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By Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n In Sanskrit the word ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is the name for both a bird and an advanced yog\u012b<\/em>. The bird has such estimable qualities that its very name became applied to the spiritual practitioner.<\/p>\n In English, Prabhup\u0101da followed a well-established convention and rendered ha\u1e41sa<\/em> as \u201cswan.\u201d The advanced yog\u012b<\/em> or devotee is accordingly \u201cswan-like.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, Prabhup\u0101da once remarked, in reference to his disciples: \u201cSo K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a consciousness means swan-like, they should be like swans. Their behavior should be like swans. They should live in clean place, at refreshing place.\u201d<\/p>\n In this second usage, ha\u1e41sa<\/em> has probably become most generally encountered when prefixed by the superlative parama<\/em>, meaning \u201chighest,\u201d best,\u201d and so on. Strictly speaking, paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em> denotes the highest of the four ranks of sanny\u0101sa<\/em> (see \u015aBh 5.1.27<\/a>, purport), but it is used in more general sense to describe the best of the sages or devotees.<\/p>\n We often see the word placed as a title before the names of a variety of spiritual teachers.<\/p>\n If dedicated transcendentalists are compared to swans, it should come as no surprise that committed materialists are likened to crows. The Bh\u0101gavatam (1.5.10<\/a>) describes worldly literature as v\u0101yasa<\/em>\u1e41 t<\/em>\u012brtham<\/em>\u2014a pilgrimage site for crows, that is to say, a garbage pile. In his commentary to this text, Prabhup\u0101da elaborates on the bird metaphor:<\/p>\n Crows and swans are not birds of the same feather because of their different mental attitudes. The fruitive workers or passionate men are compared to the crows, whereas the all-perfect saintly persons are compared to the swans. The crows take pleasure in a place where garbage is thrown out, just as the passionate fruitive workers take pleasure in wine and woman and places for gross sense pleasure. The swans do not take pleasure in the places where crows are assembled for conferences and meetings. They are instead seen in the atmosphere of natural scenic beauty where there are transparent reservoirs of water nicely decorated with stems of lotus flowers in variegated colors of natural beauty. That is the difference between the two classes of birds.<\/p>\n \n A special talent traditionally attributed to the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is said to be the basis of the extension of the avian name to a spiritually advanced person. Prabhup\u0101da explains (K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a<\/em> chapter 85):<\/p>\n The word paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em> mentioned here means \u201cthe supreme swan.\u201d It is said that the swan can draw milk from a mixture of milk and water; it can take only the milk portion and reject the watery portion. Similarly, a person who can draw out the spiritual portion from this material world and who can live alone, depending only on the Supreme Spirit, not on the material world, is called a paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em>.<\/p>\n \n Even one of the avat\u0101ras<\/em> of the Lord bears the name \u201cHa\u1e41sa.\u201d<\/p>\n Therefore, after all this, it may come as a shock to discover that the avian ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is, in fact, a goose\u2014in taxonomical nomenclature, the anser indicus<\/em>, known otherwise as the \u201cbar-headed goose.\u201d<\/p>\n As we shall see, the ha\u1e41sa<\/em>\u2014the anser indicus<\/em>\u2014is an extraordinary, amazing bird fully qualified to give its name to great devotees and even to the Lord himself. So why then the English \u201cswan?\u201d<\/p>\n The reason can only be that in English-speaking countries, the goose has long been the subject of very bad p.r. So much so, that the very word \u201cgoose\u201d has come to be synonymous with \u201cfool\u201d or \u201cidiot.\u201d<\/p>\n Even proverbially, the goose has suffered invidious comparison with the swan, as, for example, in this still remembered observation\u2014made in 1786\u2014by Horace Walpole<\/a>, Fourth Earl of Oxford, concerning the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds : \u201cAll his own geese are swans, as the swans of others are geese.\u201d<\/p>\n Two centuries later, the goose received the same unfavorable evaluation in popular lines<\/a> by Charles Kingsley:<\/p>\n When all the world is young, lad, \n \n It\u2019s no wonder, then, that the only good translation, connotatively speaking, for ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is \u201cswan.\u201d It\u2019s a no-brainer, really: Consider the expressions \u201cgoose-like great sage,\u201d or \u201ctop-most goose-like devotee.\u201d They just don\u2019t do the job.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, it is time we end this historic discrimination and rehabilitate the goose. Especially the ha\u1e41sa<\/em>. Of course, this effort was pioneered in the celebrated 2001 documentary Winged Migration<\/em><\/a>, in which the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> itself takes a cameo star-turn (see the beginning of Chapter 7 in the DVD).<\/p>\n The actual ha\u1e41sa<\/em>\u2014anser indicus<\/em> or bar-headed goose\u2014is in its own right the perfect emblem and symbol for the greatest of transcendentalists.<\/p>\n Like the swan (Cygnus<\/em>), it is beautiful . . .<\/p>\n . . . and likewise graceful in water:<\/p>\n In fact, you can see from this photograph why Europeans could take the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> for a kind of swan.<\/p>\n In flight, the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is spectacular:<\/p>\n Interestingly, the Wikipedia article<\/a> notes of the ha\u1e41sa<\/em>: \u201cIt has sometimes been separated from Anser<\/em>, which has no other member indigenous to the Indian region, nor any at all to the Ethiopian, Australian, or Neotropical regions, and placed in the monotypic genus Eulabeia<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n A \u201cmon0typic genus\u201d is a genus that contains only one species. In other words, the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is in a class by itself. And not<\/em> a goose (Anser<\/em>). I don\u2019t know who came up with the name Eulabeia<\/em>, but it is appropriate: According to a lexicon<\/a> of New Testament Greek, eulabia<\/em> means \u201creverence toward God.\u201d<\/p>\n H<\/em>a\u1e41sa<\/em>s are \u201csuper birds,\u201d in the judgment of S. Marsh Tenney, a professor of physiology who has studied them extensively. \u201cThey do everything even better than other birds.\u201d He is quoted in an article in Audubon<\/em> magazine by Lily Whiteman, who gives quite an account of the birds\u2019 annual prodigious feat:<\/p>\n At 29,028 feet, Mount Everest is tall enough to poke into the jet stream, a high-altitude river of wind that blows at speeds of more than 200 miles an hour. Temperatures on the mountain can plummet low enough to freeze exposed flesh instantly. Its upper reaches offer only a third of the oxygen available at sea level\u2014so little that if you could be transported instantly from sea level to Everest\u2019s summit, without time to acclimatize, you would probably lose consciousness within minutes. Kerosene cannot burn here; helicopters cannot fly here. Yet every spring, flocks of bar-headed geese\u2014the world\u2019s highest-altitude migrants\u2014fly from their winter feeding grounds in the lowlands of India through the Himalayan range, sometimes even directly above Everest, on their way to their nesting grounds in Tibet. Then every fall these birds retrace their route to India. With a little help from tailwinds, they may be able to cover the one-way trip\u2014more than 1,000 miles\u2014in a single day.<\/p>\n \n In other words, the ha\u1e41sa<\/em> when migrating flies at about the normal cruising altitude for passenger jets.<\/p>\n Moreover, by using tailwinds, the geese capitalize on weather that could pulverize lesser creatures. \u201cThese birds are powerful flappers, not soarers that just glide with the wind,\u201d says M.R. Fedde, an emeritus professor of anatomy and physiology at Kansas State University\u2019s School of Veterinary Medicine, who has conducted laboratory studies of the bar-headed goose\u2019s respiratory system. Partly because their wings are huge, have a disproportionately large surface area for their weight, and are pointed to reduce wind resistance, \u201cthey can fly over 50 miles an hour on their own power,\u201d Fedde says. \u201cAdd the thrust of tailwinds of perhaps 100 miles an hour if they are lucky, and these birds really move.\u201d Able to gauge and correct for drift, bar-headed geese can even fly in crosswinds without being blown off course. The same powerful and unremitting flapping that helps propel them over the mountains also generates body heat, which is retained by their down feathers. This heat, in turn, helps keep ice from building up on their wings.<\/p>\n \n (Here is the complete article<\/a>, with more wonders of the bird and some speculation so far-fetched it only deepens the mysteries of the ha\u1e41sa<\/em>.)<\/p>\n We hear of great yog\u012b<\/em>s and sages in past ages retiring to the Himalayan mountain fastness to practice severe austerities as they sought the divine in profound and prolonged meditation. It is said that by power of yoga practice, these paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em>s could greatly reduce their respiration, thereby slowing their metabolism; they could at will increase their bodily heat. Thus remaining in a remote place which provided them with neither air, nor food, nor heat, they pursued their spiritual goal with unwavering determination.<\/p>\n (By the way: Even though we can hardly imitate them today, we can apply their principles practically\u2014at least according to the directions of Bh\u0101gavad-g\u012bt\u0101, which set forth what is, in effect, a domestication of the path of transcendence. You don\u2019t have to go to the Himalayas: you can do it right at home.)<\/p>\n Yet even for us, the prodigious, Himalayan-traversing ha\u1e41sa<\/em> is a fitting emblem and symbol for the paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em>, the great, heroic athletes of the spirit in whose footsteps we should follow. Let us therefore cherish the memory not only of the human paramaha\u1e41sa<\/em> but of the bird ha\u1e41sa<\/em> as well.<\/p>\n And compared to the ha\u1e41sa<\/em>, the swan is nothing but a goose.<\/p>\n
\nAnd all the trees are green;
\nAnd every goose a swan, lad,
\nAnd every lass a queen. . . .<\/p>\n![\"hamsa-on-shore\"](\"http:\/\/soithappens.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/03\/hamsa-on-shore.jpg?w=525&h=456\" "\\"hamsa-on-shore\\"")
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By Ravindra Svarupa dasa<\/strong><\/p>\n