As Satyakama, son of Jabala
Learnt secret from Haridrumata sage,
In honest pursuit lofty aim to reach,
May seekers all from simple innocence
To state of Godward aspiration rise.
“Whose born am I, which lineage I come,
Mother dear, whose son, what blood am I,
For learning’s sake as student I do wish
To serve a master, deign to tell my name.”
When lad in earnest questioned parentage,
Jabala spoke, “As servant did I work
Much occupied, moving in early days;
Hence parentage I know not, what you are,
Go and declare, to Jabala thou born.”
The purest mind to sage betook in haste,
Presented himself student Vedic lore’s
And fell prostrate at master’s holy feet.
“Of what hierarchy parents’, lad, thou art,”
So sage queried the supplicating youth.

“I know not, sage. my lineage or blood,
My mother bore while serving much as maid,
Jabala’s son am Satyakama known,
With grace do teach, O puissant master sage.”

“No, none but purest brahmana thou sure,
This truth no other man would dare to speak.
Come, fetch the fuel, now I do accept
As holy learner secretest wisdom’s.
Four hundred cows here lean and unfed lie,
Take them to graze, and come not till they reach
A thousand robust milch-cows’ healthy state.”

To greens and thicks and wild attractions far
Did Satyakama drive the four hundred,
Who food and water restfulness required
In place secure from threat and toil for long.
Friendless, assistanceless and loveless lived,
In arid continence by force employed,
The boy deprived of sweet affection’s dose,
Save love-regard for teacher’s strict mandate
And hope for rain of light from high heaven.
To live in freedom from creditor’s eye
In early days of borrowed existence
Delicious looks, until the longish days
Release the gates for news credit’s to come,
And bitter potion with rejoicing mix,
When life is kind and life is also harsh,
The kindly friend is also raised up brow.
Demands of Nature like creditor’s bonds
Fear-fed freedom when resorted grant,
The body’s substance and its ploddings slow
Like waters rising seek the bunds to break.

The student, seeker, great disciple trod
The path of hopeful check creative call’s.
Did One become the two and then many,
And driving urge to multiply begin
Its dauntless march to find the self in forms?
The light of Sattva, Rajas-driven, goes
To plank itself in Tamas-bodies seen
And gobbles up the bodies as its food
Through eyes, ears, tongue, nose and tactile grasp
To digest body out contending real,
So that the One, the Self, alone is real.
The twigs and shrubs and barks to restrained taste 
As manna’s flood to Satyakama flowed,
The slightest shade was comfort’s canopy,
And self-respect was respect from the world,
The youth derived, or was in compulsion,
And time it takes to know where oneself stands.

Though mind is high the body pulls it down,
For body is the house that mind has built.
As grossness subtle’s body is of mind
When thoughts do rule rejecting body’s form
As abstractions and airy theories fare.
The inside cut from outside’s valid claims
Remains as dream bereft of real’s content.
As also is the outside’s excess call
Severed from inside’s requisitions
Is corpse bereft of life’s meaningful balm.
The seeker’s sorrow is self sundered twain,
As warring camps of mind’s and body’s needs.
The hungered person caught the ideal’s life
To snatch it off when limit’s norm it crossed.
To feed the body, feed the craze for fame
And feed learning’s fine appetite, the three
Are equal urges, streams of craving soul’s.

So years rolled in Satyakama’s quest
By ardent Tapas, but the cosmic forms
Which with the person were not reconciled
Poured down as showers from the formal realms
And down descended fairest fairies’ charms,
With dance and music and delightful shapes,
Intoxicants of mind and sense refined.
The more they move as student’s proximate
The more he loses consciousness of self
And enters whole the fabric forms present.
As raving bull inebriated gores,
The touch of these emboldened forms of light
Injects the bolt of maddened grip of joy,
And none who’s born would once resist such feasts.

But Satyakama, with the strength of self,
Outgrew this dish of nectar served by gods,
And hill-like stood in thunder, storm and rain.
Great glory this, to withstand cosmic tastes,
For who that’s man can Indra’s magic face.
The tempter’s wealth is yet in plenty store’s,
The wisest men have yet to pass a test.
“The world is vast, in ignorance and pain,
Thy duty is to pains ameliorate.
Renounce thy cares and care for others’ weal.
Thou bold and able well-equipped to serve
Redeem the world of mortals sunk in grief.
Why ask for freedom high heaven’s thyself
And selfish seek immortal’s seat for thee.
Go forth and serve, for thou hast high attained
The peak of glory Yoga’s way bestowed.
Be wise to work in thousand cycled births
Until the last of remnant reaches God.”
So struck the master juggler his trump-card
Inflaming ego’s name-demanding joys.
Who would resist enthroning oneself king,
Applauded, worshipped deified saviour,
To raise the trodden come as Godsend boon.

Here, Satyakama’s prudence weighed heavy
And pointed flaw in glory? name and fame,
For who on earth is sure as friend till doom,
In utter distress who is bosom friend
In world of people who remember wrongs
As truths immortal and the good ignore.
Conditioned friendship rules the human groups,
And unconditioned who on earth has heard.
Brittle as glass is human affection
Bereavement follows unions even strong.
As logs of wood on ocean’s surface meet
Do people meet as friends, relations, loves.
As logs depart when winds them cut apart
So loves perish and-dear, near fly.
What greatness, then, is sceptre emperor wields,
To dust he goes, from dust his body formed.
He spurned as worthless mortal power and love,
And sought to seek what further lay beyond.

When seekers cross this hurdle hard to scale,
Fears and cudgels upraised threats discharge,
Dread death that harbours elbow slowly crawls
With widened jaws to strike once and for all.
All austerity and all effort fades,
As dried up leaves they seem to drop on ground.
Disease and weakness thrall the person’s frame
Languishing body sinks to nether’s depths.
“Is this the all for which I strove so hard,
Tended the cows, obeyed master’s behests
And wrung out life of joy of basic needs?
Accursed is life that neither is nor not;
To live or die the same to man becomes.”
So quaking spoke the downcast searching soul.
But. lo, the wonder, night’s darkest ere morn.