MAJOR UPANISHADS
MAJOR UPANISHADS
MINOR UPANISHADS
Life in the world and Life in the spirit are not incompatiable. Work
or action is not contrary to knowledge of God , but indeed, if performed without
attachment, is a means to it. On the other hand, renunciation of the ego, of
selfishness-not of life. The end, both of work and of renunciation, is to know the self
with in and brahman with out, and to realize their identity. The self is Brahman, and
Brahman is all.
Filled full with Brahman are the things we see,
Filled full with Brahman are the things we see not,
From out of Brahman floeth all that is:
From Brahman all - yet is he still the same.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
The power behind every activity of nature and of man is the power of Brahman. To
realize this truth is to be immortal.
May quiteness descend upon my limbs,
My speech, my breath, my eye, my ears;
May all my senses wax clear and strong.
May Brhaman show himself unto me.
Never may I deny Brahman, nor Brahman me.
I with him and he with me- may we abide always together.
May there be revealed to me,
Who am devoted to Brahman,
The Body truth of the upanishads.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
The secret of immortality is to be found in purification of the heart, in meditaion, in
realization of the identity of the self
with in and Brahman without. For immortality is simply union with God.
OM . . .
May Brahman protect us,
May he guide us,
May he give us strength and right understanding.
May love and harmony be with us all.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
Man is composed of such elements as vital breath, deeds, thought, and the senses - all
of them deriving their being from the
self. They have come out of the self, and in the self they ultimately disappear - even as
the waters of a river disappear in the
sea.
OM . . .
With our ears may we hear what is good.
With our eyes may we behold thy righteousness.
Tranquit in body, may we who worship thee find rest.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
OM . . . Hail to the supreme self!
Since the manifold objects of sense are merely emanations of Brahman , to know them in
themselves is not enough. Since
all the actions of men are but phase s of the unversal process of creation, action alone
is not enough.
The sage must distinguish between Knowledge and Wisdom. Knowledge is of things, acts, and
relations. But wisdom is of
Brahman alone: and beyond all things ,acts, and relations, he abides foreever.To become
one with him is the only wisdom.
OM . . .
With our ears may we hear what is good.
With our eyes may we behold thy righteousness.
Tranquit in Body,may we who worships the find rest.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
The life of man is divided between walking , dreaming, and dreamless sleep. But
transcending these three states is
superconscious vision - called simply The Fourth.
OM . . .
With our ears may we hear what is good.
With our eyes may we behold thy righteousness.
Traquit in body , may we worship thee find rest.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
MAN , in his ignorence , identifies himself with the material sheaths that encompass
his true Self. Transcending these , he
becomes one with Brahman, who is pure bliss.
OM . . .
May Mitra grant us peace !
Varuna grant us peace !
Aryama grant us peace !
May Indra and Brihaspati grant us peace !
May the all - prevading Vishnu grant us peace !
Hail to Brahman !
Hail to thee, thou source of all power !
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
BRAHMAN , source, sustenance, and end of the universe, partakes of every phase of
existance. He wakes with the waking
man, dreams with dreamer, and sleeps the deep sleep of the dreamless sleeper; but he
transcends these three states to
become himself. His true nature is pure consciousness.
,h3> May my speech be one with my mind, and my mind be one with my speeach.
O thou self - luminous Brahman, remove the veil of ignorence from before me, that I may
behold thy light.
Do thou reveal to me the sprit of the scriptures.
May the truth of the scriptures be ever present to me.
May I seek day and night to realize waht I learn from the sages.
May I speak the truth of Brahman.
May I speak the truth.
May it protect me.
May it protect my teacher.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
BRAHMAN is all. From Brahman come appearances, sensations, desires, deeds. But all
these are merely name and form.
To know Brahman one must experience the identity between him and the Self, or Brahman
dwelling with in th lotus of the
heart. Only by souldoing can man escape from sorrow and death, and become one with the
subtle essence beyond all
knowledge.
,h3> May quiteness descend upon my limbs,
My speach, my breath, my eyes, my ears ;
May all my senses wax clear and strong.
May Brashman show himself unto me.
May I never deny Brahman , nor Brahman me.
I with him and he with me - may we abide always together.
May there be revealed to me.
Who am devoted to Brahman,
The Holy truth of the upanishads,
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
The Self is the dearest of all things, and only through the Self is anything else dear.
The Self is the origin of all finite
happiness, but it is itself pure bliss, transcending definition. It is beyond feeling and
beyond knowledge, but it is not beyond
the meditation of the sage.
OM . . .
Filled full with Brahman are the things we see,
Filled full with Brahman are the thins we see not,
From out of Brahman floweth all that is;
From Brahman all - yet is he still the same.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
Leadme from the unreal to the real.
lead me from the darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
The sage who by faith, devotion, and meditation has realized the Self and become one
with Brahman, is escapes from
rebirth, sorrow, and death.
May Brahman protect us.
May be guide us.
May be give us strength and right understanding.
May love and harmony be with us all.
OM . . . Peace -- Peace -- Peace.
This upanishad elaborately portrays the characteristic marks and ideals of the knower
of truth when he reaches the highest
stage of life. It also speaks of the duties of those sannyasins who are on the way to
knowledge.
Every upanisahd begins and ends with a shanti - patha or invocation of peace , or an
expiatory prayer to the deities for the
purpose of averting all evil and being in peace with the universe , which alone is
conducive to perfect calmness and
concentration of the mind needed for the study of such a subtle subject as the Self.
After Brahma had propounded to the Devarshis, in the preceeding Discourse of the
Atharva-Veda , the truth about rebirth,
Angiras shows in this Upanishad , the way to be from rebirth , from the bondage of Samsara
, once for all , to those who so
desired , by inclucating the Highest Atman , who is ever taintless and beyond all bondage
of birth and death. Angiras was
one of the seven Rishis , a Prajapati or prognator of mankind , and one of the ten
mind-born sons of Brahma. Besides
being regarded as the priest of the Gods, and Lord of Sacrifices he was also a teacher of
Brahmavaidya.
The method adopted here is what is technically called SHAKACHANDRANYAYAHA : - The maxim of
the bough and the
moon. Just as the moon , though immensely distant from the bough of the tree, is pointed
out to a child as the moon on
the bough, because she appears to be contiguous to it , even so the paramatman - thiugh He
has really no relation with this
body and the mind , still for the sake of ease to the learner - is first pointed out
through the body and the mind, which are
called here, the Outer and the Inner Atman respectively , child-mind. Thus by leading the
seeker after truth step by step, the
real nature of the Atman is disclosed.
Of the five Bindu Upanishads , namely the NADABINDU, BRAHMABINDU, AMRITABINDU,
DHYANABINDU AND
TEJABINDU, the Amritabindu occupiess a very important place sufficiently justifying its
title - which literally means "A
drop of nectar " - by its felicitous combination of a loftness of sentiment with a
directness of expression. Thus, though it is
small in bulk it is neverthless a drop from the fountain of eternal life itself , potent
to cure the manifold ills of Samsara , or
the endless rotation of birth and death.
The texts of Brahmabindu and the Amritabindu Upanishads are vetually the same , with
slight alterations in the wording
here and there , Taking into concideration the subjectivity of our experience of the
outside world, the Amritabindu
Upanishad inclucates, first, the control of the mind in the shape of desirelessness for
sense-objects, as the most effective way
to the attainment ofliberation and realisation of the One Who is knowledge and Bliss
Absolute. Then it sets forth in an easy
and convincing way the real nature of the soul and the realization of the highest truth
which leads to unity. Thus the central
theme of all the Upanishads - viz that the Jiva and Brahman are eternally one, and that
all duality is a mere
superimposition due to ignorance - finds a clear and forceful emphasis in these terse,
epigrammatic.
The Tejabindupanishad is the last of the five Bindu Upanishads forming part of the
Atharva-Veda. It conceives the
Supreme Atman dwelling in the heart of man, as the most subtle center of
effulgence.revealed only to Yogis by
supersensuous meditation. After stating the disciplines which the Truth-seeker must
undergo in order to master that most
difficult but the only process of supreme realisation, the Tejabindu sets forth, in the
highest philosophical conceptions, the
nature of That which is to be medicated upon, and realised in essence, that is to say,
Brahman, the Absolute, and points out
in conclusion some of the disqualifications which the student must shun if he desired to
be "one of those who make the
inaccessable" and reach the goal, the absolute freedom of the soul.
The Sarvopanishad is appropriately spoken of as the quintessence of the Upanishads,
being a concise and at the sametime
highly elequent presentation of the concentrated wisdom, bearing on the main points at
issue, of the Vedanta philosophy.
The Upanishad opens with questions as to the nature of the twenty-three fundamental
topics, and furnishes the answers to
them, in a consecutive order, to the end. Starting with bondage and Moksha and their
causes, the seeker after truth is
treated to a fine and delicate discrimination of the various gross and subtle states, in
and through which the soul seems to
appear within us, because of its Upadhis. Indicating the real nature of the soul and
dealing with the niceties of the ideas
conveyed by each of the worlds of Mahavakya Tat-Tvam-Asi ( That thou art ), Tthe Upanishad
seeks to point out the
identity of the Jivatman with the Paramatman or Supreme Brahman which is spoken of as the
Essence of Truth,
Knowledge, Infinitude , and Bliss, and concludes by an attempt at defining Maya, thus
completing as it were the circle in
order to show what causes the bondage and how it can be broken once for all. From the
point of happy definitions of the
most difficult and important terms in the phraseology of vedanta philosophy within the
smallest compass, this Upanishad
holds a distinct position of its own, and is worthy of our best attention.
The Self is the dearest of all things, and only through the Self is anything else dear.
The Self is the origin of all finite
happiness, but it is itself pure bliss, transcending definition. It is beyond feeling and
beyond knowledge, but it is not beyond
the meditation of the sage.
OM . . .
Filled full with Brahman are the things we see,
Filled full with Brahman are the thins we see not,
From out of Brahman floweth all that is;
From Brahman all - yet is he still the same.
OM . . . Peace - Peace - Peace.
Leadme from the unreal to the real.
lead me from the darkness to light.
Lead me from death to immortality.
KAIVALYOPANISHAD
This is another Upanishad belonging to the Atharva-Veda. The commetator Narayana calls it
the Brahma Shatarudriya,
(i.e) the Shatarudriya which glorifies the unconditioned Brahman as opposed to the
personal God Shiva, who is glorified in
the other shatarudriya which forms a part of the Taittriya Samhita. It is at once clear,
concise, and poetic, and withal,
highly philosophical. All this makes it one of the most valuable among the monor
Upanishads. The story form is an apt
device to make the subject easily intelligible as well as to give a predegree to teachings
inculcated. Ashvalayana was a
teacher of the Rig-Veda.
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