Excerpt III - Dialogue With Death

The Road to Wisdom

When we let our senses follow their own lead, they cannot help going after pleasure; that is their nature. As a result, it should come as no surprise to see that most of the world today is on the road to sensory satisfaction. Shreya scarcely sees a horse. Everybody is galloping towards Preya, whose road looks like Churchill Downs in the middle of the Kentucky Derby.

Look at our popular magazines, especially the advertisements; go where the greatest number of people go when they have leisure. Pleasure is another kind of perennial philosophy, an age-old, virtually universal faith.

In this light, I think we show a very pious nature. Most Americans, for example, close their evenings with several hours of prayer. There is an altar in the living room of virtually every home in this country. As soon as the light is lit an awe comes over us, an almost hypnotic readiness to believe. Then the high priest comes onto the screen and tries to sell us things.

In the Middle Ages, when the Catholic church fell on hard times for a while, it used to sell indulgences that were supposed to atone for sins. The priests of the media sell us vacuum cleaners, automobiles, toothpaste, deodorant, and all kinds of things much more harmful than indulgences were. The background music, the unctuous tones of affected interest, soothe us and beguile our trust. These are people who care. They are so concerned about our welfare that they will take any hour of the day or night to attract our attention if we do not have this particular kind of toothpaste or travel in that kind of car.

And look at the arguments: “Indulge yourself.” “Live a little!” “Don’t you deserve the best?” The underlying message is all the same: Pleasure is everything. Wherever pleasure is promised, you will find people flocking in, putting down their money, their vitality, and their time, and saying, ‘This is living!’

The other day I saw an advertisement that began, “The greatest restaurants of Europe in ten food-filled days!” That is a pilgrimage, Nachiketa would say, as arduous as walking from Lourdes to Jerusalem. You go from shrine to shrine paying homage, and when it is all over you carry home some sacred relics: an eight-page menu, a napkin stamped “Fedelucci’s of Firenze,” a bottle of wine from Le Coq d’Or.

In Bede’s history of England, the Anglo-Saxon king Edwin is approached by emissaries from Rome to persuaded him to embrace the Christian faith. Edwin consults his two most trusted advisors, one of whom is a rather pragmatic man. “Sire,” he says, “I have worshipped the old gods most of my life, yet I do not have what I want. Can this new religion offer me fulfillment? If it can, I will embrace it, for the way I have followed has not taken me where I want to go.”

Where has the religion of pleasure taken us? I doubt that there has ever been a time in history when it was followed with greater fervor. Yet there has never been a time when human beings felt more alienated, and more desolate, more cut off from those around them.

The reply of Edwin’s other counselor will probably be remembered as long as English is read. “It has often seemed to me that our life on earth is like a swallow that suddenly darts into a brightly lit banquet room on a stormy night, lingers a moment, and then darts out a window at the other side. It comes from the wintry darkness into the warmth and the light, and for a moment we see it clearly. Then it disappears again into the darkness outside.

“That is how my life appears to me. I do not know from where I came into this world or where I am going; all I know is a brief span of light which I fly through all too swiftly. If your new religion can tell me why I am here and what lies before and after me, then I for one will follow it with all my heart.”

This is not presented as a moral issue. Death is not a moralist. He simply shrugs and says, “You can choose.” In the end, the problem with Preya is simply that it runs away from Shreya: that is, away from heath, security, and peace of mind.

When my wife and I were in one of the big cities of India many years ago, we had to go from our hotel to a bank where I had never been before. After some looking, we managed to find a taxi driver who cordially agreed to take us. It was a very picturesque trip. We saw a good deal of the city, and paid well for the experience too. Only later did I discover that the man had taken us all around the city before letting us off a few blocks from where we had been.

That is what Yama is trying to convey: we can go through life like this. We may enjoy the scenery, but only rarely does someone like Nachiketa object, “Hey, look at the meter! You’ve been driving me around this way for twenty years. Let’s take a different route.”

The real issue here is choice. If you had a car that could turn only one way, would you say that is free? If it ran around crashing into things because it could not turn, denting its fenders and wasting all its fuel, would you shrug and say, “That’s automotive nature. That’s my car’s mode of self-expression”? It would take you a long time to get anywhere, and where you arrived would not be up to you.

“Everybody likes a responsive car,” Yama says. “Wouldn’t you like to have a responsive mind?”

The other day I set out for a drive through the California wine country. With a car that did not obey me, as far as I could tell, I might have ended up about a hundred miles away at the River’s End restaurant, where the Russian River empties into the sea.

It is tragic, but many lives are like that. “People do want to learn to live,” Yama explains to Nachiketa. “But they just don’t know how to steer their cars. Sixty, seventy, eighty years later, after a lot of stops, and right-turn detours, they are out of gas at River’s End. Then there is nothing to do but go inside, get something to drink, and recall a line or two from Swinburne: ‘Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.’ There is no sense of fulfillment in life then, only a hollow feeling that something essential has been missed. The auto club has to come and say compassionately, “You’re not going to get any further with that old car. The steering’s rigid; the column is frozen tight. Better come back with another vehicle and try again.”

Nachiketa nods grimly. Young though he is, he seems to know that feeling. He does not want to experience it again.

“I understand,” he tells Yama simply. “Now tell me how to choose. How do I take the road that leads to wisdom?”

“Very simple,” the King of Death replies with his fearful smile. “Just don’t take the other road.”

That is all. When we do not choose preya, we are choosing shreya. It is a most encouraging truism. Sri Ramakrishna, with the simplicity of a child, used to give the same advice: “If you want to go east, then don’t go west.”

Simple to say but terribly difficult to do. “You have to be tough,” Yama tells his young pupil. “Really tough. Can you grasp the reins from under those flying hooves and rein your horses in? Can you train them to go where you decide? It can’t be done in a few weeks. The greatest of men and women have taken years to train their senses and passions.”

When Preya comes and gives his sales pitch, the person with little endurance immediately says, “Wrap them up. I’ll take a dozen.” It takes real toughness to wait out all the blandishments of passing pleasures when they lead us away from our real goal. Teresa of Avila called it determinacion: resoluteness, resolve, the capacity to go on trying and never give up.

When we lack this toughness, despite better goals we may cherish in our hearts, we will not be able to take the road that leads where we want to go. It is a poignant paradox: wanting only happiness, yet choosing systematically in the other direction. But if we keep on choosing shreya, Yama assures us, we will reach our goal.

Fortunately for all of us, we need not be born with this inner toughness. Very few human beings are. This is a quality that can be learned, as systematically as we learn to play the piano, and the King of Death is about to show us how.

Nachiketa, the myth concludes, learned from the King of Death, the full secret of life and death. With this knowledge, he returns to the world of mortals, no longer sixteen years old but eternal, sure of life’s purpose and overflowing with the desire to pass his knowledge on to others. As long as men and women seek to overcome death, his story will be told: not only to inspire, but to show how to follow this daring teenager’s journey into consciousness and make his discovery for ourselves.

From the book Dialogue with Death, by Eknath Easwaran; reproduced without permission.