Katha Upanishad
Translated and edited by R.C. Zaehner
Chapter I
- [1] [A certain] Usan, son of Vajasravas,
gave away all his property.
He had a son called Naciketas;
- [2] And as [the cattle to be distributed as] the fee for the sacrifice performed
were being brought near,
faith entered into him, boy though he was,
and he thought:
- [3] "They drink water, eat grass, give milk, insensitive:
Joyless the worlds to which the giver of these must go!"
- [4] He said to his father,
"Daddy, to whom will you give me?"
[And he said it] a second and a third time.
His father said to him:
"I'll give you to death".
[Naciketas speaks:]
- [5] Of many the first to go.
Of many the middlemost,
What is Yama (Death) to do with me,
For today I'm his concern?
- [6] Look back, [how fared] the first,
Look forward, [how fared] the last:
Like a corn a man grows up,
Like corn he is born again.
- [7] Like a fire a Brahman guest
Enters a house;
To appease [his fiery anger],
Bring water, [Yama,] Vivasvat's son.
- [8] Hope and expectation, conviviality and good cheer,
Sacrifice, its merit, sons, cattle, - all of this
The Brahman wrests away from the man of little wit
In whose house he, nothing eating, dwells.
[Yama, the god of death, returning after three days' absence and finding
that Naciketas has not received the hospitality due to Brahmans, says:]
- [9] Since for three nights, O Brahman, thou hast dwelt
In [this] my house, an honoured guest, [yet] nothing eating.
I now salute thee, Brahman, may it go well with me.
Three boons [I grant] thee, choose [what thou wilt].
[Naciketas speaks:]
- [10] Let my father's ill-will be stilled, let him be well disposed,
Let his anger with me melt away, O Death:
Let him greet me kindly, dismissed by thee:
Of the three boons this the first I choose.
[Yama speaks:]
- [11] Thy father, Auddalaka Aruni, as before
Will be well pleased [with thee] dismissed by me;
His anger spent, how sweet his sleep at night will be,
When he [again] beholds thee from the jaws of Death set free.
[Nicaketas speaks:]
- [12] In paradise there is [no such things as] fear;
Thou art not there, nor shrinks one from old age.
Hunger and thirst, these two transcending,
Sorrow, surpassing, a man makes merry in paradise.
[13] O death, thou understand the fire that leads to paradise;
Declare it [then] to me, for I have faith:
The heavenly worlds partake of immortality;
This do I choose as my second boon.
[Yama speaks:]
- [14] This [too] I will declare to thee, - take note of it;
The fire that leads to paradise, I know it well.
Know that [this fire] can win [thee] worlds unending,
It is the ground (pratistha) [of all], hidden in secret spaces.
- [15] [And so] he told him of [this] fire, the world's beginning,
[He told him] of the firebricks, how many and how to be disposed.
And [Naciketas] repeated [all] just as he had said it:
Well satisfied with him Death spake again.
- [16] "To thee again today I grant another boon:
This fire shall bear thy name, no other;
Accept this garland variously contrived.
- [17] Who thrice performs the Naciketa rite,
With the three [Vedas] concludes a pact,
And performs the three works [prescribed],
He transcends both birth and death:
Knowing that God adorable who knows
What is Brahman born,
And realizing Him,
He attains to peace and what is absolute.
- [18] Who thrice performs the Naciketa rite,
And understands all three,
Who, knowing them, builds up the Naciketa fire,
He thrusts afar Death's fetters, sorrow surpassing,
And makes full merry in the heavenly world.
- [19] This is the Naciketa fire, thy very own,
Leading to paradise;
This didst thou choose as thy second boon;
This fire will men proclaim as thine indeed.
Naciketas, [now] thy third boon choose!"
[Naciketas speaks:]
- [20] When a man is dead, this doubt remains:
Some say, "He is," others again, "He is not,"
This would I know, by thee instructed, -
This is the third of the boons [I crave].
[Yama speaks:]
- [21] Of old the gods themselves this doubt assailed, -
How hard it is to know! How subtle a matter (dharma) !
Choose thou another boon, O Naciketas;
Insist not overmuch, hold me excused in this.
[Naciketas speaks:]
- [22] "Of old indeed the gods themselves this doubt assailed, -
How hard it is to know!" S, Death, hast thou declared.
Thou alone canst tell it forth; none other is there like thee:
No other boon is there equal to this in any wise.
[Yama speaks:]
- [23] Choose sons and grandsons to live a hundred years,
[Choose] wealth in cattle, horses, elephants and gold,
Choose wide property in land, and thou thyself
Live out thy years as many as thou wilt.
- [24] Or shoudst thou think this this is a boon [at all] equivalent,
Chooses riches and long life;
Be thou of the great ones in the land:
I grant to thee enjoyment of all thou canst desire!
- [25] Whatever a man could possibly desire
In [this] the world of men,
How hard to win,
Ask anything thou wilt at thy good pleasure, -
Fair women, chariots, instruments of music.
The like of these cannot be won by [other] men:-
All these things I give thee, bend them to thy service.
O naciketas, ask me no futher concerning death.
[Naciketas speaks:]
- [26] The morrows of a man, O Death, wear down
The power of all senses.
A life though [lived] entire is short indeed;
Keep [then] thy chariots, keep thy songs and dances!
- [27] With riches can a man never be satisfied:
When once we've seen thee, [how] sha;; we riches win?
So long as we'll live as thou [for us] ordainest;
This, then, is the only boon that I would claim.
- [28] What mortal man, grown old and wretched here below,
Could meet immortals, strangers to old age,
Know them, and [still] meditate on colours, pleasures, joys,
Finding [some] comfort in this life however long.
- [29] Wherein men, puzzled, doubt, O Death, [that tell us];
What [happens] at the great departing tell us!
That is the boon that's hidden in secret places:
Therefore no other [boon] doth Naciketas choose."
Chapter III
- [1] [Like] light and shade [there are] two [selves]
[One] here on earth imbibes the law (rta) of his own deeds:
[The other,] though hidden in the secret places [of the heart],
[Dwells] in uttermost beyond.
So say [the seers] who Brahman know,
The owners of the five fires and of the three Naciketa fires.
- [2] We may master the Naciketa fire,
[Sure] bridge for men who sacrifice,
Seeking to reach the [further] shore
Beyond the reach of fear, -
[The bridge that leads to] Brahman,
Imperishable, supreme.
- [3] Know this:
The self is the owner of the chariot,
The chariot is the body,
Soul (buddhi) is the [body's] charioteer,
Mind the reigns [that curb it].
- [4] Senses, they say, are the [chariot's] steeds,
Their object the tract before them;
What, then, is the subject of experience?
'Self, sense and mind conjoined,' wise men reply.
- [5] Who knows not how to discriminate
With mind undisciplined the while,-
Like vicious steeds untarned, his senses
He cannot master, -he their charioteer.
- [6] But he who does know how to discriminate
With mind [controlled and] disciplined,-
Like well-trained steeds, his senses
He masters [fully], -he their charioteer.
- [7] But he who knows not how to discriminate,
Mindless, never pure
He reaches not that [highest] state (pada), returns
To this round of never-ending birth and death (samsara).
- [8] But he who does know how to discriminate,
Mindful, always pure,
He gains [indeed] that [highest] state
From which he's never born again.
- [9] The man whose charioteer is wisdom (vijnana),
Whose reins a mind [controlled],
Reaches the journey's end [indeed],
Vishnu's final state (pada).
- [10] Higher than the senses are the [senses'] objects
Higher than these the mind
Higher than mind is soul (buddhi),
Higher than soul the self, the 'great'.
- [11] Higher than the 'great' the Unmanifest,
Higher than that the ''Person':
Than 'Person' there's nothing higher;
He is the goal, He the All-highest Way.[refuge]
- [12] This is the Self, deep-hidden in all beings,
[The Self that] shines not forth,-
Yet it can be seen by men who see things subtile,
By the subtile soul (bouddhi), [man's] noblest part.
- [13] Let the wise man hold tongue and mind in check,
Submit them to the intellectual (jnana) self;
Let him submit this intellect to the self [called] 'great',
And this to [that] Self which is [forever] still (santa).
- [14] Arisel Awakel Your boons you've won!
[Awake and] understand [them] !
A sharpened razor's edge is hard to cross,-
The dangers of the path,-wise seers proclaim them !
- [15] Beyond the 'great' abiding, endless, beginningless,
Soundless, intangible, It Lows not form or taste or smell,
Eternal, changeless,-[such It is,] discern It !
[For only so] can ye escape the jaws of death.
- [16] Wise men who hear and utter forth this deathless tale
Concerning Naciketas, told by Death,-
These shall win greatness in the Brahman-world.
- [17] Whoso, well versed therein, shall spread abroad
This highest mystery
Among assembled Brahmans or at the commemoration of the dead,
He is conformed to infinity,-
To infinity he's conformed !
Chapter IV
- [1] The self-existent [Lord] bored holes facing the outside world;
Therefore a man looks outward, not into [him]self.
A certain sage, in search of immortality,
Turned his eyes inward and saw the self within.
- [2] Fools pursue desires outside themselves,
Fall into the snares of widespread death:
But wise men, discerning immortality,
Seek not the Stable here among unstable things.
- [3] By what [one knows] of form and taste and smell,
Sound, touch and sexual union,
By that [same thing] one knows:
'What of all this abides?'
- [4] By what one sees these both,-
The state of slee, the state of wakefulness
'That is tne self, the great, the lord,'
So think the wise, unsorrowing.
- [5] Who knows this honey-eating self,
The living [self] so close at hand,
Lord of what was and what is yet to be
He shrinks not from him.
- [6] Who descried him from among contingent beings
As first-born of fervid penance,
As entering into the secret place [and there] abiding
He is the first-born of the waters.
- [7] Who comes to be by the breath of life (prana)
Who entered into the secret place [and there] abodes,
Aditi, pregnant with divinity,
Was born from among contingent beings.
- [8] The all-knowing [fire] concealed between the fire-sticks
Like an embryo well nurtured by a woman with child,
Should every day be reverenced by wakeful men,
Bearing their offerings to him, the fire.
- [9] From whence the sun arises,
To whither it goes down
Thereon are all the gods suspended;
None passes beyond this.
This in truth is That.
- [10] What [we see] here is also there beyond;
What there, that too is here:
Death beyond death does he incur
Who sees in this what seems to be (iva) diverse!
- [11] Grasp this with your mind:
Herein there's no diversity at all.
Death beyond death is all the lot
Of him who sees in this what seems to be diverse.
- [12] Of the measure of a thumb, the 'Person'
Abides wilhin the Self
Lord of what was and what is yet to be:
No need to shrink from Him.
- [13] Of the measure of a thumb, [this] 'Person',
Resembling a smokeless flame,
Lord of what was and of what is yet to be:
He is today, tomorrow He.
- [14] As rain that falls in craggy places
Loses itself, dispersed throughout the mountains,
So does the man who sees things (dharma) as diverse,
[Himself] become dispersed in their pursuit.
- [15] As water pure into pure [water] poured
Becomes even as [that pure water] is,
So too becomes the self of him,-
The silent sage who knows.
Chapter V
- [1] Whoso draws nigh to the city of eleven gates [body]
Of him who is not born, whose thought is not perverse,
He grieves not, for he has won deliverance:
Deliverance is his !
- [2] As swan he dwells in the pure [sky],
As god (vasu) he dwells in the atmosphere,
As priest he dwells by the altar,
As guest he dwells in the house:
Among men he dwells, in vows,
In Law (rta) and in the firmament;
Of water born, of kine, of Law (rta),
Of rock-[He], the great cosmic Law !
- [3] He leads the out-breath upward
And casts the in-breath downward:
To this Dwarf seated at the centre
All gods pay reverence.
- [4] When the embodied soul whose dwelling is the body
Dissolves and from the body is released,
What then of this remains?
- [5] Neither by breathing in nor yet by breathing out
Lives any mortal man:
By something else they live
On which the two [breaths] depend.
- [6] Lo! I will declare to thee this mystery
Of Brahman never-failing,
And of what the self becomes
When it comes to [the hour of] death.
- [7] Some to the womb return,-
Embodied souls, to receive another body;
Others pass into a lifeless stone (sthanu) In accordance with their
works (karma),
In accordance with [the tradition] they had heard (sruta).
- [8] When all things sleep, [that] Person is awake,
Assessing all desires:
That is the Pure, that Brahman,
That the Immortal, so they say:
In It all the worlds are stablished;
Beyond it none can pass.
- [9] As the one fire esconced within the house
Takes on the forms of all that's in it,
So the One Inmost Self of every being
Takes on their several forms, [remaining] without [the while].
- [10] As the one wind, once entered into a house,
Takes on the forms of all that's in it
So the One Inmost Self of every being
Takes on their several forms, [remaining] without [the while].
- [11] Just as the sun, the eye of all the world,
Is not defiled by the eye's outward blemishes,
So the One Inmost Self of every being
Is not defiled by the suffering of the world,-
[But remains] outside [it].
- [12] One and all-mastering is the Inmost Self of every being;
He makes the one form manifold:
Wise men who see Him as subsistent in [their] selves,
Taste everlasting joy, -no others.
- [13] Permanent among impermanents, conscious among the conscious,
The One among the many, Disposer of desires:
Wise men who see Him as subsistent in [their] selves,
Taste of everlasting peace, -no others.
- [14] 'That is this ' so think [the wise]
Concerning that all-highest bliss which none can indicate.
How, then, should I discern lt?
Does It shine of itself or but reflect the brilliance?
- [15] There the sun shines not, nor moon nor stars;
These lightnings shine not [there], -let alone this fire.
All things shine with the shining of this light,
This whole world reflects its radiance.
