Parṇaśālā or Paṇaśālā? The “House of Exchange” on Chitrakoot

Question

Please explain the parṇaśālā part once more—the term parṇaśālā.
 

Answer

In that word, remove the added “ra” in parṇa. As I said earlier—like Chitrakoot really points to chitta-koot (with chitta hidden)—in the same way paśālā is actually paṇaśālā. What do paṇa and the letter “pa” mean? If you open a dictionary, pa means “to transact, to do give-and-take.” Pa is also used for “bazaar.” And what happens in a bazaar? We transact—we give money to the shopkeeper and receive an item in return. So pa means behavior/transaction/exchange.

Thus, when it says “a paśālā was built on Chitrakoot,” it’s signaling that building the paṇaśālā on Chitrakoot means there’s a continuous transaction going on: the samskaras in the chitta keep rising up into the conscious mind, and the actions we do keep forming new samskaras, which go back and accumulate in the chitta. This give-and-take is running non-stop.

For example, someone does something not to your liking and you feel a little anger. That little anger grows big. Where did it come from? It rose from the chitta to the conscious mind, and that small conscious anger got magnified. Then, because we acted in anger, that action creates a fresh samskara—where does that form? In the chitta. So this exchange between chitta, conscious mind, and subconscious is going on twenty-four hours a day.

They’re telling us this so we pay attention to the chitta. If the exchange is good, it doesn’t feel bad at all; but when the exchange turns bad, it hurts our life. That’s why they say: focus on the chitta. Why focus on it? Because this transaction runs all the time. And they convey this important point through the symbol: “On Chitrakoot, a paṇaśālā (often written as parṇaśālā) was built.” Paṇaśālā means “the place of exchange.”