Today, March 4, 2020 is the day after one of the most important primary elections for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sixteen states voting for delegates. This presidential election seems so critical in ways previously unimaginable.

I’m reminded of an ancient story from the Upanishads, a sacred text from north-central India, near the Ganges, from the eighth or seventh century  BCE, a century or two before the Buddha.

There was a father and a son living in a village. The father was giving away some old, withered cattle as a gift to society. His teenage son, Nachiketa, criticized his father.

“Hey, Dad, What are you doing? You’re just giving away some old, useless, worthless cows and hoping to get some karmic credit.” The father glares at him and says: “Go to hell, Son.” The son persists, “What are you going to do with me, Dad, when I become old and useless?  Are you going to give me away too? Where are you going to send me?” The father, in his fury, without thinking, says “I’m sending you to Death. That’s where you will go.”

Nachiketa thinks to himself, “Well, Why do I have to wait until the end of my life to go to Death?  Why don’t I go see Death now? Besides, I really want to know what happens after.”

Slipping away, he searches the planet to see where he can find Yama, the god of Death. After a long search, he finally finds Yama’s house.  But Yama is away, busy working, so he decides to wait for him. Three days go by.

Finally Yama returns, surprised to see a young teenage boy there. He says, “What are you doing here? I don’t usually have visitors. They usually cannot find me.” Nachiketa replies, “I wanted to ask you some questions.” Then, Yama says, “I would be happy to answer them. But, first, because I made you wait for three days in my house, without treating you as a proper guest, I want to give you three wishes. Ask for whatever you want.”

Nachiketa says “My first wish is that I want my dad to love me again and his anger to go away. I want him to forgive me for criticizing him and I want his heart to be full when he looks at me.” Yama says, “Ok. What is your second wish?” Nachiketa replies, “I have heard the fire ritual is very important to learn and I want to learn that from you. The ritual, the techniques, the hows and the whys.” Surprised and pleased, Yama looks at him with new eyes and responds, “That’s an unusual request but I’d be happy to teach you the fire ritual.” Yama proceeds to teach him and is delighted by how great of a student Nachiketa is–––a fast learner and very adept. Yama says, “You are conducting this ritual so well that from now on this fire ritual will be called after your name.” Then Yama says, “What is your third wish?”

Nachiketa looks at him with great seriousness and responds, “I want to know the answer to the question:  What happens after we die? Where do we go? Who do we become?” Yama looks at him with troubled eyes and a bit of anger. “That is one question I can never answer––that is my secret. You can have anything else you wish. I can give you as many cows and oxen as you desire, as many princesses as you desire, as many palaces as you desire, as many kingdoms as you desire, as many musicians and dancers as you desire.” He describes each of these things in scrumptious detail.

Nachiketa says, again very seriously, “I have seen you now, Yama, God of death. All of those desires have no weight with me anymore, if it ever did. Certainly not now. You can have it all, your cows, your princesses, your palaces, your kingdoms, your musicians and dancers. I don’t want any of it. What I want is only the answer to my question.”

Yama says, “That is one thing that I cannot give you.” Nachiketa is unmoved, “But that is the only thing I want.” Then, Yama sighs and says, “You’re an amazing kid, I’ve never run into a kid like you. I’ve offered everything you could have desired on this earth and you don’t want any of it. That is of the highest good. That marks you as someone who can see through the material desires of the present.”

Yama suddenly smiles, “Now I will tell you the secret–––that every moment, every waking moment, human beings have a choice to act. You have the secret already. By not succumbing to an offer of these passing, transient desires and holding out for the knowledge around death, you have proven your capacity as an unusual, advanced state of a human being. Whether you act for the common good or the passing pleasure and convenience. Every time you act, that’s when your karmic actions accrue. Every moment we live we face a steep choice of what we will become, the sum of all of our actions, when we approach the day of our death and cross over. What we do and how we act, the effects of all of our actions are like a sticky substance that stays with our souls, long after the physical body is gone.”

This ancient story with a teenager talking seriously with Yama, the Hindu god of death, about the nature of desire seems strangely prescient. We, too, I realize, need to cultivate the third wish, the grim awareness of this moment in order to deepen our consciousness and figure out our reasons to act in the face of an impending collective death.

The oral composition of the Upanishadsis said to have begun around an intensive phase of urbanization in India. Prior to this, northern India was mostly a collection of villages. It gradually went from chieftains to kingdoms and wealth accumulated during this time.

Similarly, the rapid global urbanization we have experienced over the past seventy years is culminating at this moment of world history with a huge carbon imbalance in our atmosphere, setting off immense, roaming walls of fires in California, Australia, Montana, and Brazil  and pouring rivers out of clouds, flooding our streets, people stranded on third floor balconies, waiting for the few boats to rescue them in New Orleans, Houston, Chennai.

Through this ancient story, we learn that desire itself is a strange and noxious beast, that desires usually increased without an end in sight, as if fulfilling infinite desires was a reality.

I find it so intriguing that this critical philosophy of desire emerged during one of the biggest growths of a civilization presence along the river Ganga in the heart of northern India nearly three thousand years ago. This critique of desire emerged inside of one of the great living civilizations, just at the very time of its expansiveness, an ancient growth spurt in urbanity. The Upanishadic thinkers consciously left what was then large civilizational centers and travelled to the thick forests of central India to discover what was underneath the rapid expansion of desires. Buddha himself was one of the Upanishadic leaders of his time and his deep critique of the extension of our rapid growth of our inner desires and our external desires is at the core of Buddhism. “Suffering comes from desire” says the second Noble Truth of Buddhism. Acts of goodness for the common good have more weight than fulfilling passing ephemeral desires. We are now at a planetary civilizational moment in world history, too, similar to that ancient time.  Our acting out on our excessive desires returns back to all of us in freakish, deadly weather.

In a way, we are all Nachiketa’s father, giving away what is no longer useful to us, but framing it as a gift to others, to seem virtuous. More importantly, we act for fulfilling our excessive desires, whatever they may be.  I am Nachiketa’s father and I am Nachiketa too. You are Nachiketa’s father and you are Nachiketa, too. We all are.

No matter what happened today in terms of the election, we need to keep in mind the larger framework–––no matter if you’re a socialist democrat, a progressive democrat, a left wing democrat, a southern democrat, a centrist democrat, or an evangelical republican, a right-wing republican, a centrist republican, a left-wing republican, a libertarian, or an independent of any kind. We all have different ideas of liberty, freedom, and justice. And yet we are all facing the same future together. Our beloved planet is a round sphere, with finite limits of absorbing capacities, not an infinite, flat plane stretching to infinity that we can dump our waste on, whether carbon, plastic or otherwise. We live and act on our hopes the waste we are creating will recede out of our sight, into the far distance, and never touch us again .

We all have children, our own, our sibling’s children, our neighbor’s children, our grandchildren, who are asking us some critical questions: What are we doing? Why are we doing what we’re doing? Where are we going? Greta Thunberg of Sweden the Sunrise Movement of the United States, and many other youth groups are all akin to the ancient character, Nachiketa. They are the Nachiketas of our time,standing face to face with the god of Death, not just for  human individuals, but for all the species in the face of collective death. We all must now join them and become the Nachiketas of our time and stop being like his father.

The Green New Deal is the most serious task of our life time, and we must keep it foremost in our minds as we face an election unlike any other to come.

Vijaya Nagarajan