Katha Upanishad
Katha Upanisad
Through a boy's dialogue with Death itself, the self is shown to survive the body, the good and the pleasant point in opposite directions, and only the wise choose the good over fleeting pleasure to escape rebirth.
- dialogue between Nachiketas and Death
- the good versus the pleasant as a moral choice
- the chariot simile for self, intellect, and senses
- survival of the self after death and escape from rebirth
Frames its teaching as a dialogue between the boy Nachiketas and Yama, god of death, who grants three boons and reluctantly answers the final question of what happens after death. It introduces the influential chariot simile, the self as rider, intellect as charioteer, mind as reins, senses as horses, later echoed in the Bhagavad Gita. Part of the Yajurveda tradition, it is among the more literarily unified Upanishads. Nachiketas spends his first two boons on his father's peace of mind and on the secret of a fire sacrifice that leads to heaven, refusing wealth, kingdoms, and long life when Yama offers them as a distraction, and holds out for the third boon, knowledge of what survives death, precisely because it is the one thing Yama tries hardest to withhold.
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