A moment that changed life!

Hello readers, I hope you are doing well. I hope you remember the previous story of king Bhartrihari. Let's learn a bit more about him today why he chose the path of Vairagya.

As we know, he was the ruler of Ujjain. He was a wise and loving ruler, but so much into love and romance. He had more than a hundred queens; he couldn't look after his kingdom. His younger stepbrother Vikramaditya looked after the people in the kingdom.

The king Bhartrihari was so much into love and sex that he wrote a collection of 100 poems, called "Shrungara Shataka." All the poems are on sensuality and sexual pleasures. He was most obsessed with his youngest queen Pingala, who was most beautiful and charming. The queen Pingala was allegedly having an affair with a charioteer. When Vikramaditya came to know about it, he complained about it to the king. But the queen manipulated the king and sent Vikramaditya to exile.

Once a sage came to the kingdom and presented the king with an apple and said this apple would give youth and longevity to the person who will eat it. The king gave the apple to queen Pingala as he wanted her to be always beautiful and young. The queen Pingala gave it to the charioteer as she wanted him to be always young and strong. The charioteer was in love with a prostitute, so he gave it to her. The prostitute thought its better if someone deserving would eat this and so she gave it to the king. King Bhartrihari was so shocked to learn the sequence of events.

His materialism vanished with this event, and he wrote a collection of hundred poems on moral conduct called Niti Shataka. This event was the trigger which arose deep Vairagya in him, and he renounced his wealth, his queens, his throne, and kingdom and went to jungles in the quest of truth.

Astrologically it is possible to understand this event. If you remember my previous blog, before this Vairagya feeling arose in the king, he was like a pig in the mud, unaware of the divine, and totally in the mud of lust and worldly pleasures. One the dawn of wisdom awakened, he realized that all the worldly pleasures are momentary, and the real purpose of life is something else. Later he wrote one of the best books about Vairagya.

I hope you like this story. Happy reading!

( Pic Credit : Image by DarkWorkX from Pixabay)