THE KNOWLEDGE WORTH SACRIFICING EVERYTHING FOR!
When Nalanda University was ransacked in c. 1200 CE, two surviving monks managed to salvage the most precious manuscripts from the pillaged library. While ferrying this priceless cargo, water started entering the boat. The two exchanged glances and, the story goes, that without a word the elder monk jumped into the river, sacrificing his life for knowledge.[1]
What type of books or what kind of knowledge it could have been that the senior monk in the story did not even blink to sacrifice his life for? It must have been the books, the knowledge, one may surmise, which leads one from illusion to reality, from self-ignorance to Self-Knowledge, from mortality to immortality. The knowledge that bestows the supreme bliss of life eternal, the liberating wisdom which reveals our inseparableness from the Divine Ground of Being and establishes the identity of the microcosm with the macrocosm, the oneness of the ātman, the individual self, with Brahman, the universal reality.
Did the senior monk pay it too dearly with his life for preserving the books containing such knowledge? Not really, considering what Sage Vaśiṣta tells the young Rāma:[2]
yāvadanyanna santyaktam tāvat sāmānyameva hi |
vastu nāsādyate sādho svātmalābhe tu kā kathā ||
In the course of ordinary secular life, unless you leave something, you cannot attain another. In order to attain the all-pervading Self, how much more of sacrifice is necessary?
Accordingly, the extent of sacrifice required in order to attain the all-pervading Self has to be immense. And why should it be otherwise? If you want to buy gold, you must pay for it in gold. Only those who are willing to stake all and everything may expect to discover the fullness of their being.
[1] See: http://www.exoticindiaart.com/book/details/prasthanathraya-volume-iv-chandogya-upanishad-only-edition-with-shankaracharya-s-commentary-in-original-sanskrit-with-english-translation-IHJ069/
[2] यावदन्यन्न सन्त्यक्तम् तावत् सामान्यमेव हि ।
वस्तु नासाद्यते साधो स्वात्मलाभे तु का कथा ॥
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