Tandi and the Ten Thousand Years

The question had been Yudhishthira's, and Bhishma had refused it.

He was lying on the bed of arrows on the field at Kurukshetra with the war finished and his own death still some weeks off, and the king had asked him about Mahadeva, and the grandsire had said that a mouth in his condition was not the right mouth for that subject, and had turned and asked Krishna to answer instead. Krishna answered. He told them about the ashram of the rishi Upamanyu, and the vow he took there, and what he was shown at the end of it, and the boons that Mahadeva and Uma gave him in their own voices before they vanished with all their Ganas.

Then he told them what happened afterwards, which was the part he had not yet come to.

"All those wonderful facts I related fully to that Brahmana of great energy," Krishna said. Upamanyu was the man who had given him the Diksha, the initiation, before he began to adore Mahadeva at all, and it was proper that the teacher should hear the whole of it. Upamanyu heard him out. Then he bowed down in the direction the god had gone, and said the four sentences that were his entire theology.

"There is no deity like Sarva. There is no end or refuge like Sarva. There is none that can give so many or such high boons. There is none that equal him in battle."

And having said it, he did what teachers do when a student comes back from a great experience and has to be told, gently, that he is not the first. He began a story.

"There was in the Krita age, O sire, a Rishi celebrated under the name of Tandi."

So Yudhishthira, sitting on the field, listened to Krishna repeating the words of a man who had been dead a long time, about a man who had been dead longer.

The Krita age is the first of the four, the age in which the ox of dharma still stands on all four legs, and the men who lived in it had lifespans that make the arithmetic of what Tandi did possible to state.

"With great devotion of heart he adored, with the aid of Yoga-meditation, the great God for ten thousand years."

That is the whole account of the penance. Upamanyu gives it one sentence and does not decorate it. There is no description of the forest Tandi sat in, no list of the seasons that went over him, no anthill grown up around his body, none of the furniture that usually comes with a long austerity in these stories. There is a number, and the number is ten thousand, and the method is named. Not fasting, not standing on one leg, not the five fires. Yoga-meditation, which is the mind held on one object without wandering, for a hundred centuries.

"Listen to me as I tell thee what fruit or reward he reaped of such extraordinary devotion. He succeeded in beholding Mahadeva, and praised him by uttering some hymns."

The order of those clauses matters. He saw first and praised after. But before the seeing there was a thinking, and Upamanyu describes it. Tandi was thinking, with the aid of his penances, of Him who is the supreme Soul, who is immutable and undeteriorating, and what came over him while he thought was not certainty. It was wonder. He became filled with wonder, and out of the wonder he said something, and the something was not yet praise. It was a man asking for shelter.

"I seek the protection of Him whom the Sankhyas describe and the Yogins think of as the Supreme, the Foremost, the Purusha, the pervader of all things, and the Master of all existent objects; of him who, the learned say, is the cause of both the creation and the destruction of the universe; of him who is superior to all the celestials, the Asuras, and the Munis; of him who has nothing higher, who is unborn, who is the Lord of all things, who has neither beginning nor end, who is endued with supreme puissance, who is possessed of the highest felicity, and who is effulgent and sinless."

Ten thousand years of silence, and the first thing he said aloud was that he wanted to be protected.

After he had said those words, Tandi beheld him.

Upamanyu spends a long breath on what was standing there, and the whole description is built out of negatives and impossibilities, which is the only honest way to build it. That ocean of penances. That great Deity who is immutable and undeteriorating, who is without compare, who is inconceivable, who is eternal, and who is without any change. Who is indivisible. Who is whole. Who is Brahma. Who transcends all attributes and is endued with attributes, both at once, and the sentence does not apologise for the contradiction.

Who is the highest delight of Yogins. Who is called Emancipation. Who is the refuge of the Mind, and of Indra, and of Agni, and of the god of wind, and of the entire universe, and of the Grandsire Brahma himself. Who is incapable of being conceived by the Mind. Who is without mutation of any kind, who is pure, who is capable of being apprehended by understanding only, and who is immaterial as the Mind is immaterial. Who is difficult of comprehension. Who is incapable of being measured. Who is difficult of being attained by persons of uncleansed souls. Who is the origin of the universe, and who transcends both the universe and the attribute of darkness. Who is ancient, who is Purusha, who is possessed of effulgence, and who is higher than the highest.

Then Upamanyu goes back and adds a thing that changes the shape of the story.

The Rishi Tandi, desirous of beholding Him who, making himself endued with life-breaths, resides in what results from them, that is, in Jiva, in the form of that effulgence which is called the Mind, passed many years in the practice of the severest austerities.

Many years, on top of the ten thousand. The first sight was not the end of the work. Having been shown the Deity who is beyond conception, Tandi went back to his seat and sat down again, wanting now to find the same one in the place where he actually lives, which is inside the man who is looking for him, as the light that the mind is made of.

And having succeeded in beholding Him as the reward of those penances, he praised the great God.

"Thou art the holiest of holies," Tandi said, "and the refuge of all, O foremost of all beings endued with intelligence.

"Thou art the fiercest energy of all kinds of energy. Thou art the austerest penance of all penances. Thou, O puissant one, art the liberal giver of blessings. Thou art the supreme Truth. Salutations to thee, O thou of a thousand rays, and O refuge of all felicity. Thou art the giver of that Nirvana which Yatis, standing in fear of birth and death, strive for so hard."

Then, having opened, he did the thing every honest hymn has to do somewhere near the beginning, which is to admit that it cannot work.

"The Grandsire Brahma, he of a hundred sacrifices, Indra, Vishnu, the Viswadevas, the great Rishis, are incapable of comprehending thee and thy real nature. How then can persons like ourselves hope to comprehend thee?"

A man who has spent ten thousand years on one object is entitled to claim some expertise, and the first claim he makes is that the four highest orders of being in the universe have all failed at this and that he stands below every one of them. Everything he says afterwards is said inside that admission.

"From thee flows everything. Upon thee rests everything. Thou art called Kala, thou art called Purusha, thou art called Brahma. Celestial Rishis conversant with the Puranas say that thou hast three bodies, those pertaining to Kala, those pertaining to Purusha, and those pertaining to Brahma, or the three forms, namely Brahma, Vishnu and Rudra. Thou art Adhi-Purusha, thou art Adhyatma, thou art Adhibhuta, thou art Adhi-Daivata, thou art Adhi-loka, thou art Adhi-Vijnanam, and thou art Adhi-Yajna.

"Men of wisdom, when they succeed in knowing thee that residest in themselves and that art incapable of being known by the very gods, become freed from all bonds and pass into a state of existence that transcends all sorrow. They that do not wish to know thee have to undergo innumerable births and deaths."

That is the hinge of the hymn and it is set early. The one who cannot be known by the gods can be known by a man, and the reason is not that the man is greater. It is that the man is nearer. He is residing in the creature that is trying to know him, and the gods, looking outward from their heavens, are searching in the wrong direction.

"Thou art the door of heaven and of Emancipation," Tandi said, and then he began going through the world naming it.

This is the stretch of such a hymn that a reader is tempted to skim, and it should not be skimmed, because Tandi is not piling up compliments. He is walking through every division the mind makes and putting the same name on both halves of each.

"Thou art he that projectest all beings into existence and withdrawest them again into thyself. Thou art the great giver. Thou art heaven, thou art Emancipation, thou art desire, the seed of action. Thou art wrath that inspires creatures. Thou art Sattwa, thou art Rajas, thou art Tamas. Thou art the nether regions and thou art the upper regions.

"Thou art the Grandsire Brahma, thou art Bhava, thou art Vishnu, thou art Skanda, thou art Indra, thou art Savitri, thou art Yama, thou art Varuna, thou art Soma, thou art Dhatri, thou art Manu, thou art Vidhatri, and thou art Kuvera the Lord of treasures.

"Thou art Earth, thou art Wind, thou art Water, thou art Agni, thou art Space, thou art Speech, thou art the Understanding, thou art Steadiness, thou art Intelligence, thou art the acts that creatures do.

"Thou art Truth, thou art Falsehood, thou art existent and thou art non-existent."

The list has been climbing down all this while, from the gods to the elements to the faculties to the deeds men perform, and it arrives at that last pair, and the pair is not a slip of the tongue. Everything that is the case and everything that is not the case are both being addressed as one person.

"Thou art the senses, thou art that which transcends Prakriti, thou art immutable. Thou art superior to the universe of existent objects, thou art superior to the universe of non-existent objects. Thou art capable of being conceived, thou art incapable of being conceived. That which is supreme Brahman, that which is the highest entity, that which is the end of both the Sankhyas and the Yogins, is, without doubt, identical with thee."

Then Tandi stopped naming the world and spoke about himself, and the voice changed.

"Verily, rewarded have I been today by thee, in consequence of thy granting me a sight of thy form. I have attained the end which the righteous alone attain to. I have been rewarded with that end which is solicited by persons whose understandings have been cleansed by Knowledge."

"Alas, so long I was steeped in Ignorance. For this long period I was a senseless fool, since I had no knowledge of thee."

Ten thousand years of unbroken meditation, and the man calls the whole stretch of it foolishness, because it was time spent not knowing. He does not say the penance was wasted. He says that until the moment of seeing there was nothing in him worth calling knowledge, and that what came at the end of it was not wages.

"In course of innumerable lives have I at last succeeded in acquiring that Devotion towards thee in consequence of which thou hast shown thyself to me, O thou that art ever inclined to extend thy grace to those that are devoted to thee. He that succeeds in knowing thee is enabled to enjoy immortality."

Then he says where the difficulty lies, and it is not where a man would expect it.

"Thou art that which is ever a mystery with the gods, the Asuras, and the ascetics. Brahman is concealed in the cave of the heart. The very ascetics are unable to behold or know Him. Brahma and the Siddhas expounding the mantras have concealed thee in a cave, for preventing the deities and Asuras and human beings from beholding thee. Although thou residest in the heart, yet thou art concealed. Hence, stupefied by thee, deities and Asuras and human beings are all unable to understand thee, O Bhava, truly and in all thy details."

The hiding place is the heart. Not a mountain, not a heaven, not a distance that austerity is built to cross. He is inside every creature that is hunting for him, and the concealment is not an accident of the creature's dullness. It is an arrangement, made on purpose, so that nobody takes him by searching.

Which leaves exactly one way in, and Tandi names it.

"Unto those persons that succeed in attaining to thee after having cleansed themselves by devotion, thou showest thyself of thy own accord, O thou that residest in all hearts. By knowing thee one can avoid both death and rebirth. Thou art the highest object of knowledge. By knowing thee, no higher object remains for one to know. Thou art the greatest object of acquisition, and the person that is truly wise, by acquiring thee, thinks that there is no higher object to acquire. By attaining to thee that art exceedingly subtile, the man of wisdom becomes immortal and immutable."

From the heart the hymn turned outward again, and Tandi began to describe how the same god is approached by the men who do not sit alone in forests. By the schools, by the priests, by each of the four Vedas in its own dialect.

"The followers of the Sankhya system, well conversant with their own philosophy and possessing a knowledge of the attributes and of those called the topics of enquiry, succeed, by knowing thee, in freeing themselves from all bonds. Persons conversant with the Vedas regard thee as the one object of knowledge which has been expounded in the Vedantas. These men, devoted to the regulation of the breaths, always meditate on thee and at last enter into thee as their highest end. Riding on the car made of Om, those men enter into Maheswara.

"The Grandsire Brahma in days of yore uttered thy praises, O thou that art called Nilarohita, the blue and the red, reciting diverse hymns and urging thee to create living creatures. Brahmanas conversant with Richs praise thee by uttering Richs, regarding thee as unattached to all things and as divested of all forms. Adhwaryus in sacrifices pour libations, uttering Yajushes the while, in honour of thee. Persons of cleansed understandings that are conversant with Samans sing thee with the aid of Samans. Those regenerate persons that are conversant with the Atharvans hymn thee as Rita, as Truth, as the Highest, and as Brahma. Thou art the highest cause, whence Sacrifice has flowed."

Then he took the calendar and laid it over the body of the god, joint by joint.

"The night and day are thy sense of hearing and sense of sight. The fortnights and months are thy head and arms. The seasons are thy energy, penances are thy patience, and the year is thy thighs and feet. Thou art Mrityu, thou art Yama, thou art Hutasana, thou art Kala. Thou art endued with speed in respect of destruction, thou art the original cause of Time, and thou art eternal Time.

"Thou art Chandramas and Aditya, with all the stars and planets and the atmosphere that fills space. Thou art the pole-star. Thou art the constellation called the seven Rishis. Thou art the seven regions beginning with Bhu. Thou art Pradhana and Mahat, thou art Unmanifest, and thou art this world. Thou art the universe beginning with Brahman and ending with the lowest forms of vegetation. Thou art the eight Prakritis, and thou art above the eight Prakritis.

"Everything that exists represents a portion of thy divine Self."

The hymn had one thing left to do, and it did it by sorting the whole of mankind into five columns and writing the same name at the foot of every one.

Tandi had already called him the highest Kashtha and the highest Kala, the highest Success, the highest Refuge, the highest Tranquillity, the highest cessation of Existence. Now he took the ends that men actually work for, the goals that get people out of bed to do difficult things, and he named the five in order.

"Thou art, without doubt, that End which those persons have in view that are habituated to sacrifices, and that pour sacrificial libations impelled by specific desires, and that make large presents on such occasions.

"Thou art that high End which is sought for by persons that waste and scorch their bodies with severe penances, with ceaseless recitations, with those rigid vows and fasts that appertain to their tranquil lives, and with other means of self-affliction.

"O Eternal one, thou art that End which is theirs that are unattached to all things and that have relinquished all acts.

"Thou, O Eternal one, art that End which is theirs that are desirous of achieving Emancipation from rebirth, that live in dissociation from all enjoyments, and that desire the annihilation of the Prakriti elements.

"Thou art that high End, O illustrious one, which is indescribable, which is stainless, which is the immutable one, and which is theirs that are devoted to knowledge and science.

"These are the five Ends that have been declared in the Vedas and the Scriptures and the Puranas."

The man who sacrifices for a son. The man starving himself on a riverbank. The man who has let go of everything and does nothing. The man who wants out of birth altogether. The man who wants only to understand. Five roads whose travellers do not agree with each other and have argued for ages over which is the true one, and Tandi tells them that the far end of all five is the same person.

Then he added the sentence that takes the whole business out of the traveller's hands.

"It is through thy grace that persons attain to those Ends, or, if they fail to attain to them, it is through thy grace being denied to them."

It was thus that Tandi, who was a vast heap of penances, praised Isana. And he sang also that high Brahman which in ancient days was sung by the Creator himself.

Mahadeva had been listening the whole time, and Uma was beside him.

Of everything Tandi said, Upamanyu names the one sentence that pleased him, and it is not one of the great cosmological ones. It was the confession of failure near the beginning: that neither Brahma nor Indra nor Vishnu nor the Viswedevas nor the great Rishis know thee. Gratified at that, the holy one spoke.

"Thou shalt be indestructible and eternal. Thou shalt be freed from all sorrow. Great fame shall be thine. Thou shalt be endued with energy. Spiritual knowledge shall be thine. All the Rishis shall seek thee, and thy son, through my grace, shall become the author of Sutras, O foremost of regenerate persons."

Then, having given six things unasked, he asked.

"What wishes of thine shall I grant today? Tell me, O son, what those objects are which thou desirest."

This is the place in these stories where men ask for sons, or for kingdoms, or for the strength to burn their enemies. Here is what a man asks for when he has been sitting still for ten thousand years and the Lord of all creatures has just opened a hand in front of him. Tandi joined his palms.

"O Lord, let my devotion to thee be steady."

He asked for the thing he already had. Not for more of it, and not for anything it might buy. He had said in the hymn that it took him innumerable lives to acquire that devotion, and he knew what it had cost and how easily a man mislays it, and with the whole of the possible spread out in front of him he asked that it hold.

Having given Tandi those boons, and having received the adorations of the deities and the Rishis who had gathered to watch, the great Deity disappeared there and then with all his followers. And the rishi rose from the place where he had spent ten thousand years, and came down out of it to the asylum of Upamanyu, and told him everything that had happened.

"The Grandsire had at one time recited ten thousand names that apply to Mahadeva," Upamanyu said to Krishna. "In the scriptures, a thousand names occur of that illustrious deity. These names are not known to all. Having acquired them through the grace of the Grandsire, Tandi communicated them to me."

A year of penance for every name, and then he gave them away to a man in a forest, who gave them to Krishna, who was giving them now to Yudhishthira on the field at Kurukshetra, where Bhishma lay on the arrows and listened to a hymn older than his house.