The Boons and the Two Paths

Suratha asks for a kingdom, Samadhi for liberation; the phala-shruti. The two things people come for, and that she grants both.

Suratha asks for a kingdom, Samadhi for liberation; the phala-shruti. The two things people come for, and that she grants both.

Two Ruined Men in a Forest

On the bank of a quiet river, in the ashram of a sage named Medhas, two ruined men sat and could not understand their own hearts. One was a king, Suratha, driven from his throne by his own ministers, his treasury and army taken. The other was a merchant, Samadhi, thrown out of his house by the wife and sons he had provided for, who now wanted only his wealth. Both had lost everything. Both had every reason to be done with the people who had wronged them.

And yet neither could stop caring. The king's mind kept returning to the kingdom that had cast him out. The merchant, robbed and abandoned, still ached for the family that had robbed him. This was the thing they could not fathom, and they put it to the sage. Why, when we know these people betrayed us, do our hearts still cling to them? Why can we not simply let go?

Medhas's answer was the entire Devi Mahatmyam. This whole course, every demon and every battle, was the story he told these two men to explain the grip that would not release them.

The Power That Binds and the Power That Frees

The sage named the force that held them. It was Mahamaya, the great power of the Goddess that casts the mind into attachment, that makes even the wise cling to what harms them. The same power that spins the whole world into being also wraps the individual mind in longing. This was not their personal weakness. It was the Goddess herself, in her binding aspect, at work in them as she works in all beings.

But Medhas told them the rest, too. The Goddess who binds is the Goddess who frees. The same power that casts the mind into attachment can, when turned toward, lift the mind clear of it. So he sent them to do what the gods and the sages had done: to worship her, to sit in tapas on the riverbank, and to ask.