King Yayati was dying. He was already a hundred years old. Death came and Yayati said:
- Maybe you can take one of my sons? I had not yet truly lived, I was busy with the affairs of the kingdom and forgot that I would have to leave this body. Be compassionate!
Death said:
- Okay, ask your children.
Yayati had a hundred children. He asked, but the elders had already become cunning. They listened to him, but did not move. The youngest - he was very young, he was only sixteen years old - came up and said: “I agree.” Even Death felt pity for him: if a hundred-year-old man has not yet lived, then what can we say about a sixteen-year-old boy?
Death said:
“You don’t know anything, you’re an innocent boy.” On the other hand, your ninety-nine brothers are silent. Some of them are seventy years old. They are old, their death will come soon, it is a matter of several years. Why you?
The young man replied:
“If my father hasn’t enjoyed life in a hundred years, how can I hope to?” All this is useless! It is enough for me to understand that if my father could not make a living in the world in a hundred years, then I will not make a living even if I live a hundred years. There must be some other way to live. There seems to be no way to make money with life, so I'll try to achieve it with death. Allow me, don't create obstacles.
Death took his son, and the father lived another hundred years. Then Death came again. The father was surprised:
- So fast? I thought that a hundred years is so long, there is no need to worry. I haven't lived yet; I tried, I planned, now everything is ready, and I began to live, and you came again!
This happened ten times: each time one of the sons sacrificed his life, and the father lived.
When he was a thousand years old, Death came again and asked Yayati:
- Well, what do you think now? Should I take one son away again?
Yayati said:
- No, now I know that even a thousand years is useless. It's all in my mind and it's not a matter of time. I get involved in the same vanity again and again, I have become attached to the waste of being and essence. So this doesn't help now.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru