Mundaka Upanishad

The Mundaka Upanishad is one of the principal Upanishads. It consists of three sections.

Quotes

Olivelle, Patrick (1998). The Early Upanishads. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-512435-9. 

• As a spider spins out threads, then draws them into itself;

As plants sprout out from the earth;

As head and body hair grows from a living man;

So from the imperishable all things here spring.

• 1.1.7

• What cannot be seen, what cannot be grasped,

without color, without sight or hearing,

without hands or feet;

What is eternal and all-pervading,

extremely minute, present everywhere—

That is the immutable,

which the wise fully perceive.

• 1.6

• Two birds, companions and friends,

nestle on the very same tree.

One of them eats a tasty fig;

the other, not eating, looks on.

Stuck on the very same tree,

one person grieves, deluded

by her who is not the Lord;

But when he sees the other,

the contented Lord—and his majesty—

his grief disappears.

• 3.1.1-2

• Not by sight, not by speech, nor by any other sense;

nor by austerities or rites is he grasped.

Rather the partless one is seen by a man, as he meditates,

when his being has become pure,

through the lucidity of knowledge.

• 3.1.8

• As the rivers flow on and enter into the ocean

giving up their names and appearances;

So the knower, freed from name and appearance,

reaches the heavenly Person, beyond the very highest.

• 3.2.8