Theme for our discussion via Zoom this Friday 17 April.
The Katha Upanishad employs a beautiful imagery to illustrate the evolutionary journey of humanity.
Itcompares the human body to a chariot on a journey.Compelled to overcome feelings of being bound and unfulfilled, compelled toseek freedom and peace, the chariot rolls on, on through journeys of pleasures and pain,an endless cycle of experiences.
In the absence of some spiritual awareness these journeys furrow into the same old routes of the three ‘e’s: entertainment, excitement and exhaustion.
Finally,we reach a stage in our evolution when we tire of these ‘e’s and their pot-holed, dead-end routes. We’re increasingly aware ofhaving missed turn-offs to other routes offering journeys of wider, consciousness expanding experiences.
To gain control over the journey the Katha Upanishad’s analogy gives us a plan for managing the body ‘chariot.’
With the soul seated serenely as passenger and witness, we must ensure that the ‘charioteer’ intellect keeps a firm hold – tensing and loosening as needed – the ‘reins’ of the mind, a mind forever pulled this way and that by the ‘horses,’ our restive senses, drawn on by the ‘road’ of the sense objects.
We all know what happens if we let the horses have their way. We’ll end up on a rollicking ride, tipped this way and that, in danger of rolling over into a ditch.But with ‘right understanding’ the mind-reins will keep the horses on a steady path leading us on an ever-smoother journey to our destiny beyond.