INDRA'S LESSON

There is a wonderful story in one of the

Upanishads about the god Indra. Now, it
happened at this time that a great monster had
enclosed all the waters of the earth, so there
was a terrible drought, and the world was in a
very bad condition. It took Indra quite a while to realize that he had
a box of thunderbolts and that all he had to do was drop a
thunderbolt on the monster and blow him up. When he did that, the
waters flowed, and the world was refreshed, and Indra said, "What
a great boy am I."

So, thinking, "What a great boy am I," Indra goes up to the cosmic
mountain, which is the central mountain of the world, and decides
to build a palace worthy of such as he. The main carpenter of the
gods goes to work on it, and in very quick order he gets the palace
into pretty good condition. But every time Indra comes to inspect
it, he has bigger ideas about how splendid and grandiose the palace
should be. Finally, the carpenter says, "My god, we are both
immortal, and there is no end to his desires. I am caught for
eternity." So he goes to Brahma, the
creator god, and complain.

Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of

divine energy and divine grace. The lotus
grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the
sleeping god, whose dream is the universe.
So the carpenter comes to the edge of the
great pond of the universe and tells his story to Brahma. Brahma
says, "You go home. I will fix this up." Brahma gets off his lotus
and kneels down to address sleeping Vishnu. Vishnu just makes a
gesture and says something like, "Listen, fly, something is going to
happen."
Next morning, at the gate of the palace that is being built, there
appears a beautiful blue boy with a lot of children around him, just
admiring his beauty. The porter at the gate of the new palace goes
running to Indra, and Indra says, "Well, bring in the boy." The boy
is brought in, and Indra, the king god, sitting on his throne, says,
"Young man, welcome. And what brings you to my palace?"
"Well," says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the
horizon, "I have been told that you are building such a palace as no
Indra before you ever built." And Indra says, "Indras before me,
young man— what are you talking about?"

The boy says, "Indras before you. I have seen

them come and go, come and go. Just think,
Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean, and the
lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On
the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma
opens his eyes, and a world comes into being,
governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes, and a world goes
out of being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies,
the lotus goes back, and another lotus is formed, and another
Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite
space, each a lotus, with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes,
closing his eyes. And Indras? There may be wise men in your court
who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans or
the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those
Brahmin, let alone those Indras."

While the boy was talking, an army of ants parades across the
floor. The boy laughs when he sees them, and Indra's hair stands
on end, and he says to the boy, "Why do you laugh?" The boy
answers, "Don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt."

Indra says, "I ask. Teach." (That, by the

way, is a good Oriental idea: you don't teach
until you are asked. You don't force your
mission down people's throats.) And so the boy points to the ants
and says, "Former Indras all.Through many lifetimes they rise
from the lowest conditions to the highest illumination. And then
they drop their thunderbolt on a monster, and they think, 'What a
good boy am I.' And down they go again."

When the boy is talking, a crotchety old yogi comes into the palace
with a banana leaf parasol. He is naked except for a loincloth, and
on his chest is a little disk of hair, and half the hairs in the middle
have all dropped out.

The boy greets him and asks him just what Indra was about to ask.
"Old man, what is your name? Where do you come from? Where is
your family? Where is your house? And what is the meaning of
this curious constellation of hair on your chest?"

"Well," says the old fella, "my name is Hairy. I don't have a house.
Life is too short for that. I just have this parasol. I don't have a
family. I just meditate on Vishnu's feet, and think of eternity, and
how passing time is. You know, every time an Indra dies, a world
disappears— these things just flash by like that. Every time an
Indra dies, one hair drops out of this circle on my chest. Half the
hairs are gone now. Pretty soon they will all be gone. Life is short.
Why build a house?"

Then the two disappear. The boy was Vishnu, the Lord Protector,
and the old yogi was Shiva, the creator and destroyer of the world,
who had just come for the instruction of Indra, who is simply a god
of history but thinks he is the whole show.

Indra is sitting there on the throne, and he is completely

disillusioned, completely shot. He calls the carpenter and says,
"I'm quitting the building of this palace. You are dismissed." So
the carpenter got his intention. He is dismissed from the job, and
there is no more house building going on.
Indra decides to go out and be a yogi and just meditate on the lotus
feet of Vishnu. But he has a beautiful queen named Indrani. And
when Indrani hears of Indra's plan, she goes to the priest of the
gods and says, "Now he has got the idea in his head of going out to
become a yogi."

"Well," says the priest, "come in with me, darling, and we will sit
down, and I will fix this up." So they sit down before the king's
throne, and the priest says, "Now, I wrote a book for you many
years ago on the art of politics. You are in the position of the king
of the gods. You are a manifestation of the mystery of Brahma in
the field of time. This is a high privilege. Appreciate it, honor it,
and deal with life as though you were what you really are. And
besides, now I am going to write you a book on the art of love so
that you and your wife will know that in the wonderful mystery of
the two that are one, Brahma is radiantly present also."

And with this set of instructions, Indra

gives up his idea of going out and
becoming a yogi and finds that, in life,
he can represent the eternal as a symbol,
you might say, of the Brahma. So each
of us is, in a way, the Indra of his own
life. You can make a choice, either to
throw it all off and go into the forest to meditate, or to stay in the
world, both in the life of your job, which is the kingly job of
politics and achievement, and in the love life with your wife and
family. Now, this is a very nice myth, it seems to me.

Joseph Campbell (1904-1987),

The Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers)
Doubleday, New York, 1988