By Ritambhara
The Katha Upanishad belongs to the Krishna Yajurveda and frames its teaching as a dialogue between the boy Nachiketas and Yama, lord of death. In the third section of its first chapter, Yama gives the parable of the chariot. The Katha Upanishad chariot is the clearest picture in the Upanishads of how a person governs appetite.
ātmānaṃ rathinaṃ viddhi śarīraṃ ratham eva tu
buddhiṃ tu sārathiṃ viddhi manaḥ pragraham eva ca
indriyāṇi hayān āhur viṣayāṃs teṣu gocarān
ātmendriyamanoyuktaṃ bhoktety āhur manīṣiṇaḥ
“Know the Self as the lord of the chariot and the body as the chariot. Know the intellect as the driver and the mind as the reins. The senses, they say, are the horses, and the objects of sense are their roads. The Self joined with body, senses and mind the wise call the enjoyer.” (Katha Upanishad 1.3.3–4)
What the parable claims
Each part has a fixed office. The intellect, buddhi, decides the route. The mind, manas, is the pragraha, the reins, from the root grah, to hold. The senses are hayāḥ, horses, and their objects are gocarāḥ, the ranges they run over. Shankara reads the objects of sense, form and the rest, as the roads the horses travel. The enjoyer, bhoktṛ, comes from the root bhuj, to enjoy or consume. Shankara holds that enjoyment belongs to the Self only as it is joined with intellect and the other conditions, and that the pure Self enjoys nothing.
The next verse names the failure
Verse 1.3.5 describes the person without discernment, whose mind is never yoked. His senses run out of control, duṣṭāśvā iva sāratheḥ, like the wicked horses of a driver. Shankara explains that the reins go slack first, and the intellect then loses its hold on the senses. The chain of command runs from discernment to mind to sense. Consumption follows the weakest link in it.
The parable and the household ledger
The United Nations Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2020 found that around two-thirds of global emissions are linked to private households under consumption-based accounting. The same report found that the richest 1 per cent of people emit more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest half. In the terms of the parable, these figures measure the horses at full gallop. On that accounting, most emissions trace back along the roads of sense to what households buy, eat, heat and drive.
The Katha places responsibility on the driver. It requires a person to hold the mind firm as the reins and to let the intellect choose the road for the senses. On this reading, cutting consumption is the ordinary work of a driver who has taken back the reins.
