populate the earth. They went to a place known as Narayansar where the river Sindhu
meets the Arabian ocean. There they took their bath and started doing Tapa.
Sage Narad was on his wonderings, and coincidentally he came that way. Seeing
these sons doing Tapa, he asked them the reason. When he learnt that they have
decided to endure so much hardship to empower themselves to produce children who
would fill all corners of the world, Narad thought that it was a waste of precious time
and energy because the same effort could be devoted for attaining spiritual liberation
and achieving nobler goals of life. So he decided to enlighten the sons about the
futility of the exercise they were undertaking as it would only entangle their souls in
the web of worldly affairs and trap them for eternity in the cycle of deeds and their
effects. This Tapa could instead be used to give them eternal peace and bliss by way
of liberation from this delusory world of falsehoods, illusionary charms and material
entanglements that lead to nowhere, and which results in nothing but constant pain
and misery instead of happiness, bliss and peace.
Narad approached them and said—‘Have you seen the end of the earth? Without
this knowledge, how do you know how many children you need to fill it, what is the
size of your kingdom, and what resources you have? Even though you are the sons of
Prajapati Daksha (who is supposed to be an expert of this knowledge because the
word “Daksha” literally means one who is an expert of a subject and skilled in
knowledge), it looks you are inept to handle the cosmic machine of the creator
because one should not do anything without proper knowledge of its consequences.
{That is, you don’t know that you will be trapped in your own web if you start
procreating and populating the world, that you will be sucked-in the quagmire of
worldly miseries and worries once you start a large family, and then your soul will
never find peace anywhere in life. A wise man does not do engage in doing Tapa for
such a mundane and worldly thing as producing children. Tapa is a highly evolved
spiritual exercise one should undertake to attain higher goals of life such as obtaining
spiritual bliss and salvation that are not attainable by other ordinary means, and it
should not be bartered for such worthless things as desiring sons and daughters, or for
any other thing related to a material world that is perishable, a world that is full of
pain and grief!
You don’t have even the basic knowledge any learned man is expected to have.
So how will you ever succeed in doing Tapa which is an extremely hazardous
journey, and even if you do succeed you will not know how to judiciously use its
eclectic rewards. It’s like sitting on a dynamite power-keg which would blow you off
if you are not careful.
Let me see. Do you know the answers of the following ten questions that would
show you are wise and enlightened enough to be eligible to do Tapa? The questions
are these: (i) Do you know that country where there is only one ‘Purush’ (Chief;
Lord; Authority; Sovereign)? (ii) A ‘hole’ in which one can find a way to go in, but
from which no one knows the way out? (iii) A ‘river’ that flows both ways—up and
down (i.e. which rises to inundate high ground on one side of its bank, and undercuts
the ground of the other side of its bank)? (iv) A ‘house’ made of 25 mysterious
‘elements’? (v) A ‘Swan’ who speaks in a mysterious tongue? (vi) A self-rotating
‘wheel’ which has sharp serrated edges like that of a saw, which is as strong as the
Vajra, the formidably hard material used to make the weapon of the king of gods
known as Indra? (vii) A ‘woman’ who can assume countless forms? (viii) A ‘Purush’
(male) who is the ‘husband of Punchaleek’? (ix) The ‘end of the earth’? (x) And do
you really know the ‘meaning of your father’s instructions’? If you do not know the
correct answers of these questions, you are not competent to do Tapa.’
The sons of Daksha were taken aback. They huddled around the sage and
contemplated upon the answers. After a lot of deliberations and discussions, the
answer that came to their minds opened a flood-gate of true spiritual wisdom for
them, filling them with renunciation and propelling them towards seeking spiritual
liberation and deliverance by dropping off the desire to do Tapa to procreate and
kiana
(Kiana)
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