The Guru and the Radish Girl

Once, when the great 11th-century translator Marpa was being detained by tax collectors in Nepal, he was visited by an unlikely guest: the 10th-century poet-yogin Saraha. In a dream, after being carried on a palanquin to a fig tree grove in south India, the sleeping translator encountered Saraha seated on a corpse and requested his blessing. Saraha blessed Marpa’s body and entreated him to “eat flesh, be a madman, be like a fearless lion, [letting] your elephant mind wander free.” Marpa awoke the next day with a sense of clarity so deep that “even if I were to meet the buddhas of the three times, I would have nothing to ask them. This was the decisive experience of mind-itself.”

This “decisive experience of mind-itself” characterizes many of the stories surrounding Saraha, a mystic known for his fierce exhortations to cut through the layers of delusion in order to experience the true nature of mind directly. While Saraha is considered one of the founders of the Vajrayana tradition and has been incorporated into a number of Tibetan Buddhist lineages, there have been relatively few academic examinations of his full body of work and its ongoing legacy. With Saraha: Poet of Blissful Awareness, scholar Roger R. Jackson presents the first thorough treatment of Saraha’s context, life, works, poetics, and teachings, including new translations of nearly all of Saraha’s dohas, or spontaneous songs.

The following story, taken from the 11th- or 12th-century master Abhayadatta’s biography of the eighty-four mahasiddhas and translated by Jackson, is perhaps the earliest extended hagiography of Saraha. To hear Jackson read this story and to learn more about Saraha’s life and legacy, listen to Jackson’s conversation with Tricycle’s editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, on a recent episode of Tricycle Talks.

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The story of Guru Saraha:

Saraha was of the brahmin caste and was from Roli, which was part of the city-state of Rajñi in eastern India. He was the son of a dakini. Although he was a brahmin, he had faith in the buddhadharma, and through hearing the dharma from countless masters, he developed confidence in the Secret Mantra Dharma. He upheld both Brahmanical and Buddhist vows, practicing the Brahmanical religion by day and practicing the Buddhist religion at night.

When he resorted to liquor, every brahmin heard of this and they all assembled in order to have him exiled. They said to King Ratnapāla, “You are the king. Is it proper to engage in a perverted religion in this land? Saraha, the Archer, may be the chieftain of fifteen thousand households in Roli, but by drinking liquor he has undermined his caste status and must be exiled.” The king said, “I don’t want to exile someone who controls fifteen thousand households.”

The king then approached Saraha and said, “You are a brahmin, and it’s not proper for you to drink liquor.” Saraha said, “I didn’t drink liquor and will swear an oath to that effect, so assemble every brahmin and all the people.” They all assembled, and Saraha declared, “If I have drunk liquor, let my hand burn; if I have not drunk it, may it not burn.” He plunged his hand into boiling butter, and it was not burned. The king said, “So in truth, did he drink liquor or not?” The brahmins said, “In truth, he drank.”

Repeating his statement, Saraha drank molten copper and was not burned, but the brahmins said, “Nevertheless, he drank.” “Well,” said Saraha, “if someone goes into the water and sinks, then they drank, but if they don’t sink, then they didn’t drink.” The other brahmins went into the water singly or in pairs. When he went in, Saraha did not sink, while the others did. “Saraha did not drink,” everyone declared. Saraha further said, “Let’s get weighed on a scale; the one who is heavier did not drink, and the one who is lighter drank.” When this was done, Saraha was heavier, and he declared, “I did not drink.” Likewise, even when they loaded onto the scale three iron boulders, each weighing the same as a man, Saraha was heavier—and he was heavier even than six boulders, Saraha was. The king declared, “If someone who has such abilities drinks, let them drink!”

All the brahmins, and the king as well, bowed down to Saraha and requested instruction. He sang songs to the king, queens, and all the people; these are known as the Doha Trilogy. The brahmins abandoned their own religion and entered the Buddhist teaching.

After that, Saraha took on a 15-year-old servant girl, instructed her, and led her to another land. They lived in a remote place. He engaged in practice, while the girl served him and cared for him. One day, he said, “I want to eat radishes,” so the girl added radishes to buffalo yogurt and took it to him. He was sitting in concentration, though, and wouldn’t get up.

Isolating the body is not isolation; isolating the mind from signs and concepts is supreme isolation.

Saraha did not rise from that concentration for twelve years. When he finally got up, he asked, “Where are the radishes?” The servant girl replied, “You’ve been in concentration for twelve years without getting up, so now where are they? Springtime has passed, and there are none.” Saraha said to the girl, “Now I will go to the mountains to practice.” The girl said, “Isolating the body is not isolation; isolating the mind from signs and concepts is supreme isolation. You sat in concentration for twelve years, but you couldn’t sever a tiny sign, the thought of radishes. What’s the good of going to the mountains?” When she said this, Saraha thought, “That’s true,” and he abandoned signs and concepts, took to heart the primordial meaning, obtained the special attainment of supreme mahamudra, and worked limitlessly for the aims of beings. He and the girl eventually went to the land of the dakinis.

This completes the story of Guru Saraha.

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From Saraha: Poet of Blissful Awareness by Roger R. Jackson © 2024 by Roger Jackson. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc. Boulder, CO.