[some corrections made on 21-Nov-2005]
The story of Astavakra is pretty fascinating, and sets the background and the context.
As per what I remember from a seminar I attended recently, I present the speaker’s opinions as I remember them, I hope I do not misquote anything! The speaker was Sri Nityananda, someone who was enlightened at the age of 25. Now don’t ask me what that’s supposed to mean, I’m not that much concerned, I went only because the topic was interesting, and I felt whatever he (or his followers) claims about himself is not of primary concern, if he’s got some good ideas let me listen to them… and indeed he did give a very lively and informative presentation.
————
The story is that while still in his mother’s womb, Astavakra would listen to his father’s recitation of verses from the Rig Veda, and sometimes correct him. Astavakra was the pioneer in creating the idea of a generation gap 😉 where the son is annoyingly smarter than the father! And at one point he said that “what you’re reciting is just words, theres no substance in them” and his father got really angry, and cursed his son!
And due to the curse, when Astavakra was born, he had eight distortions in his body (hence the name asta = 8, vakra = crooked), and needless to say was far from handsome…
At the age of 12, as a result of several incidents* Astavakra goes to the court. King Janaka, a very scholarly king, is on the throne and all the courtiers are present, and the moment he enters – everybody starts laughing – seeing his crooked body including the king.
But instead of getting offended, Astavakra also starts laughing. [this, the speaker commented, is the mark of a great man, whether he feels offended when he is being belittled].
King Janaka ridicules him “everybody is laughing at you, why are you also laughing”.
Then Astavakra answers very boldly, referring to everybody in the court who was laughing “I am laughing because such a great scholar and king like you has surrounded yourself with cobblers!! And you’re also one among them!!”. He further explains “…because a cobbler looks only at the skin, and not beyond it… likewise you’re all judging me just by my shape, and not looking at my being!”.
And then King Janaka gets the idea that really Astavakra knows what he is talking about, and starts asking him questions. There’s a question and answer conversation, recorded as the Ashtavakra Gita.
The Astavakra Gita is around 5000 years older than the Bhagavad Gita. The speaker said that this is an extremely powerful and concise book, and gives the truth straightaway, without any long winded twists and turns. The speaker made one very crucial point: he said the most important thing about the Astavakra Gita is that nobody worships Astavakra. Therefore it stands a better chance of people paying attention to what he said. The main issue the Bhagavad Gita has ended up with is that people start worshipping Krishna and therefore get sidetracked from what he actually said!
———-
In the entire 3 days (of approx 2 hours each), the speaker only covered the first few paragraphs. I’ll probably read the rest of the book some day, but he said that the rest of the book were the same paragraphs explained in greater detail.
There were a lot more ideas, and though they come to mind in particular situations, they’re kind of hard to explain just from memory.
——–
\* As for the background story, the speaker skipped the details, I suppose because of limited time he wanted to get to the point.
I found various versions of the background story on the internet. One is that Astavakra’s father is imprisoned, another is that his father is dead and he wants to bring him back to life, another is that King Janaka asks that he dosen’t care if he’s the greatest of scholars, but he should get enlightened straightaway by the mere words of the scholar, another is that there’s a debate where Astavakra helps in the victory, etc. I feel these details aren’t that relevant compared to the actual content of the conversation (given in the link).
Leave a Reply to Massage Therapy Talk » Blog Archive » Comment on astavakra gita by Meditation » Blog Archive » Comment … Cancel reply