In the sixth book (entitled Nirvāṇaprakaraṇa; chapters 14-28/29) of the Mokṣopāya/Yogavāsiṣṭha the muni Vasiṣṭha tells his disciple, prince Rāma, about a corvid (a raven or a crow; in the story the bird is variously designated as vāyasa, kālakākola, kāka, and kākola)* named Bhusuṇḍa (this is the uniform spelling throughout the Mokṣopāya manuscripts; in the Yogavāsiṣṭha and Laghuyogavāsiṣṭha editions the name is printed as Bhuśuṇḍa).

Once, Vasiṣṭha participated in a talk (kathā) about long-lived beings (sucirajīvin) in which the raven/crow Bhusuṇḍa was mentioned. Out of curiosity, Vasiṣṭha set out for Bhusuṇḍa’s habitation on a marvelous tree standing on a peak of mount Meru. In the course of their conversation we learn that Bhusuṇḍa is the son of the male raven/crow Caṇḍa (himself being the vehicle of the mātṛ Alambusā) and of one of the female geese (haṃsī) who are the vehicles of the mātṛ Brāhmī. Bhusuṇḍa is virtually immortal; in the phase between the end of a kalpa and the beginning of a new creation he survives in the state of deep sleep (suṣuptāvasthā). In few words, his method is the concentrated observation of his breath which, in his case, is not a suppression of but an intellectual reflection on his breath (prāṇacintā). Mentally, Bhusuṇḍa is a jīvanmukta ("liberated while living"). The story contains a lot of interesting details in literary and philosophical respect which cannot be dealt with here.

By the way: some Sanskrit lexicographers list the terms cirajīvin and dīrghāyus ("long-lived") as designations for corvids, and, in the Pañcatantra and the Kathāsaritsāgara, cirajīvin is attested as the name of a corvid.

* Cf. K.N. Dave, Birds in Sanskrit Literature, rev ed. 2005, p. 3: "[...] lexicographers have treated all black Crows including the Raven as a variety of a common type".

Best,
Roland Steiner