The Lord of Death and meditation

In our Sunday mini-retreat, we took some time to read an excerpt from one of the most famous of the Upanishads - holy scriptures of the Vedic tradition. In this tale, Nachiketa is cursed by his father and as a response he travels to see Yama, Lord of Death. Yama is away and Nachiketa must wait for him to return. Yama is mortified that a guest has been made to wait. He offers Nachiketa any gift he wants. Nachiketa wants to know about the mysteries of death. Yama is reluctant but the boy has the right to ask. In this excerpt Yama explains how we apply our minds to understand the truth of the Self and in so doing, we understand our mortality and immortality.

Behind this is a story about the fear of our Ego, the fear of death, of annihilation, of being set aside so that the true mind may pursue the holy life. In yoga, do not have fear, trust the path, trust your intuition, learn to put down the outer fussing mind and find the inner sanctum of stillness...

Katha Upanishad

Translated by Eknath Easwaran

In the secret cave of the heart, two are

Seated by life's fountain. The separate ego

Drinks of the sweet and bitter stuff,

Liking the sweet, disliking the bitter,

While the supreme Self drinks sweet and bitter

Neither liking this nor disliking that.

The ego gropes in darkness, while the Self

Lives in light. So declare the illumined sages,

And the householders who worship

The sacred fire in the name of the Lord.

May we light the fire of Nachiketa

That burns out the ego, and enables us

To pass from fearful fragmentation

To fearless fullness in the changeless Whole.

Know the Self as lord of the chariot,

The body as the chariot itself,

The discriminating intellect as

The charioteer, and the mind as the reins.

The senses, say the wise, are the horses;

Selfish desires are the roads they travel.

When the Self is confused with the body,

Mind, and senses, they point out, he seems

To enjoy pleasure and suffer sorrow.

When a person lacks discrimination

And his mind is undisciplined, his senses

Run hither and thither like wild horses.

But they obey the rein like trained horses

When a person has discrimination

And the mind is one-pointed. Those who lack

Discrimination, with little control

Over their thoughts and far from pure,

Reach not the pure state of immortality

But wander from death to death; while those

Who have discrimination, with a still mind

And a pure heart, reach journey's end,

Never again to fall into the jaws of death.

With a discriminating intellect

As charioteer, a well-trained mind as reins,

They attain the supreme goal of life

To be united with the Lord of Love.