The Esoteric Significance of the Kathopanishad - 3.5 Swami Krishnananda

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24/10/2019
Chapter 3: Nachiketas’ Third Boon-5.
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We are presented with two opportunities in our life: the good one and the pleasant one. We always choose the comfortable and the pleasant one, and not the good one if it is not pleasant and comfortable. The good one need not necessarily be comfortable because our idea of pleasantness and comfort is an acquiescing in what is in harmony with the requirements of our sense-ridden physical individuality. If the psychophysical structure of our personality is to be satisfied with a particular circumstance, that is what we shall grab at the very first opportunity. Whether it is good or bad, that is a different matter. A bitter medicine is not as comfortable and pleasant as a delicious sweet dish which we would like to swallow rather than a very unpalatable decoction from the apothecary. But we know the need for bitter medicine. It will do us good, and the sweet dishes may do us harm from the point of view of our health.

We ask for satisfaction, and not blessedness. We confuse the one with the other. If our ego is satisfied, we think the good has come. God is very great. If the body is satisfied and all its longings and demands through the senses are provided, we imagine that the good has come to us. We cannot actually understand with our little minds what good is. The word ‘good’ was used in a lofty sense for the first time by the great philosopher Plato many centuries before Christ. Plato said that the idea of the good is the only good in this world. Everything else that we see in this world is an object of opinion – what in the Kathopanishad is called preyas, or the satisfying but not actually the auspicious or the blessed.

The world is too substantially concrete and heavy before us to permit our higher operations through the reason and the understanding in terms of the idea of the good which Plato speaks of or the Pure Consciousness which Acharya Sankara does not tire of emphasising in his discourses, or the satchidananda-ghana-akhanda-ekarasa which the Upanishads proclaim.

To be continued ....
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