BIRDS AS ASCETICS

BIRDS AS ASCETICS

These were the last days of his life. Watering the plants in his courtyard, Pandit Amarnath, the master, looked at the empty bird-bowl at the sill of the gate, and asked why it had no crumbs for the birds. And before I went in to bring some, he said: “Beta, panchi to jogi hote hain. Birds are ascetics, my child.”

Perhaps the closest comparison with the ascetic life is the life of the bird, another mystic, which in almost all cultures is considered symbolic of some tiding or other. Like the early bird whose single cry can stir up the silences of miles around, the jogi, or yogi, too, perpetuates this myth or internal image of transcendence into which also fall sadhus and Sufi fakirs, bauls and bards and minstrels — composers and musicians, and pop-stars strumming the guitar and singing about ‘answers that are blowing in the wind....’

Like the bird, the jogi is not only the picture of transcendence, but sings of transcendence as well. He will do his rounds at the crack of dawn, known as the prabhat pheri in the mystic lore of the jogis, awakening all those asleep, and crying out: Alakh niranjan! The word ‘alakh’ is of course from alakshya, or symbol-lessness, and ‘niranjan’ signifies dispassion. The symbol-lessness of The Dispassionate One. Each morning, they serve as a symbolic reminder to awaken one’s sleeping soul to God. Again, like the bird, the jogi will then live and eat from a bowl, not saving for the morrow, and sing of the follies of human nature, of those who live to hoard, or do not hoard only as much as is necessary to live. Quite like the visitation of a bird, the jogi will never pass by the same cluster of households again, lest he attach himself to people even while begging for alms, and after hearkening the world, he will fade into the night — forever, never to return.

Om Namah Shivay