Chāndogya Upaniṣad

The Chāndogya Upaniṣad is one of the two oldest and most important The Upaniṣads, composed probably in the seventh or sixth century BCE in the Kuru-Pañcāla region of the upper Gaṅgā plain. It belongs to the Sāma Veda — the Veda of chants — and takes its name from the chandogas, the priests who sang them. Its eight chapters begin with long meditations on the sacred syllable Oṃ and the chants of the ritual, and move through some of the most famous stories and teachings in Indian thought: the honest boy Satyakāma; the sage Śāṇḍilya’s declaration that “all this is Brahman”; the doctrine of rebirth revealed by a king; and above all, in the sixth chapter, Uddālaka Āruṇi‘s instruction of his son Śvetaketu, culminating nine times in the words tat tvam asi, “that thou art” — the great saying (mahāvākya) that became the watchword of Advaita Vedānta. Its eighth chapter tells how the god Indra and the demon Virocana went to learn about the Self, and how the demon was satisfied too soon.

Structure

The Upaniṣad has eight chapters (prapāṭhakas). Chapters 1–2 are mainly ritual meditations on the udgītha (the central chant of the Sāma Veda) and Oṃ. Chapter 3 contains cosmic meditations and Śāṇḍilya’s doctrine. Chapter 4 tells stories of teachers and students, including Satyakāma and Raikva. Chapter 5 includes the contest of the senses and the doctrine of the five fires and the two paths. Chapter 6 is Uddālaka’s teaching. Chapter 7 is Sanatkumāra’s teaching to the sage Nārada. Chapter 8 concerns the space within the heart and the story of Indra and Virocana.

The text

Oṃ and the chant

The Upaniṣad opens: “Oṃ — one should venerate this syllable as the udgītha” (1.1.1). It explains Oṃ as the essence of essences: the essence of beings is the earth, of earth water, of water plants, of plants man, of man speech, of speech the Ṛg, of the Ṛg the Sāman, of the Sāman the udgītha — Oṃ. Later traditions inherited from these chapters the conviction that Oṃ contains the whole of reality. A comic passage (1.12) describes dogs walking in procession like priests, chanting “Oṃ! Let us eat! Oṃ! Let us drink!” — an early satire of ritualism.

“All this is Brahman”

In chapter 3 the sage Śāṇḍilya teaches: “All this is Brahman (sarvaṃ khalv idaṃ brahma). One should venerate it in tranquillity as that from which one comes, into which one dissolves, in which one breathes” (3.14.1). Brahman is “made of mind, whose body is breath, whose form is light, whose resolve is truth, whose self is space, containing all works, all desires, all smells, all tastes… This self of mine within the heart is smaller than a grain of rice or barley or a mustard seed or a millet grain; this self of mine within the heart is greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than all these worlds… It is Brahman. When I depart from here, I shall merge into it” (3.14.2–4). The paradox of the infinitely small that is infinitely great would echo through Indian thought.

The same chapter compares a man’s life to a sacrifice (3.16) and mentions “Kṛṣṇa, the son of Devakī” (3.17.6) — perhaps the earliest reference to the figure who would become the god of the Bhagavad Gītā.

Satyakāma, the truthful

In chapter 4, the boy Satyakāma asks his mother, Jabālā, about his lineage, so that he can become a Vedic student. She answers: “I do not know, my son, what lineage you are of. I had you in my youth, when I went about a great deal as a servant girl. So I do not know. But my name is Jabālā and yours is Satyakāma; say you are Satyakāma Jābāla.” He goes to the teacher Hāridrumata Gautama and repeats exactly what his mother said. The teacher replies: “Only a Brahmin could speak like this. Fetch the firewood, my dear; I will initiate you, for you have not departed from the truth” (4.4.5).

The teacher then sends him off to tend four hundred thin, weak cows, and he vows not to return until they number a thousand. In the forest, a bull, a fire, a goose and a diver-bird each teach him a quarter of Brahman. When he returns, his teacher says, “Your face shines like one who knows Brahman. Who taught you?” “Others than men” — and he asks to be taught by his teacher anyway, “for I have heard that only knowledge learned from a teacher leads to the best”. The story became, for later reformers, a classic text about worth by conduct rather than birth.

Satyakāma himself becomes a teacher. His student Upakosala waits twelve years without being taught; the sacred fires he tends teach him instead: “Breath is Brahman, joy is Brahman, space is Brahman” (4.10).

The contest of the senses and the two paths

Chapter 5 tells how the faculties — speech, eye, ear, mind and breath — argued over which was best. Each left the body for a year; the body went on living, mute, blind, deaf, mindless. But when breath began to leave, “it tore out the other faculties as a fine horse tears out the pegs of its tether”. All acknowledged breath as supreme (5.1).

It then tells how Śvetaketu, Uddālaka’s son, proud of his learning, goes to the assembly of King Pravāhaṇa Jaivali, who asks him five questions about what happens to people after death. Śvetaketu cannot answer any. Humiliated, he returns to his father, who cannot answer either, and goes himself to the king as a student. The king says: “Since you have asked this, and since before you this knowledge never went to Brahmins, the rule over all worlds has belonged to the Kṣatriya alone” (5.3.7). He then teaches the five fires — the heavenly world, the rain-cloud, the earth, man and woman — through which the dead pass, as faith, soma, rain, food and semen, to be born again; and the two paths: those who know this and practise austerity in the forest go by the path of the gods to Brahman and do not return; those who perform sacrifices and good works go by the path of the fathers to the moon and return to be reborn; and those who know neither become “tiny creatures that are born and die again and again” (5.10). “Those whose conduct here has been pleasant will enter a pleasant womb — a Brahmin, Kṣatriya or Vaiśya; those whose conduct has been foul will enter a foul womb — a dog, a pig or an outcaste” (5.10.7). Here, for the first time, rebirth is linked with conduct and social class.

Uddālaka and Śvetaketu: “that thou art”

Chapter 6 is the most famous in the Upaniṣads. Śvetaketu, aged twelve, goes to study, and returns at twenty-four, “conceited, thinking himself learned, and arrogant”. His father asks him: “Did you ask for that teaching by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought becomes thought, the unknown becomes known?” “How can there be such a teaching, sir?”

Uddālaka explains: “Just as, my dear, by one lump of clay all that is made of clay is known — the modification being only a name, a verbal handle, the reality being just clay; just as by one nugget of gold all that is made of gold is known… so is that teaching” (6.1.4–6).

He then teaches that “in the beginning this world was simply what is existent (sat) — one only, without a second. Some say that in the beginning this world was simply what is non-existent, one only, without a second, and from the non-existent the existent was born. But how could that be? How could the existent be born from the non-existent?” (6.2.1–2). Being thought, “Let me become many”, and emitted heat, water and food, from which all things are compounded.

Then come the lessons, each ending with the refrain: “That which is the finest essence — this whole world has that as its self. That is the truth. That is the self (ātman). That thou art, Śvetaketu” (sa ya eṣo ‘ṇimā aitadātmyam idaṃ sarvam, tat satyam, sa ātmā, tat tvam asi śvetaketo).

• The bees and the nectar: as bees gather nectar from many trees and reduce it to one honey, so that the drops cannot say “I am the nectar of this tree”, so all creatures merge into Being without knowing it (6.9).
• The rivers and the sea: the rivers flowing east and west merge in the sea and become the sea, and no longer know “I am this river” (6.10).
• The great tree: if one strikes a tree at its root, its trunk or its top, it bleeds sap but lives, pervaded by the living self; when life leaves a branch, it withers. “This body dies when the living self leaves it; the living self does not die” (6.11).
• The banyan seed: Uddālaka tells his son to bring a fruit of the banyan, break it, break a seed, and say what he sees. “Nothing at all, sir.” “That finest essence you cannot see — from that the great banyan grows. Believe me, my dear” (6.12).
• Salt in water: Śvetaketu puts salt in water overnight. In the morning his father asks for the salt; he cannot find it. “Sip from this end. How is it?” “Salty.” “From the middle?” “Salty.” “From the other end?” “Salty.” “You do not see Being here, yet it is here” (6.13). See Tat Tvam Asi — Salt in Water.
• The blindfolded man: a man led blindfolded from Gandhāra and abandoned in a wilderness finds his way home by asking directions from village to village; so a person with a teacher knows the way home (6.14).
• The dying man: as a man dies, his speech merges into mind, mind into breath, breath into heat, heat into the highest deity (6.15).
• The ordeal by fire: an accused thief grasps a red-hot axe; if he is lying, he is burned; if truthful, he is not — so the one who holds to truth is unharmed (6.16).

Ādi Śaṅkara read tat tvam asi as identity: the true self of Śvetaketu is Brahman. Rāmānuja read it as the identity of God as the inner self of Śvetaketu, who is God’s body. Madhva‘s followers split the words to read atat tvam asi, “thou art not that”. See Ātman is Brahman.

Nārada and Sanatkumāra

In chapter 7, the sage Nārada comes to Sanatkumāra and lists everything he has studied — the four Vedas, history, grammar, mathematics, logic, ethics, astronomy, the science of snakes — and says: “I know only the texts, sir; I do not know the Self. I have heard from people like you that one who knows the Self passes beyond sorrow. I am in sorrow.” Sanatkumāra leads him up a ladder of things to venerate — name, speech, mind, will, thought, contemplation, understanding, strength, food, water, heat, space, memory, hope, breath — each greater than the last, until he reaches the infinite (bhūmā): “The infinite is happiness; there is no happiness in the small. Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, knows nothing else — that is the infinite. Where one sees something else, hears something else, knows something else — that is the small” (7.23–24).

The space in the heart; Indra and Virocana

Chapter 8 speaks of the “small lotus-dwelling” in the “city of Brahman”, the body: within it is a small space, “as large as this space outside”, containing heaven and earth, fire and wind, sun and moon, lightning and stars (8.1). The Self in it is “free of evil, free of old age and death, free of sorrow, hunger and thirst, whose desires and intentions are real”.

Then the story of Indra and Virocana (8.7–12). The creator Prajāpati declares that whoever finds this Self obtains all worlds and desires. Indra, king of the gods, and Virocana, king of the demons, go to him with firewood in hand as students, and live with him for thirty-two years. Prajāpati tells them to look at themselves in a pan of water, dressed in fine clothes and ornaments: “That is the self.” Virocana goes away satisfied, and teaches the demons that the body is the self — “which is why even now people say of someone who does not give, has no faith and does not sacrifice, ‘he is a demon’, and why they dress the bodies of the dead in fine clothes”. Indra, on the way home, sees the problem: if the body is the self, the self is blind when the body is blind, and perishes with it. He returns. Prajāpati tells him the self is what moves about in dreams; Indra objects that the dream self also suffers and weeps. He returns again: the self is in deep sleep; Indra objects that in deep sleep one does not know oneself — it is like annihilation. After a total of 101 years, Prajāpati teaches him the truth: “This body is mortal, gripped by death. It is the dwelling of the immortal, bodiless self… The body is like a cart to which the self is yoked.” The one who knows “let me smell”, “let me speak”, “let me think” is the self; the nose, speech and mind are its instruments.

Significance

The Chāndogya’s sixth chapter is the classic text of Vedānta: tat tvam asi is the most commented-on sentence in Indian philosophy, and Uddālaka’s argument that being cannot come from non-being has been compared with Parmenides. The Indra-Virocana story is the earliest philosophical comedy of materialism. And the story of Satyakāma — a boy without a known father, accepted as a student for his honesty — has been quoted for two thousand years whenever Indians argued about whether worth comes from birth or from character.

In conversation

The salt in the water is the image to keep: invisible, ungraspable, yet in every sip — and that thou art. And Satyakāma’s answer is still the best argument that truthfulness, not birth, makes a person noble.