Īśā Upaniṣad

The Īśā Upaniṣad (also Īśāvāsya Upaniṣad, after its first words) is the shortest of the principal The Upaniṣads — just eighteen verses — and one of the most influential. It forms the fortieth and last chapter of the Vājasaneyī Saṃhitā of the White Yajur Veda, which makes it the only Upaniṣad embedded in a Vedic hymn collection, and it is traditionally placed first in collections of the Upaniṣads. In a few lines it addresses problems that other Upaniṣads leave tense: how to reconcile renunciation with life in the world, knowledge with action, and the transcendent Lord with the moving universe.

The invocation

Like other Upaniṣads of the White Yajur Veda, the Īśā is recited with a peace invocation (śānti mantra) that has become one of the most famous verses in Hinduism:

oṃ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaṃ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate

That is full; this is full. From the full, the full arises. Taking the full from the full, the full alone remains.

“That” is Brahman, “this” the manifest world; infinity minus infinity is infinity.

The text

The Upaniṣad opens:

īśā vāsyam idaṃ sarvaṃ yat kiñca jagatyāṃ jagat tena tyaktena bhuñjīthā mā gṛdhaḥ kasya svid dhanam

All this — whatever moves in this moving world — is to be inhabited (or: clothed, pervaded) by the Lord. Enjoy it through renunciation; do not covet anyone’s wealth. (1)

The verse holds together two things usually opposed. Because everything belongs to God, nothing is ours to grasp; and precisely by giving up the claim to possess, one can enjoy the world. Gandhi called it the whole of Hinduism.

The second verse reconciles action and freedom: “Doing works here, one may wish to live a hundred years. Thus, and not otherwise, action does not cling to a man” (2) — an anticipation of the Bhagavad Gītā’s doctrine of action without attachment.

The Lord is then described in paradoxes: “It moves, it moves not; it is far, it is near; it is within all this, and it is outside all this” (5). And the ethical consequence:

He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings, does not shrink from anything. When, for one who understands, the Self has become all beings, what delusion, what sorrow can there be for him who sees oneness? (6–7)

Knowledge and ignorance

Verses 9–14 are among the most puzzling in the Upaniṣads:

Into blind darkness enter those who worship ignorance (avidyā); into greater darkness, as it were, those who delight in knowledge (vidyā) alone… He who knows both knowledge and ignorance together crosses death by ignorance and attains immortality by knowledge. (9, 11)

The same is then said of “becoming” and “non-becoming”. Commentators argue over what is meant. For Ādi Śaṅkara, “ignorance” here means ritual action and “knowledge” meditation on deities; both are inferior to knowledge of Brahman. For others — notably Sri Aurobindo — the verses teach the integration of worldly life and spiritual knowledge: neither materialism nor world-rejecting mysticism, but both together.

The golden disc

The final verses are a dying man’s prayer to the sun:

The face of truth is covered by a golden disc. Uncover it, O Pūṣan, so that I who love the truth may see… The person who is there in the sun — I am he (so ‘ham asmi). (15–16)

Let my breath now go to the immortal wind, and this body end in ashes. Oṃ! Remember, O mind, what has been done; remember the deeds… O Agni, lead us by the good path to prosperity, you who know all our ways. (17–18)

Significance

Ādi Śaṅkara, Madhva and many others wrote commentaries on it. Gandhi made its first verse the basis of his ethic of non-possession and trusteeship — wealth as something held in trust, not owned. Sri Aurobindo wrote a book-length commentary reading it as the charter of a “life divine” that embraces the world. And its invocation of fullness is recited at the start of countless rituals, lectures and yoga classes.