Contents · 4 sections · 3 min
Key Ideas
Satyaṃ jñānam anantaṃ brahma — Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinity.
The five sheaths (kośas) — food, breath, mind, understanding, bliss.
From bliss beings are born, by bliss they live, into bliss they return.
The convocation address — speak the truth, practise dharma, treat your mother, father, teacher and guest as gods.
Words turn back from it, with the mind, not reaching it.
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad, part of the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka of the Black Yajur Veda, is one of the oldest principal The Upaniṣads, probably from the sixth or fifth century BCE. It has three chapters, called vallīs (“creepers”): the Śikṣā Vallī, on phonetics and student life; the Brahmānanda Vallī, on Brahman and bliss; and the Bhṛgu Vallī, in which the god Varuṇa teaches his son Bhṛgu to discover Brahman for himself.
The student’s chapter
The first chapter opens with the lessons of śikṣā, the science of pronunciation — letters, accents, quantity, articulation — and meditations on the connections between things. Its eleventh section is the convocation address, the teacher’s words to the student completing his Vedic studies:
Speak the truth. Practise dharma. Do not neglect your study… Do not neglect truth. Do not neglect dharma. Do not neglect welfare. Do not neglect prosperity… Treat your mother as a god. Treat your father as a god. Treat your teacher as a god. Treat your guest as a god. Do those deeds that are blameless, not others… Give with faith; do not give without faith. Give with grace, with modesty, with fear, with understanding. And if you have any doubt about conduct, behave as Brahmins who are wise, devoted, not harsh, lovers of dharma, would behave. (1.11)
Brahman and the five sheaths
The second chapter begins with a definition: “The knower of Brahman attains the highest. Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinity (satyaṃ jñānam anantaṃ brahma). He who knows it hidden in the cave of the heart and in the highest heaven attains all desires together with the wise Brahman” (2.1).
It then traces creation — from the Self came space, from space wind, from wind fire, from fire water, from water earth, from earth plants, from plants food, from food man — and describes the human person as a series of five sheaths (kośas), each within the other, like nested containers:
- Annamaya — the sheath made of food: the physical body.
- Prāṇamaya — made of breath: the life force.
- Manomaya — made of mind: thought and perception.
- Vijñānamaya — made of understanding: intellect and discernment.
- Ānandamaya — made of bliss: joy, delight and bliss itself.
Later Vedānta took the doctrine of the sheaths as a method of meditation: identify each layer, see that you are not it, and discover the Self that is none of them.
The chapter also contains a famous calculus of bliss (2.8): take a young man, noble, learned, strong, possessing the whole earth with its wealth — that is one unit of human bliss. A hundred of those is the bliss of the human gandharvas; a hundred of those, of the divine gandharvas; and so on up through the ancestors, the gods, Indra, Bṛhaspati and Prajāpati — each a hundred times the last — to the bliss of Brahman. “And so it is for a man versed in the Veda and free from desire.” And: “Words turn back from it, together with the mind, not having attained it. He who knows the bliss of Brahman fears nothing” (2.9).
Bhṛgu’s discovery
In the third chapter, Bhṛgu asks his father Varuṇa to teach him Brahman. Varuṇa gives him a definition — “that from which these beings are born, by which they live when born, and into which they enter at death: seek to know that; that is Brahman” — and sends him to discover it by austerity. Bhṛgu first concludes that Brahman is food; then, returning to meditate further, breath; then mind; then understanding; and finally bliss: “From bliss these beings are born; by bliss they live; into bliss they enter at death” (3.6). The Upaniṣad ends with a hymn of ecstasy: “I am food! I am food! I am food! I am the eater of food!…”
Significance
The Taittirīya gave Vedānta its standard definition of Brahman, its doctrine of the five sheaths, and the idea, central to later thought, that the deepest nature of reality is bliss (ānanda) — the third term of saccidānanda. Its convocation address remains a living part of Indian education.
Curiosities
did you know?- ‘Mātṛdevo bhava, pitṛdevo bhava, ācāryadevo bhava, atithidevo bhava’ — ‘let your mother be a god to you, your father, your teacher, your guest’ — is quoted at graduation ceremonies across India, and ‘atithi devo bhava’ is the slogan of India’s tourism ministry.
- Its peace chant ‘saha nāvavatu’ (‘May he protect us both together’) is recited at the start of classes in many Indian schools.
Questions to Argue About
debate club →- Is bliss the deepest layer of the self — or a state the self passes through?
Explore Next
related by shared connectionsMāṇḍūkya Upaniṣad
The shortest Upaniṣad — twelve verses on the syllable Oṃ and the four states of consciousness, waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the “fourth” (turīya), the pure Self. Said to be enough, by itself, for liberation.
Īśā Upaniṣad
The shortest of the principal Upaniṣads — eighteen verses that begin “All this is pervaded by the Lord” and reconcile renunciation with action, knowledge with works, and the one with the many.
Kena Upaniṣad
The “By whom?” Upaniṣad — by whom is the mind sent forth, the breath set going, speech uttered? Its answer is the paradox that Brahman is known only by those who know they do not know it — and a story of the gods humbled by a blade of grass.
Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad
The Upaniṣad of the “shaven head” — it distinguishes the “lower knowledge” of the Vedas and sciences from the “higher knowledge” of the imperishable, compares ritual to leaky boats, gives the image of two birds on one tree, and India its national motto, “Truth alone triumphs”.
Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
The most theistic of the principal Upaniṣads — it identifies Brahman with Rudra-Śiva, a personal Lord to be loved, blends Vedānta with early Sāṃkhya and Yoga, and first uses the words māyā and bhakti in their later senses.
Bhartṛhari
The 5th-century philosopher of language who taught that ultimate reality is the Word (śabda-brahman), that meaning flashes forth as a whole (sphoṭa), and that all knowledge is shot through with language — and, by tradition, the poet of the Three Centuries on love, worldly wisdom and renunciation.