Nachiketa and Death

Now we come to a story told at the strangest doorstep of all, the door of Death. It is from the Katha Upanishad, and it begins with a boy and his father.

The boy was named Nachiketa. His father was holding a great sacrifice, and to be generous a man was meant to give away his best. But Nachiketa watched his father hand over old cows, thin and worn, that had no milk left to give. The boy was troubled. A gift that costs nothing is not really a gift.

So, half teasing and half in earnest, Nachiketa pressed his father. And to whom, he asked, will you give me? He asked it again, and again. At last his father snapped in anger: To Death I give you. The word was out, and a word like that could not be unsaid.

So the boy went. He travelled to the house of Yama, the lord of the dead, and found him away from home. Nachiketa waited at the door three nights, taking no food. When Yama returned and saw a young guest left waiting and hungry, he was ashamed, for a guest is sacred. To make amends, he offered Nachiketa three boons, three wishes, one for each night.

For the first wish, Nachiketa asked that his father's anger be gone, and that he himself return home in peace. Granted, said Death. For the second, he asked to be taught a certain sacred fire that leads to heaven. Death taught it gladly, and even named that fire after the boy.

Then came the third wish, the great one. When a person dies, said Nachiketa, there is a doubt. Some say they still somehow are. Some say they are not. Teach me the truth of this. What lies beyond death?

Death did not want to answer. This is too deep, he said. Even the gods once wondered at it. Ask for something else. And then Yama tried to tempt the boy away from his question. He offered sons and grandsons, herds of cattle, gold, vast lands, long life. He offered the loveliest companions, music, every delight a person could wish. Only choose something else, he said, anything but this.

Nachiketa did not waver. All these pleasures, he said, wear out the senses by tomorrow. Keep your horses and your dancing and your gold. He had seen something true, and it is the moral hinge of the whole story. There are two roads before every person. Listen to how Death himself names them.

Here are the two roads. There is shreyas, the good, which is truly worth having but often hard. And there is preyas, the pleasant, which is sweet at once but soon gone. The wise person pauses, looks at both, and chooses the good. The foolish one grabs the pleasant and never looks up. Nachiketa chose the good. This is the first real choice on any path toward truth.

And because the boy chose well, Death taught him the answer to his question. He spoke of the Self, the atman, the knower within. And he said of it the most freeing thing in all these pages.

So that is the answer to Nachiketa's doubt. The body is born and the body dies. But the Self that knows, the real you, was never born and can never die. Death cannot touch it, for it was never inside death's reach to begin with. Remember these words. Long from now, in a chariot on a field of war, another teacher will say almost the very same thing, and you will know you heard it here first.