Chudala: A Yogini who helped her husband attain- Part 1

The Yoga Vashistha has numer­ous inter­est­ing sto­ries that con­nects var­i­ous aspects of life. One such sto­ry is that of King Shikid­hw­ja and Queen Chu­dala.

King Shikid­wa­ja was the King of Malawa. His father had died when Shikid­wa­ja was just 16 years of age. Even as a young teenag­er, he ruled his king­dom with great grace and solem­ni­ty. He was val­or­ous, hand­some, silent and respect­ful. He had all the qual­i­ties that a dharmic king pos­sessed. When he attained mar­riage­able age, the min­is­ters of his court sug­gest­ed the daugh­ter of the King of Saurash­tra. Her name was Chu­dala. The wed­ding was arranged and they enjoyed each oth­ers com­pa­ny for many many years. Chu­dala being trained in sev­er­al arts right from young age, she taught music and dance to Shikid­wa­ja. Being a dharmic and right­eous cou­ple, they soon tran­scend­ed the mun­dane pur­suits of roy­al life and turned inward for answers.

“The taste of youth­ful plea­sure is soon suc­ceed­ed by a dis­taste for it in old age. The fresh­ness of plants in spring gives way to the dry­ness of autumn. Then where in this world is that per­ma­nent plea­sure and last­ing good which nev­er grows stale and is ever sweet and love­ly? 10 There­fore we should seek that which will sup­port us in all con­di­tions of life, and which will be a rem­e­dy of all the evils that sur­round us in this world.”

They delved deep into scrip­tures and dis­cussed with each oth­er on a vari­ety of spir­i­tu­al and reli­gious mat­ters. Queen Chu­dala was so deeply involved with these learn­ings that she had a long­ing to taste the ulti­mate. He con­stant thought was “How will I realise the imper­ish­able One”.

“All oth­er knowl­edge is mere noth­ing, just like a sec­ond moon in the sky. There is only one Con­scious­ness in exis­tence, and this is called the great enti­ty, the sum total of all exis­tence.”

Day by day her under­stand­ing of her­self and the supreme con­scious­ness grew deep­er and deep­er. She under­stood that the whole exis­tence is a leela and how the same con­scious­ness is con­tained in each per­son just as gold exist in every piece jew­ellery but in dif­fer­ent forms. She lived in com­plete bliss not attached to the things around her. She was indif­fer­ent to mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions but at the same dis­played extreme calm­ness and seren­i­ty.

“Her mind was detached from the feel­ings of love and fear, of pride and plea­sure, and quite insus­cep­ti­ble of delu­sion.”

Her quest was so deep and sin­cere that she soon attained enlight­en­ment and realised the God with­in her. Her sad­hana and tapasya, her detach­ment and calm­ness, her soli­tude and bliss made her shine like the sun. She was adorned with new beau­ty and her fac­ing was glow­ing with real­iza­tion and it was dif­fi­cult to hide this trans­for­ma­tion…

to be con­tin­ued!

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