Kathopanishad : ( 04/03/2013. )

  ====================================================================================== Monday 05, October 2026, 17:40. Books Vedanta & Upanishads Commentary on the Kathopanishad: 1.3 Swami Krishnananda Discourse 1: Nachiketas Goes to the Lord of Death -3. ======================================================================================== In another edition of this Upanishad that occurs in the Taittiriya Brahmana, the same story is told in a different way. A voice from the sky speaks. Nachiketas went to the abode of the Lord of Death, and passed three nights in the absence of Yama. He went there when Yama was not at home, and stood outside, starving. After three days, when the lord of the house came, he asked, “You have been here for three nights. What did you eat?” “On the first day, your cattle,” so goes the reply. “What did you eat on the second day?” “Your progeny.” “What did you eat on the third day?” “All your good works.” The word used in the Sanskrit language for ...

  ================================================================================================================= Tuesday 29, September 2026, 05:40. Books Vedanta & Upanishads Commentary on the Kathopanishad:  Swami Krishnananda Discourse 1: Nachiketas Goes to the Lord of Death -2. ============================================================================================== What does 'gift' mean? Charity means the giving of that which we love most. It does not mean simply giving something. Our heart has to go a little bit by the process of alienation, and our joy should diminish a little because of a part of our joy going to contribute to the joy of another person. If we do not share a little of our love and joy, and do not contribute thereby to the joy of some other person, any kind of giving in that condition cannot be regarded as a gift. If we have lost nothing by giving, we have given nothing. And if the person receiving actually receives nothing, the gift has not b...

========================================================================================== Friday 11, Sep 2026, 16:00. Books Vedanta & Upanishads Commentary on the Kathopanishad:  Swami Krishnananda Discourse 1: Nachiketas Goes to the Lord of Death -1. ============================================================================================== Discourse 1: Nachiketas Goes to the Lord of Death -1. The manner of presentation of the Kathopanishad, and also some of its contents, bear some resemblance to the manner of presentation of the Bhagavadgita. The Bhagavadgita commences with a student, the seeker Arjuna, and the Kathopanishad, which is what we are going to study now, starts with a student, Nachiketas by name. Arjuna, as a seeker of higher knowledge, surrendered himself to his Master, Sri Krishna. Here Nachiketas surrenders himself to Yama, the Lord of Death, for the sake of knowledge. The Bhagavadgita instruction starts with the distinction between sankhya and yoga. The Ka...

============================================================================================ Friday 28, Aug 2026, 16.30. Vedanta & Upanishads The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 7.1 Discourse No. 7-1. Swami Krishnananda. Post -32. ============================================================================================ The problem of the Katha Upanishad may be regarded as what pertains to the enigma of life and death. The great question of life is also the great question of death. While life is a great mystery before us, death stares at us as a still greater mystery. Both these sides of the same coin of experience stand before us as an eternal query which sages and saints from time immemorial have been trying to confront and solve to the satisfaction of each individual seeker. The Katha Upanishad is given to us by the Lord of Death in the context of the aspiration of Nachiketas who sought for eternal life. It is death that leads to life, as it were. 'Die to live', is the ...

========================================================================================================== Monday 10, Aug 2026, 07:25. The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 6.2. Discourse No. 6 Swami Krishnananda. Post -31. =========================================================================================== There is something more than Universality. What could it be? If the mind is to contemplate it, the heart would give way, the brain would cease to function. Every cell of the body will melt, and it is this condition, indescribable, inscrutable, that made saints and sages dance in ecstasy. You must have heard of Mira dancing, Tukaram dancing—all these saints danced. And why did they? They were not crazy people. It was the bursting experience of a supernatural delight that entered them. They could not explain it. They could not express it in words. They could not even contain it within themselves. It could be expressed only in an ecstasy of a supernormal behaviour. The individual i...

  ============================================================================================= Thursday 30, July 2023, 17:15. The Secret of the Katha Upanishad: 6.1. Discourse No. 6 Swami Krishnananda. Post -30. ============================================================================================== The most consequent and difficult part of yoga commences when we try to rise beyond the vijnana-atman or the intellectual personality. That stage whereby the human individual struggles to attune itself to the Universal is the hardest one in yoga. There are difficulties of various kinds in one's attempt on the path of Spirit, but these difficulties can be classified into two groups—the natural and the supernatural. The natural difficulties are, to some extent, conceivable by the human mind, and these are those which we have to confront until we reach that level of concentration and meditation wherein the intellect reaches its limits. When the limit of the intellect is reached, we ...