Dharma Katha

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 13

There is a moment that every family knows, or will know. A room, quiet. A person in a bed, breathing slowly. The people who love them, standing close, saying nothing, because there is nothing that is enough. And then the breath stops.

Source note. Labels: text and tradition. The account of the dying person, death approaching like a serpent, the last vision in which all worlds appear as one, the moment that seems an age, the two messengers, and the thumb-sized person drawn from the bo...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 12

Look at what a man carries to a riverbank in Pitru Paksha. A small copper vessel of water. A pinch of black sesame seeds. A few blades of green grass. And sometimes, a handful of barley. Nothing else.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 10 first.

Source note. Label: tradition. The uses of kusha, sesame and barley in the rite are living tradition, and the reasons given, purity, protection, association with Vishnu, dearness to the ancestors, the link to the harvest, ar...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 11

A father sits alone in his hermitage. His son is dead. He has performed all the proper rites for the body. The fire is out. The mourners have gone. And now, in the silence, he does something no one has ever done before. He begins to cook.

Source note. Label: scripture. This story is from the Mahabharata, Anushasana Parva, section ninety-one in the Ganguli translation. The lineage from Brahma to Atri to Dattatreya to Nimi to Srimat, Srimat's thousand years of austerity and death, Nimi's gr...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 10

Hold out your hand and imagine there is water in it. Cool, clear, ordinary water. The kind you drink without thinking. Now imagine that this water is a message.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 6 first.

Source note. Labels: the water in the Ganga story is scripture, from the Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga forty-one and forty-four. The details of the tarpan rite, the direction, sesame, kusha and the three offerings of water, are living tradition. The meaning of the wo...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 9

The river of heaven fell from the sky, and she was furious. Not with the earth. Not with the king who had called her. She fell in a rage of pride, with a single thought in her mind: I will sweep away the god who dares to stand in my way. She hit his head.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 8 first.

Source note. Label: scripture. This story is from the Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, sarga forty-three and forty-four. The de...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 8

At the end of a thousand years, a voice spoke from the sky. The man standing in the fire had no idea how long he had been there. His skin was dark from the sun. His arms had stopped hurting long ago. He had stopped thinking about himself. He was, by now, only a wish, standing on two feet: let the river come.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 7 first.

Source note. Label: scripture. This story is from the Valmiki Ra...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 7

How long would you keep trying at something if you knew you might die before it worked? A year? Ten years? A whole life? Now imagine you are not the first to try. Your grandfather tried. He failed. Your father is trying, and he too is going to fail. And you are told: this is your task too, and you may fail, and even so, you must not stop.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 2 first.

Source note. Label: scripture. Th...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 6

On a rooftop in the early morning, a woman places a plate. It holds a little rice, a spoon of lentils, a piece of bread. She sets it on the parapet, steps back, and waits. She is not waiting for a guest. She is waiting for a crow.

Missed the previous story? Listen to Episode 1 first.

Source note. Label: tradition. The custom of kaak bali, the offering to the crow in Shraddha, and the belief that ancestors may come in the fo...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 5

Here is a love story that begins in a pit full of the dead. A sage finds his ancestors hanging upside down in the dark, and he decides to marry. But he cannot find a bride worthy of him. So he makes one. This is Dharma Katha, Season One, Pitru Paksha. Episode five. In episode three we heard how the sage Jaratkaru found his ancestors hanging by a thread. Today we hear a second story with the same picture at its heart: a sage, a pit, and ancestors who ca...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 4

A child is born. A room fills with sound. A mother laughs and cries at the same time. And, says a very old Sanskrit text, in that very moment, before the child has done a single thing, before a word or a breath of choice, the child already owes. This is Dharma Katha, Season One, Pitru Paksha. Episode four. It is a short one. In the last episode, we met a sage who discovered his ancestors hanging by a thread. Today we look at the ancient sentence that names wh...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 3

Imagine walking through a forest, alone, thin as a stick, a man who has decided that nothing in the world matters except the fire inside him. You have not slept properly in years. You eat almost nothing. You have given up home, wealth, marriage, name. You are proud of it. You think you are close to God.

Source note. Label: scripture. This story is from the Mahabharata, Adi Parva, Astika Parva, in the sections numbered thirteen and forty-five to forty-seven in the Ganguli translation. The de...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 2

Sixty thousand young men rode out of a city one morning. Not one of them came home. And when their father, an old king, finally learned what had happened to them, there was no body to bury, and no funeral fire to light. There was only a heap of ash, deep under the earth, and a promise that would take three more generations to keep.

Source note. Label: scripture. This episode follows the Valmiki Ramayana, Bala Kanda, chapters thirty-eight to forty-one. The boon of Bhrigu, th...

Dharma Katha · Season 1: Pitru Paksha · Episode 1

A man stands knee-deep in a cold river, just after dawn. He faces south. In India, south is the direction of the dead. In his cupped hands he holds a little water, a few black sesame seeds, and some blades of sacred kusha grass. He says a name. His father's. Then another name. His grandfather's. Then a third. His great-grandfather's, a man he never met, known to him only as a name his own father once said.

Source note. Label: scripture and living tradition. The co...