Khila Kanda. Adhyaya 5, Brahmana 11. The highest austerity: sickness, death, the pyre
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Each mantra is given four ways: the Sanskrit in its Devanagari script, the same sounds in Roman letters, an English translation set in our own voice, and then the line once more in plain words, for a first and unhurried reading.
Not every passage is opened to the same depth. A few central mantras carry the full cross-school commentary, where the schools are set side by side. The rest are kept here whole and faithful, set in their place but not expounded, so the book stays entire and nothing is dropped for being thought minor.
Where the schools read a line differently, the difference is kept open. None is crowned and none is corrected. Each is met on its own terms, and where they contradict, the contradiction is left standing for you to sit with.
The supreme austerity
This indeed is the supreme austerity, that a man lies ill and suffers. He who knows it thus wins the supreme world. This indeed is the supreme austerity, that they carry the dead to the forest. He who knows it thus wins the supreme world. This indeed is the supreme austerity, that they lay the dead upon the fire. He who knows it thus wins the supreme world.
The Upanisad gives a new meaning to penance. The hardest austerity is not one you take up by choice; it is the suffering that comes at the end of life. Three moments are named in turn: the body wasting in sickness, the body carried out to the cremation ground, the body placed on the pyre. Whoever meets these knowingly, accepting them as the supreme tapas rather than dreading them, gains the highest world.