Natchiketa and the King of Death -- Episode II

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Not your father's Katha Upanishad ... Part II

King of Death

The good is one thing; the pleasant is another. These two, differing in their ends, both prompt to action. Blessed are they that choose the good; they that choose the pleasant miss the goal.

Both the good and the pleasant present themselves to men. The wise, having examined both, distinguish the one from the other. The wise prefer the good to the pleasant; the foolish, driven by fleshly desires, prefer the pleasant to the good.

You, O Natchiketa, having looked upon fleshly desires, delightful to the senses, have renounced them all. You have turned from the miry way wherein many a man wallows.

Far from each other, and leading to different ends, are Ignorance and Knowledge. You, O Natchiketa, I regard as one who aspires after Knowledge, for a multitude of pleasant objects were unable to tempt you!

Living in the abyss of Ignorance, yet wise in their own conceit, deluded fools go round and round, the blind led by the blind.

To the thoughtless youth, deceived by the vanity of earthly possessions, the path that leads to the eternal abode is not revealed. This world alone is real; there is no here-after--thinking thus, he falls again and again, birth after birth, into my jaws.

To many it is not given to hear of the self.

Many, though they hear of it, do not understand it.

Wonderful is he who speaks of it!

Intelligent is he who learns of it.

Blessed is he who, taught by a good teacher, is able to understand it.

The truth of the Self cannot be fully understood when taught by an ignorant man, for opinions regarding it, not founded in Knowledge, vary one from another. Subtler than the subtlest is this Self, and beyond all logic. Taught by a teacher who knows the Self and Brahman as one, a man leaves vain theory behind and attains to Truth.

The awakening which you have Known, does not come through the intellect, but rather, in fullest measure, through the lips of the Wise.

Beloved Natchiketa, blessed, blessed are you, because you seek the eternal! Would that I had more pupils like You!

Well I know that earthly treasure lasts but till the morrow. For, did not I myself, wishing to be King of Death, make sacrifice with Fire? But the sacrifice was a fleeting thing, performed with fleeting objects, and small is my reward seeing that only for a moment will my reign endure.

The goal of worldly desire, the glittering objects for which all men long, the celestial pleasure they hope to gain by religious rites, the most sought-after of miraculous powers -- all these were within your grasp. But all these, with firm resolve, you have renounced.

The ancient, effulgent being, the indwelling Spirit, subtle, deep-hidden in the lotus of the heart, is hard to know. But the wise man, following the path of meditation, knows him, and is freed alike from pleasure and from pain.

The man who has learned that the Self is separate from the body, the senses and the mind, and has fully known him, the soul of Truth, the subtle principle -- such a man verily attains to him, and is exceedingly glad, because he has found the source and dwelling place of all felicity.

Truly do I believe, O Natchiketa, that for you the gates of joy stand open.