauty, to tempt Nara and Narayana and break their penance.

The apsaras came to the hermitage of the twin sages, beautiful beyond compare, and they used every art of seduction they possessed - their loveliness, their songs, their dances, their sweet allurements - to draw the sages out of their meditation and inflame them with desire, as they had broken so many ascetics before.

But Nara and Narayana were not as other ascetics. They did not struggle against the temptation, did not flee from it in fear, did not blaze up in anger at the disturbance, as a lesser sage might. They simply remained as they were - serene, unmoved, untouched, their inner peace not so much as rippled by all the apsaras' beauty and art. There was in them no desire to be inflamed and no anger to be provoked; the temptation washed over them like water over a rock, and left them wholly undisturbed. So perfect was their mastery of themselves, so complete their inner stillness, that the most beautiful beings in all the worlds, using all their power, could not stir them by so much as a thought.

And then Narayana did a wonderful thing - not in anger, not in struggle, but with perfect, untroubled ease, to teach the apsaras the smallness of what they had brought against him. While they pressed their seductions, the serene sage simply took a flower (or, some say, struck his own thigh), and from it he created a woman - a being of such surpassing loveliness that she outshone every one of the celestial nymphs as the sun outshines the stars.

This woman, born of the sage's thigh (the uru), was named Urvashi, and she was the most beautiful of all the apsaras who would ever be - lovelier by far than all the nymphs Indra had sent. The sage had made, in a moment and without the least disturbance to his serenity, a being more beautiful than all the beauty arrayed against him. And by this he showed the apsaras, gently, how little their loveliness was to one who had mastered desire: that he who was untroubled by their beauty could, if he wished, create beauty far greater than theirs as easily as breathing, and remain wholly untouched by it.

The apsaras, when they beheld Urvashi - this woman the sage had created, lovelier than them all - were utterly humbled and put to shame. They saw at once the futility of their errand: that one who could fashion such beauty without effort and without being moved by it could never be tempted by the beauty they had brought. Their pride in their own loveliness, which had broken so many ascetics, was shamed before the serene power of the twin sages.

Abandoning their attempt entirely, the apsaras bowed before Nara and Narayana and worshipped them, acknowledging their greatness. The sages, bearing them no ill will, blessed them and let them go; and Narayana gave the newly-created Urvashi to the apsaras to take back with them to the court of Indra, where she became the most celebrated of all the celestial nymphs - the same Urvashi who would later descend to love the mortal king Pururavas. So the very attempt to break the sages' penance produced, instead of any disturbance, only the loveliest of all the apsaras; and the penance of Nara and Narayana continued, wholly unbroken, exactly as before.

Such were Nara and Narayana, the twin sages - the eternal companions, the Lord and his perfect devotee, inseparable through all the ages. And the sages who told the tale revealed to the Pandavas the thing that made it strike so close to home: that Nara and Narayana do not remain forever in their hermitage, but are reborn together into the world in every age, in whatever forms the welfare of that age requires, to uphold dharma and to do the work of the gods - always together, always the divine and his eternal companion, side by side.

And in this present age, the age of the Pandavas themselves, Nara and Narayana had been born again, together, as two beings the Pandavas knew and loved above all others. Narayana, the Lord, had been born as Krishna. And Nara, his eternal companion, the perfect man and devotee, had been born as Arjuna. The inseparable twin sages of Badari were none other than Krishna and Arjuna - the Lord and his dearest friend, the charioteer and the archer, reborn together to do the work of dharma in the great war that was coming.

This revelation cast a great light, for the Pandavas, over the whole of their own story and the war to come. For if Krishna was Narayana, the Lord himself, and Arjuna was Nara, his eternal companion and perfect devotee, then the friendship between them - the bond of the charioteer and the warrior, which would be sealed forever when Krishna spoke the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna on the field of Kurukshetra - was no ordinary friendship at all, but the eternal partnership of the divine and the soul, reborn into the world.

The inseparability of Krishna and Arjuna, the Lord guiding and the devotee following, the charioteer and the one he drives into battle - all of it was the latest turning of an ancient and eternal companionship, the same Nara and Narayana who had done penance together at Badari since the beginning of time. And so the discourse Krishna would give Arjuna in his hour of doubt, the teaching of the Gita, was the Lord instructing his own eternal companion, Narayana speaking to Nara, the divine awakening the soul to its true nature - the very thing the two had come, again and again in every age, to accomplish for the world.

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

"See, first, how the true master conquers temptation - not by struggle, and not by flight, but by serenity. Lesser ascetics fight desire and are exhausted by it, or flee it in fear, or blaze up in anger when it is sent against them - and so are disturbed and diminished even in resisting. But Nara and Narayana were so perfectly at peace within that the greatest beauty in all the worlds could not stir them by a thought, and they could even create beauty greater than the temptation and remain wholly untouched. The deepest mastery is not the strength to resist, but the stillness that has nothing left in it to be tempted; cultivate that inner peace, and no allurement can reach you.

"And take to your hearts the greater revelation: that your friend Krishna and your brother Arjuna are Narayana and Nara, the Lord and his eternal companion, reborn together in this age to uphold dharma. The bond between them is the eternal bond of the divine and the soul. When Krishna guides Arjuna, when the charioteer drives the warrior, you are watching the oldest companionship in creation, the Lord and the devotee, side by side as they have been since the beginning and will be to the end. Honor that bond, and know that the Lord and his companion are never truly parted, in any age."

And the Pandavas, hearing who their friend and brother truly were, looked upon Krishna and Arjuna with new wonder and reverence, and understood at last the depth of the friendship at the center of their lives.