Six Weeks with the Upanishads

The Isa opens with a chant about wholeness: the visible comes from the invisible whole, and the whole remains whole. Its first verse asks that everything be seen as covered by the Lord, and that we enjoy by renouncing. Read slowly, and read Paramananda’s commentary after each verse. A question for the week: what would change if you saw the ordinary things around you as held within something whole?

Verses VI and VII are among the most loved in all the Upanishads: the one who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings no longer shrinks from anything, and for one who sees this oneness there is no delusion and no grief. The closing verses are a prayer for the face of truth to be uncovered. A question for the week: whom do you find it hardest to see this way?

Our essay on the great saying of the Chāndogya Upanishad, tat tvam asi, which the Isa’s vision of the Self in all beings anticipates.

The Katha tells the story of Nachiketas, a boy given away by his father to Death, who waits three days at Death’s door and is granted three wishes. For the third he asks what becomes of a person after death, and refuses every offer of wealth and long life in its place. A question for the week: what would you be offered, and what would you refuse, for the one thing you most want to know?

Death begins his teaching with a choice that faces everyone: the good and the pleasant are different, and the wise choose the good. He goes on to the Self that is never born and never dies, subtler than the subtle and greater than the great, which is not reached by argument or learning but reveals itself to the one it chooses. A question for the week: notice, each day, one moment when the good and the pleasant pulled in different directions.

The Katha’s most famous image: the Self is the lord of the chariot, the body is the chariot, the intellect the driver, the mind the reins and the senses the horses. The later parts speak of the Self as a light without smoke in the heart, and end with a definition of yoga as the stilling of the senses and the mind. A question for the week: in your own chariot, who is usually holding the reins?

The Library’s entry on ātman, the Self, and how the traditions understand it.

The Kena begins with a question: by whom is the mind sent towards its objects? The answer is that which is the ear of the ear and the mind of the mind, which the eye cannot see but by which the eye sees. Its second part turns knowledge upside down: the one who thinks he knows does not know. A question for the week: can you turn your attention, even for a moment, from what you see to that by which you see?

To close the path, our essay setting the Brahman of the Upanishads beside Plotinus’s One.