Yama

On a sacrificial ground thick with incense smoke, a boy stood watching a herd of cows that his father had just given away. The cows were thin and old, and they had stopped giving milk long ago. The boy was named Nachiketa, and he understood something the grown-ups seemed to have forgotten. A gift with no value left in it cannot buy a true blessing.

His father, Vajashravasa, was holding a great sacrificial ceremony. By custom, the man who made the offering had to give away the most precious things he owned. But he gave only cows that nobody wanted. Nachiketa went to his father and asked politely, "Father, to whom will you give me?" He asked once, then twice, then three times. The father was busy and grew annoyed. In a moment of temper he said something he surely regretted right afterward. "I give you to Death!"

Nachiketa did not cry, and he was not afraid. He was a brave child who kept his word. To him, a father's spoken word was like a sacred oath, and what had been promised had to be done. So the boy set out alone to find the palace of Yama.

Yama is not a frightening ghost. He is Dharmaraja, which means the King of Righteousness. People believe he was the first to pass through death, and that he then became king of the realm of the ancestors, where he weighs every matter with fairness.

When Nachiketa arrived, Yama was away. The boy sat down to wait at the gate. One day passed. Then two days. Then three, without a grain of rice or a sip of water. Still he waited patiently, his heart calm as a lake at dawn.

When Yama returned and saw the boy sitting there, he was startled. In the old tradition, making a sincere guest wait three days, hungry and thirsty, was a serious fault. The King of Righteousness knew he had failed in courtesy, and he wanted to make amends.

Yama spoke warmly. "Child, a guest waited three nights at my gate with nothing to eat. So I grant three wishes, one for each night. Speak."

For the first wish, Nachiketa asked that his father's anger be gone, so that when he came home, his father would welcome him with the same love as before. Yama smiled and granted it at once.

For the second wish, he asked to learn about the sacred sacrificial fire, the fire that leads the way to a realm of peace. Yama gladly taught him every detail. Moved by the boy's hunger to learn, he even named the fire after him.

Then came the third wish. Nachiketa looked up, his eyes bright and calm, and asked the greatest of questions. "Tell me the secret of death. After the body is gone, does the soul remain?"

This was not a frightened curiosity. It was a question of wisdom, one that wise sages had spent thousands of years trying to answer.

At first Yama tried to steer him toward another wish. "This one is very hard," he said. "Even the gods of old were unsure. Ask for something else." Then he laid out before the boy many precious things. Gold and silver piled as high as mountains. A kingdom with mighty armies. A very long life and every pleasure in the world.

But Nachiketa shook his head at each one. He said something that stopped the king short. "These things will fade. I want to know what does not fade."

At that moment Yama stopped testing him. He had made a promise, and as the King of Righteousness he kept his word in full. More than that, joy rose in his heart, the joy of a teacher who has at last met a student worthy of him.

And he taught. There is something in each of us called Atman, the deepest and truest self. Atman is not born, and it does not pass away. When this body falls away, Atman remains whole, quiet and everlasting, like the sky that does not change at all when clouds drift across it.

This story comes from the Katha Upanishad, a sacred Hindu text from several thousand years ago. Yama, though, traveled a very long way to reach us. In Vietnamese Buddhist belief, he was welcomed and became Diêm Vương, the wise official who weighs the good deeds of every person. He is the same just king. From faraway India, he has become a familiar figure in the paintings of Vietnamese pagodas.

It was not Nachiketa who went looking for Death. It was Death who found a worthy student.