The King Who Renounced the World

The Maitri Upanisad opens with a story unlike any other in the Upanisadic corpus. It begins not with a question, not with a debate, but with a king looking at his own body and recoiling. He sees the flesh, the bones, the mucus, the blood - and he asks: what is the use of all this? The body will decay. The mountains will crumble. The oceans will dry up. The gods themselves will fall from their places. In the face of such universal impermanence, what is the use of enjoyment?

The king, Brhadratha, does not ask this question in a spirit of despair. He asks it as a man who has seen through the illusion. He knows that the answer is not in the world. And so he goes in search of the one who can give it.

The King’s Lament

King Brhadratha had everything a man could desire - a kingdom, wealth, power, a son to succeed him. But he had seen through it all. One day, he established his eldest son on the throne and walked away from the palace.

He went into the forest and began the most severe penance imaginable. He stood with his arms raised above his head, unmoving, gazing fixedly at the sun. Day after day, week after week, month after month - he stood there, burning in the sun, exposed to the wind and rain, his body wasting away.

For a thousand days, he stood like that.

At the end of the thousand days, the sage Sakayanya approached him. The king, seeing the sage, prostrated himself and spoke words that echo through the ages:

“In this foul, unchaste body, consisting of bones, skin, nerves, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears, and many other impurities - what is the use of the enjoyment of desires?” (MU 1.3)

He continued:

“In this body, which is afflicted by desire, anger, greed, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from what is loved, union with what is unloved, hunger, thirst, old age, death, disease, and grief - what is the use of the enjoyment of desires?” (MU 1.4)

Then the king looked at the entire universe and saw the same impermanence:

“We see that all this is subject to decay. The great oceans dry up. The mountains crumble. The pole-star shifts. The wind-ropes that hold the stars are cut. The earth sinks down. The gods themselves fall from their places. In such a world, what is the use of enjoyment? For he who has fed on desires is seen again - returns again - to this earth.” (MU 1.4, paraphrase)

The king had seen through the fabric of the world. He had seen that every object of desire is impermanent, every pleasure fleeting, every achievement destined for oblivion. And he asked: “What remains?”

The Sage’s Teaching

Sakayanya looked at the emaciated king - the man who had stood for a thousand days in the sun, who had renounced everything, who had seen through everything - and began to teach.

“He who in perfect rest, rising from this body and reaching the highest light, comes forth in his own form - he is the Self. This is the immortal, the fearless. This is Brahman.” (MU 2.3)

The Self is not the body. It is not the mind. It is not the breath. It is that which rises from the body at death, that which reaches the highest light, that which comes forth in its own true form - pure, luminous, conscious, free.

Sakayanya taught the king about the three gunas - the strands of nature that bind the Self to the cycle of birth and death. Sattva (purity, light, harmony) is the highest strand, but even sattva binds, because it creates attachment to happiness and knowledge. Rajas (passion, activity, restlessness) binds through desire and action. Tamas (darkness, inertia, ignorance) binds through delusion and sloth.

The Self, Sakayanya taught, is beyond all three gunas. It is the witness that knows them all but is identical with none.

Sakayanya taught about the six limbs of yoga - one of the earliest systematic presentations of the path:

“Pranayama (restraint of breath), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), Dhyana (meditation), Dharana (concentration), Tarka (contemplative inquiry), Samadhi (absorption) - these are the six limbs of yoga.” (MU 6.18)

Through these practices, the mind is purified, the senses are brought under control, and the Self is directly realized. Yoga, Sakayanya said, is the union of the individual psyche with the transcendent Self.

He taught the king about the two forms of Brahman:

“There are two forms of Brahman: time and non-time. That which was before the sun is non-time, without parts. That which has its beginning from the sun is time, with parts.” (MU 6.15)

The Brahman that is beyond time is the ultimate reality - without beginning, without end, without division. The Brahman that appears as time is the world of cause and effect, of birth and death, of names and forms. Both are Brahman, but the higher is known only in silence.

The Self Within

The teaching culminated in the revelation of the Self as the inner dweller within all beings:

“The Self is indeed the inner Self of all beings. He is the one who sees, who hears, who thinks, who understands. He is the eye within the eye, the ear within the ear, the mind within the mind.” (MU 2.7, paraphrase)

The Self that Brhadratha sought - the Self for which he had stood a thousand days in the sun - was not a distant deity or a philosophical abstraction. It was the one who was even then knowing his own seeking. It was the witness of his penance, the knower of his renunciation, the light by which he saw the impermanence of all things.

“He who has found the Self, the innermost, the fearless, the immortal - he attains the highest Brahman. Verily, Brahman is all. He who knows this becomes the Self of all.” (MU 7.7, paraphrase)

The Teaching

The story of King Brhadratha and the sage Sakayanya carries profound lessons:

1. Desirelessness is the beginning of wisdom. Brhadratha did not renounce the world because he had failed at it. He renounced because he had seen through it. Every object of desire, when attained, reveals itself as impermanent. The wise see this before they have exhausted themselves in the pursuit.

2. The body is not the Self. Brhadratha’s description of the body’s foulness is not a rejection of the physical but a call to look beyond it. The body is a vehicle, not the destination. To identify with it is to be bound by its decay.

3. Yoga is the path to realization. The six limbs of yoga - breath control, sense withdrawal, meditation, concentration, inquiry, and absorption - are the practical means by which the mind is purified and the Self is known.

4. The Self is the inner witness. It is not produced by the body, the mind, or the world. It is the light by which all these are known. It was there before the body was born and will be there after the body dies. It is the immortal, the fearless - Brahman itself.

Further study: The impermanence that Brhadratha saw through is the world of appearances analysed on the Maya page. The Self that Sakayanya revealed is the Atman explored on the Atman page. The mechanism by which we mistake the body for the Self is the subject of the Adhyasa page.

Source citations: Maitri (Maitrayaniya) Upanisad. Key citations: MU 1.1 (the king’s renunciation), MU 1.2 (Sakayanya approaches), MU 1.3-4 (Brhadratha’s lament on the body’s impermanence), MU 2.3 (the Self as the immortal, fearless Brahman), MU 2.7 (the Self as the inner Self of all), MU 6.15 (the two forms of Brahman), MU 6.18 (the six limbs of yoga). Translations consulted: Max Muller (Sacred Books of the East, Vol. 15), E.B. Cowell, S. Radhakrishnan.