Was That True or Is This True?

There’s a story about the emperor Janaka, who was known throughout the land as a powerful ruler and a philosopher.

One night, the guards rushed into his chambers to wake him with urgent news. Enemy forces had attacked his kingdom in the darkness, and though he quickly rallied his army and rode out to fight them, the battle went badly and his army was defeated.

Janaka was wounded, captured, and brought before the conquering king. But because Janaka was known as a great philosopher and a just ruler, the enemy spared his life but took everything else. He was exiled from his own empire.

Janaka wandered the roads for days, hungry and desperate. People were too afraid of the new tyrant to offer help to their beloved old king. They turned him away when he approached their doors, and he couldn’t even get a drink of water in the kingdom that had been his own.

After a few days he crossed the border into a neighboring land, exhausted and in pain. He found a charity kitchen in a nearby temple where the poor were being fed. He stood in the long queue with trembling hands, waiting to be fed.

When his turn finally came, the man giving out food looked at him with sympathy. “You seem like you were once someone of importance,” he said. “I’m sorry, but we’ve run out of food. There’s only a little left at the bottom of the pot, scraps really, but I can give you that if you want it.”

Janaka said yes, anything, and watched as the man scraped together what remained into a bowl and handed it to him.

As Janaka raised the bowl to his mouth, a bird swooped down from nowhere and knocked it from his hands. The bowl went rolling in the dust and whatever food was in it scattered across the ground. Janaka collapsed, crying out in despair at the cruelty of his fortune.

And then he suddenly woke up.

He was sitting in his bed in the palace, heart pounding. The guards rushed in asking what was wrong.

Since Janaka was a seeker of truth, and he didn’t dismiss it as just a nightmare. The pain he experienced felt too real to ignore.

If that felt so real while he was in it, and this feels so real now, which one is actually true? He looked at the guard and asked: “Was that true or is this true?”

The guard looked confused and called for the queen, who came rushing in. But Janaka asked her the same thing: “Was that true or is this true?”

The doctor arrived, examined him and checked for fever, and Janaka asked him too: “Was that true or is this true?”

Over the next few days, word spread through the city that the emperor had gone mad.

His teacher Ashtavakra heard about this and came to visit. He still found Janaka asking the same question to everyone he met: “Was that true or is this true?”

Ashtavakra asked him: “When you were lying in the dust, defeated and in pain, was all this here? Your empire, your health, your throne, the queen by your side?”

“No,” Janaka said. “None of this was there.”

“And right now, surrounded by your power and comfort, is all that suffering and defeat here?”

“No, that is not here now.”

“Then neither that is true, nor this is true.”

Janaka looked shocked and asked, “Then.. is there no truth at all then?”

Ashtavakra leaned forward and said, “When you were in the dust, were you there? Did you experience it?”

“Yes.”

“And now, surrounded by all this, are you here? Are you experiencing this?”

“Yes.”

“Then you were there and you are here.”

“Neither that world nor this world is ultimately real, but you are the truth.”

“You are what remains when dreams disappear, and when waking disappears.”

This story comes from Swami Sarvapriyananda’s talk on the Mandukya Upanishad.