Badrinath… Spirituality mytholized in legend and history… This is where Shiva and Parvati lived. It is a magnificent place at around 10,000 feet in the Himalayas. One day, Shiva and Parvati took a walk. When they came back, at the entrance of their home a little baby was crying. Looking at this child crying his heart out, Parvati’s maternal instincts came up and she wanted to go pick up the child. Shiva stopped her and said, “Don’t touch that child.” Parvati replied, “How cruel. How can you say that?”Shiva said, “This is not a good baby. Why does he land up at our doorstep by himself? There is no one around, no footprints of parents in the snow. This is not a child.” But Parvati said, “Nothing doing! The mother in me will not allow me to let the child be like this,” and she took the baby into the house. The child was very comfortable, sitting on her lap, looking very gleefully at Shiva. Shiva knew the consequence of this but he said, “Okay, let’s see what happens.” Parvati comforted and fed the child, left him at home and went with Shiva for a bath in the nearby hot water springs. When they came back, they found the doors were locked from the inside. Parvati was aghast. “Who has closed the door?” Shiva said, “I told you, don’t pick up this child. You brought the child into the house and now he has locked the door.” Parvati said, “What shall we do?” Shiva had two options: one was to burn up everything in front of him. Another was to just find another way and go. So he said, “Let’s go somewhere else. Because it’s your beloved baby, I cannot touch it.” This is how Shiva lost his own home and Shiva and Parvati became “illegal aliens”! They walked around, looking for an ideal place to live and finally settled down in Kedarnath. That was the legend... Historically, it was Adi Shankaracharya was established the temple at Badrinath. From Kaladi to Badrinath, the distance is more than three thousand kilometres by walk. Adi Shankara walked such distances not just south to north but also east to west. He walked up and down the country thrice and east to west once. Once, when he was up in the north, he came to know intuitively that his mother was dying. At the age of twelve, his mother had given him permission to take sanyas only after he had promised her that he would be there with her at the moment of her death. So when he realized that his mother was ill, he walked all the way back to Kerala just to be with her beside her deathbed. He spent a few days with his mother and after she had died, he walked back north again to Badrinath as his calling was yet undone. Some history... What is it about the Himalayas that calls to people? On my recent trip there, I realized something. The purpose of coming to the Himalayas was not to achieve something. This was an opportunity to simply be dwarfed, if not dissolved. It’s hard to believe that thousands of years of ago, people went into these mountains when there were no roads, automobiles or maps. No knowledge of where the mountains begin and where they end. Not knowing where the end is, these people simply kept going. Come to think of it…that’s the attitude and strength required to follow the spiritual path isn’t it…?!.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 14:13:34 +0000
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