Nachiketas’s Dedication and Involvement – Learning from ancient stories

I happened to hear a discourse on Upanishads sometime back. And I am currently reading one of the modern day recipes of attaining wealth in life – Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. The book is the outcome of research done by Hill. Hill interviewed, studied the life of successful who build wealth of big magnitude and strikingly he identified certain common traits among so many people like Edison, Barnes, Ford. He identified the common traits and written those traits as chapters.

After I read first few chapters and when I was thinking about the essence of the first chapter. The first chapter talks about burning desire, obsession and creating a mental map of that one has already acquired the wealth which he is aiming for. One cannot find equivalent words in any language to express it but Hill did a tremendous job explaining to the readers, not by words but by stories.

However, I find an interesting and much inspiring story from Upanishad. A king named “Vajasravas” was performing sacred ceremony to Lord Yama. During those days, the sacred ceremonies are carried out by priest and it is the duty of the person who is performing the ceremony to offer a lot of cows and wealth. Only then, the ceremony will be complete. After the ceremony was performed, the king gave cows. However, his son, “Nachiketa” felt that the cows offered were bad (though it was good in reality). He argued with his father continuously and he was persistent to know why the priests where offered inferior cows. At some point of time the king was shouted at his son and said that he would give his kid Lord Yama in order to stop his son’s intriguing questions.

On hearing, the little kid kept slient and he believed that his was going to give him to Lord Yama. He started to prepare himself. He was thinking about serving Lord Yama and imagined that he would want to be at least an average servant if not a best servant. In his mind, he started to see himself serving Yama. He was so dedicated and involved in his father’s worship and he visualized being an obedient servant. He had a burning desire to make his father worship successful. A quite impressed Yama by the thoughts and involvement of Nachiketas explained him “What is Brahman”.

In this story, his burning desire and mental map of serving Lord Yama itself gave Nachiketas, the answers to the questions which is beyond human comprehension. By this, Nachiketas is an ever standing evidence for dedication and involvement. So was the case with Prahladha.

You can find this story told in a much better way however I wanted to reflect and dig into ancient storied to bring out modern day management/self development concepts. Truly, I believe in burning desire and if you want to pick up those qualities, read “Think and Grow Rich” and of course my blog :-). Dig deeper into your inner mind, you will find invaluable thoughts and end your day with a nice book. Good books are sleeping pills