The Upaniṣads / The Kaṭha

The Kaṭha (कठ)

Naciketas (नचिकेत) and Yama (यम). The father, in anger, gives the boy to Death. The boy waits three nights. Death grants three boons. The third boon is the one Death does not want to give: what becomes of a man who has died. The teaching that follows is the rest of the book.

Six vallī (वल्ली), 119 mantras: 29, 25, 17, 15, 15, 18. A Śaṅkara (शङ्कर) bhāṣya (भाष्य) calls the last three the second adhyāya (अध्याय). These pages number the six in reading order, 1 through 6. The chariot is vallī (वल्ली) 3, mantras 3 through 11.

The six

• Vallī (वल्ली) 1. The gift, the three nights, the three boons. The third is the doubt about the dead.
• Vallī (वल्ली) 2. The better and the pleasanter. The syllable oṃ (ओं). The self is not born and does not die.
• Vallī (वल्ली) 3. The two who drink. Then the chariot: self, body, intellect, mind, senses, objects. Then the series above the senses, up to the person.
• Vallī (वल्ली) 4. The self turned outward, and the refrain etad vai tat (एतद् वै तत्).
• Vallī (वल्ली) 5. The city of eleven gates. The one who wakes in those who sleep.
• Vallī (वल्ली) 6. The tree with its roots above. Yoga (योग) as the holding of the senses. The channels of the heart.

The chariot sits beside Gītā (गीता) 3.42, which climbs from the senses to the mind, the intellect, and what is beyond. Yoga Sūtra (सूत्र) 2.54 is the senses coming to heel. 1.2 is the stilling. The Brahma Sūtra (ब्रह्म सूत्र) takes up this upaniṣad (उपनिषद्) in several places. One of them is 1.4.1, the unmanifest in the chariot series, which the sūtra (सूत्र) refuses to read as an inferred pradhāna (प्रधान) standing free.