Facing life is more real than facing death (Kath Upanishad) || AP Neem Candies
Video Information: Shabdyog session, 24.07.2019, Advait Bodhsthal, Greater Noida, India
Context:
~ What is the real price of fearlessness?
~ Why is wanting security an impediment for freedom?
~ How to realise the Truth?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Context:
~ What is the real price of fearlessness?
~ Why is wanting security an impediment for freedom?
~ How to realise the Truth?
Music Credits: Milind Date
~~~~~
Transcript
00:00 Pachikita is a mere boy dependent on his father and he has the honesty and the guts to go
00:15 to his father and say, "of what use is all this that you are doing?
00:24 Who will benefit from these old and sick and milkless cows?"
00:41 I assure you that was more difficult than facing Yamraj.
00:54 We glorify Nachiketa's encounter with Yamraj and that keeps things safe for us.
01:06 Glory to Nachiketa who stood unflinching in front of Yamraj.
01:11 Nice, because we very well know that this encounter is a myth.
01:19 We very well know that we will never have the occasion in our own life to stand face
01:26 to face with the death god.
01:30 At least not in the way the Upanishad narrates.
01:36 We all will die.
01:37 In that sense we all will face the death god one day.
01:42 But not in the way Nachiketa faced, not in the way of having a conversation in words
01:53 and sentences.
01:56 So nice and safe.
01:59 Say glory to the one who can stand unflinching, unflappable in front of Yamraj.
02:11 I'll put it differently, I'll say glory to the one who is dependent on somebody close
02:25 to him and yet has the guts to utter the truth and the guts to leave his home.
02:38 That's where Nachiketa's glory really lies.
02:45 Yamraj is fictitious.
02:49 What danger is there in facing fiction?
02:52 Nachiketa's father is not fictitious.
02:58 There is great danger in facing someone real, especially when you are dependent on that
03:04 real person.
03:14 And at first father, who is an influential person, keeps dismissing the boy away.
03:32 But Nachiketa keeps pestering him.
03:41 Finally annoyed by the boy's pesky behaviour, the father says, "I am giving you away to
03:51 death".
03:52 Obviously, the father is just uttering some nonsense in a moment of rage.
04:06 The boy has been annoying him.
04:11 The boy has been questioning his moral authority.
04:16 The father does not really want to put away the boy.
04:20 The father just wants the boy to leave him alone and not irritate him.
04:28 After all, it's a big ceremony that is going on.
04:32 Thousands of cows are being given to Brahmins.
04:37 The father is busy overseeing the arrangement.
04:42 And the boy is chasing him.
04:45 And the boy is saying, "Father, hold.
04:48 What the hell is going on?
04:50 These are useless cows.
04:52 You are donating them.
04:54 What is the worth of such a donation?"
04:58 Father is saying, "Stay away.
05:03 Can you visualize all this?"
05:04 The Kathopanishad does not explicitly tell of all this.
05:10 That which I am narrating consists of a lot of my own construction.
05:19 But this is how it would have happened.
05:24 Barely a teenager and he is chasing the father.
05:30 "Father, what really is going on?
05:32 Look at that cow.
05:33 Look, look, father, look.
05:36 Half dead."
05:37 So the father says, "Keep shut."
05:49 The boy does not relent.
05:50 Finally, father says, "I am giving you away to God.
05:57 Death God."
06:03 And now comes the moment of glory, real glory.
06:06 Nachiketa says, "Fine.
06:08 If you are giving me away to death God, then here I go away to death."
06:17 Parnishvari, that's dispassion.
06:20 That's determination.
06:27 After that, what happens is smooth and natural.
06:34 Nachiketa has already cleared the big test.
06:40 Facing Yamraj is the smaller test.
06:43 Having cleared the big test, obviously he will emerge with flying colors in the smaller
06:48 one.
06:50 The big test is to leave the home.
06:55 The big test is to give up all dependency.
07:01 Then after that, obviously, you will be blessed with the truth.
07:07 And look at Nachiketa.
07:10 The first thing he asks Yamraj is, "Let my father be alright.
07:20 Please bless my father.
07:23 Please don't let him stay angry."
07:25 His father has done the unthinkable and Nachiketa still has no bitterness.
07:43 He says, "God, first of all, you bless my father."
07:50 About truth, he asks right in the end, that's his final query.
07:55 What does he ask?
07:57 "Tell me that by which immortality is achieved.
08:03 What really is immortality?"
08:07 He doesn't directly ask about death.
08:08 He asks about immortality.
08:14 And Yamraj says, "Boy, you can have expensive toys if you want.
08:24 You can have the best of foods if you want.
08:30 The latest gadgets if you so please.
08:37 A brand new car for you, along with the driving license.
08:41 It doesn't matter if you are underage.
08:45 I am the death God, you see."
08:48 All that Nachiketa could be tempted with was tried.
08:53 It failed on him.
08:55 All the knowledge that you find in the Upanishad is easy to get.
09:02 Once you have overcome dependency, once you have stayed true to yourself, once you have
09:17 won over the craving for security, stability, the confines of a comfortable palace, the
09:40 comfort of a regular routine, once you have been able to go beyond all this, then the
09:53 truth is obvious.
09:55 That is not at all difficult.
09:58 All the great and golden verses that you come across in the Kathopanishad, they will spring
10:08 up right from your heart, they will not be distant or difficult anymore.
10:18 You get this.
10:19 Those verses are the easiest part.
10:23 You start hearing those verses right in your breath.
10:26 They are the easiest part.
10:27 The more difficult part is right in the beginning.
10:33 The more difficult part is when you ask your father for the truth, knowing fully well that
10:40 he is not in the truth.
10:41 [Music]