It is important that we protect the good name of our families and not squander the goodwill and reputation that our ancestors have built up over the years. If it comes to a choice between our lives and our self-respect, we should choose self-respect, said Goda Venkateswara Sastrigal.
The example of Nachiketas is a lesson to us all in how we should value honesty and uprightness and seek to uphold our family's reputation.
Nachiketas' father performed a yaga, and it was incumbent upon him to give away all that he possessed.
The first day, he gave gold and silver, and the milk yielding cows in his possession. And he kept giving away all his belongings, until he was left with nothing else to give, but sickly cows that yielded no milk. But Nachiketas felt that it was a sin to give people scrawny cows. So he said to his father, “To whom are you going to give me?” He hoped to make his father see the folly of his ways. But as the young Nachiketas kept repeating his question, his father lost his temper and told the boy that he was going to gift him to Yama, the God of Death.
Nachiketas did not hesitate to embrace death, and he went to the abode of Yama. Yama was away, and the child was denied entry to Yama's territory by the guards there.
So the child waited for three days without food or water, until Yama himself arrived and offered the boy something to eat and drink. Such was the boy's concern for his family's reputation that he was prepared to bear the pangs of hunger and the discomforts of going without even water while he waited for Yama. He was anxious that the good name of his family should not be besmirched by his father's act of giving unhealthy cows as gifts.
A lion never loses its majesty, even when it is old, unable to hunt anymore. Will a lion eat grass, because it has become old? It will still continue to eat flesh and would in fact like to eat the flesh of an elephant. Anything less would be a blot on the lion's prowess.
Likewise, we too should safeguard the reputation of our family. But when our elders make mistakes, we should point them out, just as Nachiketas did.
