The thirteen

कठोपनिषद्

Kaṭha Upanishad

Death the Teacher and the Secret of the Self

Faith took possession of him who was yet a boy, and he went unafraid to the house of Death to ask what remains when the body falls.

Other Upanishads begin with the cosmos or with a question put to the gods; the Katha begins with a boy, a gift that was never meant to be a gift, and a house that no living man has entered by choice. It belongs to the Black Yajurveda, and it is the most dramatic of the great Upanishads: the teacher is Yama, the lord of the Law and of Death; the pupil is a boy whose faith does not bend; and the whole matter between them is whether there is anything in us that death cannot touch. Sri Aurobindo first rendered it into English at Baroda about 1900, gave it to the readers of the Karmayogin in 1909, and said that he had tried "to convey the literary merit of the original".

The Upanishad moves in six chapters, two cycles of three. In the first Death is asked, tempted and, at last, persuaded to speak; in the second the Self is unveiled, first as the rider of a chariot, then as the Person no larger than a thumb seated in the heart, then as the eternal Tree whose roots are above. We shall follow it in that order. Under all its severity there is a laughter of delight, for the seer knows that the one whom he calls Death is only the door, and that beyond the door is a Being "who is rapture and the transcendence of rapture".

Sri Aurobindo’s writings on it · 1

The text · 119 passages

Translation by Sri Aurobindo.

1. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.1
2. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.2
3. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.3
4. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.4
5. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.5
6. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.6
7. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.7
8. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.8
9. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.9
10. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.10
11. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.11
12. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.12
13. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.13
14. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.14
15. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.15
16. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.16
17. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.17
18. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.18
19. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.19
20. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.20
21. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.21
22. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.22
23. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.23
24. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.24
25. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.25
26. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.26
27. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.27
28. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.28
29. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.1.29
30. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.1
31. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.2
32. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.3
33. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.4
34. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.5
35. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.6
36. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.7
37. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.8
38. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.9
39. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.10
40. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.11
41. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.12
42. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.13
43. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.14
44. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.15
45. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.16
46. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.17
47. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.18
48. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.19
49. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.20
50. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.21
51. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.22
52. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.23
53. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.24
54. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.2.25
55. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.1
56. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.2
57. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.3
58. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.4
59. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.5
60. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.6
61. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.7
62. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.8
63. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.9
64. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.10
65. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.11
66. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.12
67. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.13
68. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.14
69. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.15
70. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.16
71. Kaṭha Upanishad 1.3.17
72. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.1
73. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.2
74. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.3
75. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.4
76. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.5
77. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.6
78. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.7
79. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.8
80. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.9
81. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.10
82. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.11
83. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.12
84. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.13
85. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.14
86. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.1.15
87. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.1
88. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.2
89. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.3
90. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.4
91. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.5
92. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.6
93. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.7
94. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.8
95. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.9
96. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.10
97. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.11
98. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.12
99. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.13
100. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.14
101. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.2.15
102. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.1
103. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.2
104. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.3
105. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.4
106. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.5
107. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.6
108. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.7
109. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.8
110. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.9
111. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.10
112. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.11
113. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.12
114. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.13
115. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.14
116. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.15
117. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.16
118. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.17
119. Kaṭha Upanishad 2.3.18