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Tonight and next week we'll be exploring what I sometimes think of as three key facets of spiritual practice that really serve our awakening and our freedom.

And there's an ancient teaching story from the Upanishads that I've always loved and every time I revisit it, I feel like there's more that comes out of it as happens with all really good teaching stories.

So I'd like to share with you a bit of this story and we'll use this story as a kind of grounding for both weeks.

And I'm going to read you a little bit of what you can find. It's one of the versions you can find on the web of Nachikita and the Lord of Death.

So Nachikita is a young man from India. He's the son of a rich merchant who also happens to be a very miserly guy.

And when his father was making donations in order to receive a gift from the gods, Nachikita noticed that he was donating only the cows he owned that were old, our lame, our blind.

So publicly he brought this up. He challenges father and basically in his father, shame and anger, his father said, I give you to Yama, which is death.

And now that's kind of like saying go to hell, you know, but he said, I give you to Yama. And Nachikita being a very sincere young man and taking things literally, he thought, okay, so he took him for his word and went off into the dense forest searching for death.

And finally he sat and waited for death to appear and he sat through pain and he sat through hunger and he sat through exhaustion.

And he arrived in the land of Yama. He was greeted by Yama's three assistants who were, as you might imagine, pestilence, famine and war, his three assistants.

And they told him death was out. So he said, I'll wait. And he waited. And he waited through three days that were pretty intense, pretty miserable for him, but he waited patiently.

And finally Yama arrived and sensing the boy's patience and his determination and his sincerity. He offered him any three boons, any boons of his choosing to continue on his spiritual journey.

So Nachikita's first wish was for peace with his father, that all be forgiven, that he, that he lived his life with an undefended heart. And he knew that he couldn't move on in his spiritual path if he was pushing his father or anyone out of his heart.

So that was his first request and it was granted and his heart was quite open and free from that. His second request, his second wish was for inner fire.

Now inner fire is really that sometimes called the sacred fire. It's the energy that brings the path alive.

It's a quality of devotion and courage to really commit ourselves fully to give everything we've got to what we're doing. And when we do that, when we give ourselves fully to the path, of course, there's a profound kind of freedom that's possible.

So that was granted. So here he had his heart was open and his energy was alive and full for really going the whole ten yards and he was asked what his third wish might be.

And he said, for my third wish, I want to realize the truth of that which is beyond death. I want to know the mystery of that which is timeless, which is immortal.

Now Lord Yama was taken aback. He said, look, this is your third and final wish. You could have anything you want. You could have beautiful women or maidens that could accompany you. You could have the chariots with the fastest steeds in the kingdom to carry you on your way. You could have your own palace.

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