CHAPTER TWELVE

Conversation Between

Maharaja Rahigana and Jada Bharata

Because Maharaja Rahigana was still doubtful about his enlightenment.
he asked the braéhmana Jada Bharata to repeat his instructions and
clarify ideas he could not understand. In this chapter, Maharaja
Rahigana offers his respectful obeisances to Jada Bharata, who was con-
cealing his real position. The King could understand by his speech how
exalted and advanced he was in spiritual knowledge. He very much
regretted his offense against him. Maharaja Rahigana was bitten by the
serpent of ignorance, but was cured by the nectarean words of Jada
Bharata. Later, because he was doubtful about the subjects discussed. he
made further inquiries, one question after another. First he wanted to be
released from the offense he had committed at the lotus feet of Jada
Bharata.

Maharaja Rahigana was somewhat unhappy at not being able to grasp
Jada Bharata’s instructions, which were full of meaning that could not be
understood by a materialistic person. Therefore Jada Bharata repeated
his instructions more clearly. He said that on the surface of the globe all
living entities, moving and unmoving, were but transformations of the
earth in different ways. The King was very proud of his king’s body. but
that body was simply another transformation of the earth. Out of his

false prestige, the King was misbehaving toward the palanquin carrier.
as a master toward a servant, and he was actually very unkind to other
living entities. Consequently King Rahagana was unfit to give protection
to the citizens, and because he was ignorant. he was unfit to be counted
among advanced philosophers. Everything in the material world is but a
transformation of the earth, although things have different names ac-
cording to their transformations. Actually the varieties are one and the
same, and ultimately all these varieties are vanquished into atoms.
Nothing is permanent in this material world. The variety of things and
their distinctions are simply mental concoctions. The Absolute Truth is
beyond illusion and is manifest in three features—impersonal Brahman.

399
