The Katha Upanishad
'When a person dies, there arises this doubt: ‘He still exists,’ say some; ‘he does not,’ say others. I want you to teach me the truth.' [I.1.20]
If there is one Upanishad that can be called a favorite in all ages, it is the Katha. It is not hard to see why. Its theme, broadly, is the same as that of all the Upanishads: the deathless Self, the need for and the way to its realization; but the Katha is more successful than other Upanishads at describing this, in several ways.
As the Upanishads illustrate, the right questions are half the battle in life. In the Katha we have the right question in highly dramatic form; in fact we have a highly imaginative confrontation of the ideal teacher (I.1.22) and the ideal student (II.1.4), and their identity is surprising: the latter is a teenager, and his teacher is death.
We must consider why.
Nothing places the question ‘Who am I?’ in such stark relief as the fact of death. What dies? What is left? Are we here merely to be torn away from everyone, and everyone from us? And what, if anything, can we do about death - now, while we are still alive?
…The Katha consistently lays stress on several practical themes of the spiritual life: that a spiritual teacher is essential; that in all human experience it is really only the Self, pure consciousness, that is the enjoyer, so that when one realizes the Self ‘there is nothing else to be known’ and ‘all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened’; and of course that death occurs only to that part of us which was born and launched into separate existence. This Upanishad thus speaks to a longing which could not be deeper or more universal: that some day, somehow, as Donne put it, ‘Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!’
The Katha is also distinctive in explaining with the use of two very practical terms that every moment we live, even theoretically while we sleep, we face a steep choice between what will move us closer to that day and what will only postpone in - that is, between what is good and what is merely pleasant; in Sanskrit, between shreya and preya. While there are no dualities and no compartments in reality, as long as there are dualities and compartments in personality, we have to pay careful attention to this distinction at every moment. But that makes life very much worth living; and perhaps this sense, as Wallace Stevens wrote in ’Sunday Morning’:
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
- Michael N. Nagler, in the introduction to Eknath Easwaran’s translation of the Katha Upanishad.
If there is one Upanishad that can be called a favorite in all ages, it is the Katha. It is not hard to see why. Its theme, broadly, is the same as that of all the Upanishads: the deathless Self, the need for and the way to its realization; but the Katha is more successful than other Upanishads at describing this, in several ways.
As the Upanishads illustrate, the right questions are half the battle in life. In the Katha we have the right question in highly dramatic form; in fact we have a highly imaginative confrontation of the ideal teacher (I.1.22) and the ideal student (II.1.4), and their identity is surprising: the latter is a teenager, and his teacher is death.
We must consider why.
Nothing places the question ‘Who am I?’ in such stark relief as the fact of death. What dies? What is left? Are we here merely to be torn away from everyone, and everyone from us? And what, if anything, can we do about death - now, while we are still alive?
…The Katha consistently lays stress on several practical themes of the spiritual life: that a spiritual teacher is essential; that in all human experience it is really only the Self, pure consciousness, that is the enjoyer, so that when one realizes the Self ‘there is nothing else to be known’ and ‘all the knots that strangle the heart are loosened’; and of course that death occurs only to that part of us which was born and launched into separate existence. This Upanishad thus speaks to a longing which could not be deeper or more universal: that some day, somehow, as Donne put it, ‘Death shall be no more: Death, thou shalt die!’
The Katha is also distinctive in explaining with the use of two very practical terms that every moment we live, even theoretically while we sleep, we face a steep choice between what will move us closer to that day and what will only postpone in - that is, between what is good and what is merely pleasant; in Sanskrit, between shreya and preya. While there are no dualities and no compartments in reality, as long as there are dualities and compartments in personality, we have to pay careful attention to this distinction at every moment. But that makes life very much worth living; and perhaps this sense, as Wallace Stevens wrote in ’Sunday Morning’:
Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,
Alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams
And our desires.
- Michael N. Nagler, in the introduction to Eknath Easwaran’s translation of the Katha Upanishad.