The City of Nine Gates

The sages told the Pandavas of the parable of Puranjana, the king who dwelt in a city of nine gates - a story that the sage Narada once told to teach a king the truth of the soul, the body, and the bondage of desire. For it is an allegory: the king is the soul, the city is the body, and the whole tale a mirror of every embodied life.

There was, the sage said, a king named Puranjana, which means one who dwells in a city, who went wandering in search of a fit place to live. After long searching he came upon a beautiful city that had nine gates, adorned with gardens and towers and every delight - a city made ready for a dweller. And there, near the city, he met a lovely woman attended by her companions and guarded by a great serpent of many hoods; and the king, smitten with desire for her, asked her who she was and besought her to be his. So begins the parable: the soul, wandering, finds the body with its nine openings, and is captivated by the senses and the mind, and enters in to dwell.

The woman agreed to be the king's companion, and Puranjana entered the city of nine gates and dwelt there with her as its lord, giving himself up to a life of pleasure and enjoyment in her company. The city, the sage explained, was the body, and its nine gates were the nine openings of the body through which we perceive and act upon the world; the woman was the intelligence or understanding, the faculty by which the soul experiences the world; her companions were the senses, and the great serpent that guarded her was the vital breath, the life-force.

So the soul, Puranjana, entered the body and took the understanding for its mate, and through the nine gates went out to all the objects of the senses, ruled by his desire for the woman and led by her wherever she went. Whatever she sought, he sought; whatever she enjoyed, he enjoyed; he followed her in all things, bound to her, identifying himself wholly with her and with the city they dwelt in - forgetting his own true nature as a free and separate soul, and living only for the pleasures of the senses through the gates of the body. So the embodied soul lives, the sage taught, captivated by the mind and senses, following desire, forgetful of itself.

For a long time King Puranjana lived in the city of nine gates, wholly absorbed in pleasure and enjoyment with his beloved, going out through the gates to taste the delights of the world and returning to her, passing his days in the pursuit of desire and never once thinking of anything beyond it. He grew utterly attached to the woman and the city, and to the children and dependents and possessions that gathered about him there, until his whole self was bound up in them, and he knew no other life and no other goal than the enjoyments of his city.

So absorbed was he in this round of pleasure that he forgot entirely what he had been before he entered the city - forgot that he was a soul, free and separate, who had come from elsewhere and would have to leave again; forgot that the city was not his true home but only a dwelling he had entered for a time. He took the body for himself, the senses for his life, and the pleasures of the world for his whole purpose; and in this forgetfulness, this complete identification of the soul with the body and its enjoyments, lay the whole of his bondage. He lived, as embodied souls live, lost in the dream of the senses, heedless of the truth.

But the time of pleasure could not last forever. There came at length against the city of Puranjana a great and terrible army, led by a fearsome king and accompanied by a being called Old Age, who wasted and weakened all that the army touched. This army laid siege to the city, breaking down its defenses, overrunning its gates one by one, while the dwellers within grew weak and could not resist. The sage explained the meaning: the army was Time, with its days and seasons and years that wear all things away; and Old Age was that decay which comes upon every body in the end, weakening the senses and the powers one by one.

Against this army of Time there is no lasting defense; for it comes against every city of nine gates, every embodied soul, and overruns it at the last. Puranjana, who had given no thought to anything but pleasure, was unprepared and helpless before it; his strength failed, his city was overwhelmed, the gates were stormed, the great serpent of the vital breath grew weak and made ready to flee. The pleasures he had clung to could not save him, nor could the woman, nor the city; for Time spares nothing, and the body it has built it also throws down. So the sage showed the king the end that comes to all who live only for the body and forget the soul.

As the city fell and the time came for Puranjana to leave it, his mind was still wholly fixed upon the woman and the city and all that he had loved - so attached was he, even at the end, that he could think of nothing else, and grieved to be parted from his beloved and his dwelling. And this, the sage taught, is a thing of the deepest consequence: that the state of the mind at the moment of leaving the body shapes what comes after; for whatever a soul is attached to and dwells upon at the end, that it tends toward in its next birth.

Because Puranjana, even in death, clung with his whole heart to the woman, his understanding and his desire, his attachment carried him onward into another birth bound by that very longing, so that he took again a form shaped by what he had craved, and entered once more into the round of birth and death, still bound, still forgetful, still ruled by desire. So the sage showed how attachment binds the soul not only in life but beyond it; how the desires we cling to at the end draw us back into bondage; and how the soul, forgetful of itself and enslaved to the senses, wanders from body to body, from city to city of nine gates, life after life, never finding rest, because it has never remembered what it truly is.

But there was, in the parable, one more figure, who held the key to the soul's release. For Puranjana, the sage said, had once had a friend, a companion of his own nature, who had been with him before he entered the city - and this friend had not entered into the bondage of the city, but had remained apart, watching, while Puranjana lost himself in the pleasures of the senses. This friend was the true Self, the supreme Soul, the inner witness, who dwells alongside the embodied soul in every life but is not bound as it is, and who waits, ever the friend, to awaken the soul to the truth.

The two, the sage explained, are like two birds on a single tree: the one eats the fruits of the tree, tasting its sweetness and bitterness, bound to the branches; the other sits beside it, not eating, only watching, serene and free. The first bird is the soul caught in the body, enjoying and suffering and bound; the second is the witnessing Self, untouched and free. And the whole hope of the bound soul lies in turning at last to that watching friend - in remembering the witness beside it, the true Self it had forgotten - for in that remembrance is the beginning of freedom. The friend had never abandoned Puranjana; he had only waited to be remembered.

Then the sage Narada unveiled the meaning of the whole parable plainly, that none might mistake it. 'The king Puranjana,' he said, 'is the soul, the dweller in the body. The city of nine gates is the body itself, with its nine openings. The woman he loved is the understanding, and her companions the senses, and the serpent the vital breath. The army of Time and the being Old Age are the years and the decay that overrun every body at the last. And the friend who watched, unbound, is the supreme Self, the inner witness, the true nature of the soul, which the soul forgets when it enters the city and loses itself in pleasure.

'See, then, in this king the picture of your own life: how the soul, wandering, enters the body, is captivated by the mind and senses, gives itself up to the pleasures of the world, forgets its own true nature, and so is bound; how Time at last overruns the city and casts the soul out; and how, clinging in attachment even at the end, the soul is drawn back into birth after birth, never free. And see the one way out: to remember the friend who watches, the true Self that is ever free; to cease identifying with the city and the woman, the body and the senses; and to turn, while there is yet time, from the pleasures of the gates to the witness within. This is the meaning of Puranjana; learn it, and be free.'

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

'See, first, the picture of bondage that the parable holds up. The soul, like Puranjana, enters the body, the city of nine gates; it is captivated by the understanding and the senses, gives itself up to the pleasures of the world, and forgets its own true nature as a free and separate self. So it lives, bound and forgetful; and when Time at last overruns the city and casts it out, it clings in attachment even at the end, and is drawn by that desire back into birth after birth. The tale teaches that this is the condition of the embodied soul that lives only for the senses: bound, forgetful, wandering, never at rest. Recognize your own life in it, and be warned.

'And see the way of freedom. Beside the bound soul there sits ever a friend, the witnessing Self, the soul's own true nature, unbound and free, like the second bird upon the tree that watches and does not eat. The soul's release lies in remembering that friend - in ceasing to identify with the body and the senses, and turning to the witness within. The tale teaches that we are not the city of nine gates, nor the senses, nor the pleasures we pursue, but the free soul that has forgotten itself; and that to remember our true nature, the watching Self, is to begin to be free. Live, then, not lost in the city like Puranjana, but mindful of the friend who watches; and so escape the round of birth and death.'

And the Pandavas, who had tasted both the pleasures of kingship and the sorrows of loss, took to heart the parable of the soul in the city of the body.