🌷 Katho Upanishad 🌷
Chapter 3
The grace of the divine
🌻 Day 19 🌻
You don’t know how the mind escapes and finds a way out. It reason’s out everything. So, even when an instructions is given about the nature of the self, the mind is clouded with aversions, cravings, disappointments, angers – any of these emotions, and the instruction doesn’t get registered. It doesn’t filter down. It doesn’t ring a bell. The right situation for this is the mind being hollow and empty.
The Lord of Death says, “May we have more seekers like you.” It’s not just a student who is blessed to have a great teacher. A teacher also feels happy and blessed to have a student who sees beyond logic and scholarship. When you think your logic is very strong, you don’t see light on other side. “I am right. I am so good.” Then you make others the culprit, the world as culprit.
A teenage girl went into a wrong ways. She was addicted to alcohol and drugs. When she realised it is a wrong way, she blamed her mother. Earlier she blamed her mother because she was very strict. Now she blamed the mother, “Why weren’t you strict enough? Why did you let me go astray?” The mother was caught in between. She didn’t know what to do. When the mother was strict, the girl blamed and left her. What could she do? She could not tie her up at home. And when she got back to her senses, she came back and blamed her mother. The daughter and mother both were at a loss.
Millions of people are in such strange situations, that ‘you are responsible for everything.’ Many of us see life through limited logic and justify our action, justify our attitude. We think we are right. We are like a frog in the well thinking this is the
universe.
Nachiketa then said, “I know that earthly treasures are transient. I can never reach the Eternal through them. Hence I have renounced all my desires for earthly treasure to win the Eternal through your instructions.” He basically said, “Now come to the point. I praise you, you praise me. You are just beating around the bush.”
The Lord of Death is considered as Deva. He is not considered a demon. Death is a part of divinity. Death is all compassion. Death is not considered cruel.
