The King Consoled in Grief

The sages told the Pandavas of King Senajit, who was sunk in grief at the death of his son, and of the wise brahmana who came and lifted him out of his sorrow with the truth - a tale of consolation, of the universality of loss, and of the equanimity by which the wise are not overwhelmed by grief.

King Senajit was a great and prosperous ruler, blessed with every fortune; but a heavy sorrow fell upon him, for his beloved son died. And the king was utterly overcome with grief, plunged into a despair he could not master, weeping and lamenting without ceasing, his whole spirit darkened by the loss of his child, unable to take comfort or to find any reason to go on. His ministers and friends could not console him; he sat sunk in his sorrow, broken, like a man for whom the light of the world had gone out. And in this condition there came to him a wise brahmana, who looked on the grieving king and resolved to console him, not with empty words, but with the deep truth that alone can ease such grief.

The wise brahmana approached the grieving king and asked him gently, 'For whom do you grieve, O King? You weep for your son; but consider - who are you, and who was he, and what is the bond between you that death has broken? You grieve as though you had lost something that was truly and forever your own. But tell me: are you truly the master even of your own self? You cannot keep your own body from age and death; you did not make yourself, nor can you preserve yourself. How then was your son ever truly yours to keep?

'All beings,' the brahmana said, 'come together for a time and then are parted, like travelers who meet at an inn and go their separate ways in the morning, or like logs that float together on a river and are driven apart by the current. Father and son, husband and wife, friend and friend - all these unions are for a time only, and all end in separation; it is the very nature of things. Your son came to you for a season, and has gone on, as all must go; the parting is not a special cruelty aimed at you, but the common law of all that lives. For whom, then, do you grieve so, as though your loss were a strange and unjust thing, when it is the lot of all?'

The brahmana unfolded for the king the truth that all unions end in parting, and that grief, though natural, rests upon forgetting this. 'Consider, O King,' he said, 'how all things that come together must part. Wealth gathered is scattered; what is built up falls down; what rises sets; what is born dies; what meets is parted. This is the law of all existence, fixed and unchanging, and no one is exempt from it - not the poorest beggar, nor the greatest king, nor the gods themselves. All that you have and love, you have only for a time; it was never truly yours to keep, but only lent for a season.

'Why, then, single out this one parting to grieve over, as though it were a strange injustice, when partings are the very texture of life, and you yourself, every day, are moving toward your own? You grieve for your son as one lost; but you too are being carried by time toward the same gate, and all whom you love with you. To grieve at one parting while forgetting that all is parting is to misunderstand the nature of the world. The wise, knowing that all unions end, hold what they have lightly, and are not overwhelmed when the parting comes that they always knew must come.'

The brahmana showed the king, too, the uselessness of grief, that it helps neither the one who is gone nor the one who remains. 'Your grieving, O King,' he said, 'does not bring back your son, nor ease his lot, wherever he has gone; the dead are beyond the reach of our weeping, and our sorrow cannot touch them or help them at all. And it does not help you, the living; it only wastes your strength, darkens your days, and harms your own body and spirit, so that grief, indulged, becomes a second affliction added to the first, a sickness that feeds upon itself.

'Consider that those who grieve are themselves in time grieved for; that the mourner of today is mourned tomorrow; that all are caught in the same passing stream. To give yourself up to endless sorrow is to add your own ruin to your loss, and to no purpose; for the grief changes nothing and saves no one. The wise, therefore, having understood that grief avails nothing, do not let it master them, but bear their losses with steadiness, doing what can be done - the rites, the duties of the living - and not wasting themselves in a sorrow that helps neither the dead nor the living. Grieve, if you must, as a man must; but do not let grief consume you, for it is fruitless.'

The brahmana led the king deeper, to the very root of sorrow, which is attachment. 'Consider, O King,' he said, 'why this loss gives you such pain. It is because you had made the boy your own in your heart, bound your happiness up in him, said this is mine. And it is this binding, this sense of mine, that is the root of your grief; for wherever we say mine, there we open ourselves to sorrow, since all that we call ours must one day be lost. The more we bind ourselves to things and persons as our own, the more grief we store up for ourselves; for every attachment is a hostage given to fortune, and fortune takes them all in the end.

'See how it is the rich in attachments who are richest in sorrow, and how those who have freed themselves from the sense of mine are freed also from grief. The one who claims nothing as his own has nothing to lose, and so is not cast down when losses come. This is no coldness, but a clear seeing: that all things are passing and none truly ours, and that to bind our hearts to them as ours is to ensure our own suffering. Loosen, then, the grip of mine; love without clutching; hold all things as lent and not owned; and so cut the very root from which the tree of sorrow grows. For where there is no attachment, there grief cannot take hold.'

King Senajit, listening to the brahmana's words, was lifted out of his grief. The truth the wise man spoke entered his heart and eased it: he saw that all unions end in parting, that his loss was the common lot and no strange injustice, that his grieving helped neither his son nor himself, and that the root of his sorrow was his own attachment. And as he understood these things, the weight of his despair lifted; his mind grew calm and clear; and he rose out of the pit of his grief, consoled and steadied, able once more to take up his life and his duties.

He was not made cold or uncaring by the brahmana's teaching, nor did he cease to love his son; but he was freed from the despair that had overwhelmed him, and brought to a calm and clear-eyed acceptance of what could not be changed. The grief that had broken him was transformed, by understanding, into a sober and steady peace. And the king gave thanks to the wise brahmana who had come to him in his darkness and led him back to the light - not with false comfort or empty words, but with the deep truth that alone can truly console, the truth of the way things are.

There was in the tale a teaching about the equanimity by which the wise meet the losses of life. For the brahmana had not told the king that loss is not painful, nor that he should not feel it; he had shown him, rather, how to understand his loss truly, and so to bear it with steadiness rather than be overwhelmed by it. The wise, the tale taught, are not those who feel nothing, but those who, understanding the nature of things - that all unions end, that all things pass, that grief avails nothing, that attachment is the root of sorrow - are not cast down and broken by the losses that overwhelm others, but meet them with a calm and steady spirit.

This equanimity is not coldness, but clear sight; not the absence of love, but the absence of the desperate clutching that turns love into a source of ruin. The wise love and lose as all must, but they hold their losses in the light of understanding, and so are not destroyed by them. And this steadiness, the tale taught, is a thing to be cultivated before the losses come; for the one who has understood the passing nature of all things, and loosened the grip of attachment, is ready when sorrow comes, and is not broken by it, but bears it and passes through it to peace. Such is the equanimity of the wise, which the brahmana taught the king, and which all may learn.

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

'See, first, the truths by which grief is consoled. King Senajit was broken by the death of his son, until a wise brahmana showed him that all unions end in parting, and his loss was the common lot of all, not a strange injustice; that his grief helped neither the dead nor the living; and that the root of his sorrow was his own attachment, his sense of mine. Understanding these things, the king was lifted from his despair to a calm acceptance. The tale teaches that grief is consoled not by empty comfort but by the deep truth of the way things are: that all is passing, that loss is universal, that grieving avails nothing, and that attachment is the root of sorrow. Hold these truths ready, then, against the day of loss.

'And see the equanimity of the wise, which is not coldness but clear sight. The brahmana did not teach the king to feel nothing, but to understand his loss truly and so bear it with steadiness rather than be overwhelmed. The wise love and lose as all must, but, understanding the passing nature of all things and loosening the grip of attachment, they are not broken by the losses that destroy others. Cultivate, then, this equanimity before sorrow comes: hold all things as lent and not owned, love without desperate clutching, and remember that all unions end. So shall you be ready when loss comes, and meet it not with despair but with the steady peace of the wise.'

And the Pandavas, who would suffer the loss of so many they loved, took deeply to heart the tale of the king consoled in his grief.