Attachment to people, places and objects is the root cause of bondage. A strong knot that is difficult to untie or extricate is immediately formed when one develops attachment. Worldly life has its strong pulls and the temptations to get attracted and attached are aplenty.
The story of King Bharata who was later born as Jadabharata, illustrates the consequences that have to be faced if one succumbs to attachment, pointed out Sri N. Suresh in a lecture.
Bharata exemplified the truth that Karma Yoga done with sincerity leads to Jnana yoga. While discharging his kingly duties disinterestedly, Bharata realised the value of penance. He decided to renounce the worldly possessions and handed over his kingdom to his sons. He then retired to the forest to lead the austere life of an ascetic.
But from the spiritual heights of constant meditation and austere living, Bharata developed attachment when he succumbed to a humane tendency — showing concern to an orphaned deer that had lost its mother. Its plight would have moved anyone into a spontaneous spurt of compassion. The king-turned-sage was no exception. He began to nurture the young one in his hermitage.
The association with it became a passion instead of a detached concern for it. This cost him to forego the chance of salvation that he had earned through penance. In spite of his great austerities and blemishless life, King Bharata pined for the lost deer at the moment of death.
He was then born a deer in his next birth to expiate for his lapse in penance and meditation. But in his lifetime as a deer, he remembered his past life by God's grace and his past penance. So the deer lived near a hermitage and gave up its life in such a surrounding.
It is believed that one is born as whatever one thinks of at the moment of death and that is why scriptures advise us to meditate on God at all times so that we can reach Him.
This constant thought of God is to be cultivated zealously and conscientiously.
It is thus clear that even God realisation is no guarantee for salvation if a person reverts to worldly ties.
