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Upanishads

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When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.

The Upanishads are a collection of religious texts, written in Sanskrit and forming part of the Hindu scriptures. They were written between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE, though the name Upanishad is sometimes also extended to cover many later writings on the Vedanta philosophy.

Quotes

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The quotations used here are primarily taken from the translation by Max Müller, first published 1879-84.
Know that all this, whatever moves in this moving world, is enveloped by God.
That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped.
  • सत्यमेव जयते (satyameva jayate)
    • Truth alone triumphs
      • Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.6
        • Also translated as: "Truth verily triumphs."; "Truth shall prevail."
  • See how it was with those who came before,
    How it will be with those who are living.
    Like corn mortals ripen and fall; like corn
    They come up again.
  • Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.
  • As large as this ether (all space) is, so large is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and whatever is not (i. e. whatever has been or will be), all that is contained within it.
  • Lead us from the unreal to the real. Lead us from darkness to light. Lead us from death to immortality.
  • This earth is the honey (madhu, the effect) of all beings, and all beings are the honey (madhu, the effect) of this earth.
  • काममय एवायं पुरुष इति
    स यथाकामो भवति तत्क्रतुर्भवति
    यत्क्रतुर्भवति तत्कर्म कुरुते
    यत्कर्म कुरुते तदभिसम्पद्यते
    • You are what your deep, driving desire is
      As your desire is, so is your will
      As your will is, so is your deed
      As your deed is, so is your destiny
      • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.4.5
  • When the speech of this dead person enters into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the hearing into space, into the earth the body, into the ether the self, into the shrubs the hairs of the body, into the trees the hairs of the head, when the blood and the seed are deposited in the water, where is then that person?
    • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 3.2.13. [5]

[Upanishad], 1.1.6; the book The Upanishads translation by Eknath Easwaran.

  • The gods love what is mysterious, and dislike what is evident.
    • Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 4.2.2. [6]
  • Know that all this, whatever moves in this moving world, is enveloped by God. Therefore find your enjoyment in renunciation; do not covet what belongs to others.
  • That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not see with the eye, that by which man sees the activities of the eye, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not hear with the ear, that by which man hears the ear’s hearing, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not smell with the organ of smell, that by which the organ of smell is attracted towards its objects, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped.

Ramacharka, The spirit of the Upanishads (1907)

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Ramacharka, 1907, The spirit of the Upanishads, Cosmo Classics, New York

  • Thinking evolves the objective. All the three worlds exist through thinking. The Kosmos melts away on its dissolution. This thinking should carefully be diagnosed.
    • Yogavasishtha p. 44
  • Knowledge of the Divine dissolves all bonds, and gives freedom from every kind of misery including birth and death. S'vetasvataropanishad.
    • p. 8
  • Mind being nearest mind, those who abandoning the true secret, apply themselves only to the body, are described as lost in physical attachment. Yogavasishtha.
    • p. 58
  • You may drink the ocean dry; you may uproot from its base the mountain Meru; you may swallow fire. But more diffucult than all these, oh Good One! is control over the mind. Panchadasi.
    • p. 45
  • The light breaking upon the mind should not be excluded by that false logic which puts forth unholy guesses of every kind up to the obliteration even of the facts of consciousness. Yogavasishtha.
    • p. 22
  • Trees continue to vegetate, and so do live on beasts and birds; he alone lives whose mind lives not in consequence of taking on a variety of forms. All holy writ is so much burden to him who has not acquired self-control, the body is so much burden to him who knows only the anatman (no-self.)
    • Yogavasishtha. p. 23

Quotes about the Upanishads

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  • On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads, and no finer fruit than the Vedanta philosophy.
    • Paul Deussen. History of Philosophy. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
  • The Upanishads are as old as Homer, and as modern as Kant.
    • Durant, Will (1963). Our Oriental heritage. New York: Simon & Schuster.
  • As we study the philosophy of the Upanishads, the impression grows on us that the attainment of this path is not exactly the simplest of tasks. Our Western superciliousness in the face of these Indian insights is a mark of our barbarian nature, which has not the remotest inkling of their extraordinary depth and astonishing psychological accuracy.
    • Carl Jung. Psychological Types. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
  • And if, indeed, in addition to this he is a partaker of the benefit conferred by the Vedas, the access to which, opened to us through the Upanishads, is in my eyes the greatest advantage which this still young century enjoys over previous ones, because I believe that the influence of the Sanscrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century: if, I say, the reader has also already received and assimilated the sacred, primitive Indian wisdom, then is he best of all prepared to hear what I have to say to him. My work will not speak to him, as to many others, in a strange and even hostile tongue; for, if it does not sound too vain, I might express the opinion that each one of the individual and disconnected aphorisms which make up the Upanishads may be deduced as a consequence from the thought I am going to impart, though the converse, that my thought is to be found in the Upanishads, is by no means the case.
  • The view of things … that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated.
  • From every sentence deep original and sublime thoughts arise, and a high and holy and earnest spirit pervades the whole. In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads… It has been the solace of my life; and it will be the solace of my death. They are the product of the highest wisdom...
    • Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in A Look at India From the Views of Other Scholars, by Stephen Knapp [8], quoted in Schopenhauer on Self, World and Morality: Vedantic and Non-Vedantic Perspectives by A. Barua. Also in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
    • Also translated as: "From every sentence (of the Upanishads) deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit....They are destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people." quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
  • The Indian air surrounds us, the original thoughts of kindred spirits ... And O! How the mind is here washed clean of all its early in grafted Jewish superstition! It IS the most profitable and most elevating reading which is possible in the world. ... [Sanskrit literature is] 'the greatest gift of our century.
    • Arthur Schopenhauer. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
  • Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries. How entirely does the Upanishad breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one, who, by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his Soul!
    • Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
  • There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction....The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad.
  • The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West.
  • I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.
    • Niels Bohr. source: Indian Conquests of the Mind, Saibal Gupta. Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
  • The earliest of these Upanishads will always maintain a place in the philosophic literature of the world, among the most astounding products of the human mind.
    • Max Müller. source: Hinduism Invades America, Wendell Thomas Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
  • You must remember that what the Bible is to the Christians, what the Koran is to the Mohammedans, what the Tripitaka is to the Buddhist, what the Zend Avesta is to the Parsees, these Upanishads are to us. These and nothing but these are our scriptures. The Purânas, the Tantras, and all the other books, even the Vyasa-Sutras, are of secondary, tertiary authority, but primary are the Vedas. Manu, and the Puranas, and all the other books are to be taken so far as they agree with the authority of the Upanishads, and when they disagree they are to be rejected without mercy.
    • (Vivekananda) [9]
  • The Upanishads, the Vyâsa-Sutras, and the Gita, therefore, have been taken up by every sect in India that wants to claim authority for orthodoxy, whether dualist, or Vishishtâdvaitist, or Advaitist; the authorities of each of these are the three Prasthanas. We find that a Shankaracharya, or a Râmânuja, or a Madhvâchârya, or a Vallabhâcharya, or a Chaitanya - any one who wanted to propound a new sect -had to take up these three systems and write only a new commentary on them. Therefore it would be wrong to confine the word Vedanta only to one system which has arisen out of the Upanishads. All these are covered by the word Vedanta.
  • The objections you show about the Vedas would be valid if the word Vedas meant Samhitâs. The word Vedas includes the three parts, the Samhitas, the Brâhmanas, and the Upanishads, according to the universally received opinion in India. Of these, the first two portions, as being the ceremonial parts, have been nearly put out of sight; the Upanishads have alone been taken up by all our philosophers and founders of sects. The idea that the Samhitas are the only Vedas is very recent and has been started by the late Swâmi Dayânanda. This opinion has not got any hold on the orthodox population. The reason of this opinion was that Swami Dayananda thought he could find a consistent theory of the whole, based on a new interpretation of the Samhitas, but the difficulties remained the same, only they fell back on the Brahmanas. And in spite of the theories of interpretation and interpolation a good deal still remains. Now if it is possible to build a consistent religion on the Samhitas, it is a thousand times more sure that a very consistent and harmonious faith can be based upon the Upanishads, and moreover, here one has not to go against the already received national opinion. Here all the Âchâryas (Teachers) of the past would side with you, and you have a vast scope for new progress.

See also

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Principal Upanishads
Other Upanishads
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Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia has an article about:


Upanishads
Principal Isha • Kena • Katha • Prashna • Mundaka • Mandukya • Taittiriya • Aitareya • Chandogya • Brihadaranyaka
Other Shvetashvatara
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