The Story of Saint Dakshinamurthy

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This is the story of a great saint called Dakshinamurthy Swamigal, a Paramahamsa who always lived a life of freedom and a very highly evolved enlightened being from the southern part of India who used to sit in the forest under a banyan tree. His presence was so intense and powerful that one could touch and see God.

One day the official poet of the king’s court sang thousand verses on Saint Dakshinamurthy praising the power and the heroic qualities of that Master, conferring upon him the honor named ‘bharani’ which is the honor given to great warriors who kill one thousand elephants in the war. When the king came to know about this his ego got hurt because the king was the only guy who had killed thousand elephants in the war in the whole region and so he was the only guy who had that song and title. Now the deeply hurt king called the poet and asked him to justify his decision of singing the same thousand songs about that naked beggar who was sitting under the banyan tree and threatened him that else he would cut the poet’s head. The poet calmly explained that he did not have any reason or justification but was not afraid to die since his body and mind had already experienced whatever maximum peak could be experienced in the saint’s presence and in the best interest of the king asked him to visit the saint just once and sit in his presence.

Fortunately, even though the king was caught by ego, got inspired by the many stories he had heard about enlightened beings in the earlier times and decided to visit the saint. The king went with his whole paraphernalia to visit the saint sitting under the banyan tree. There was such an intense vibrating silence. The moment king entered the Banyan tree’s shadow, something happened in him. If a person observed an intense silence in the master’s body language, whether they want it or not, it will penetrate their inner space. This is what happened to the king who had originally come with the idea of shouting at or questioning the saint.

The transmission of silence happened between the Master and the king. All that the king received was one nod by the Master indicating ‘sit’. The king sat and because the king sat, the whole army sat and Master again resumed into the silence. The silence was so intense that neither did the king want to break it nor he had the energy or guts to break it. Even after a week had passed, beyond logic the king did not feel any thirst or hunger or even the idea of time. And the story says after one week, the Master was so compassionate that he just moves his eyes, looks to his poet, his disciple and in a very jovial way says that he thought the kingdom needed the king back. He smiles and suddenly all of them come back to the normal mind or mood. They realized one week had passed; there was no thought, no communication, no food or water or sleep, but only deep fulfillment physically, mentally and spiritually.

History says that the king built a beautiful huge temple and mutt under the same banyan tree in the place in southern India known as Thiruvarur. And in the temple he had this whole story engraved with his earnest sharing of how he ended up requesting the poet to write more on the saint since one thousand verses of ‘bharani’ looked too less for him.

Based on Nithyananda’s teachings