The Upaniṣadsउपनिषद्

The Upaniṣads are a collection of Sanskrit texts, composed roughly between 800 and 200 BCE, that form the final, philosophical layer of the Vedic literature, and are therefore called Vedānta, “the end of the Veda”. In dialogues, stories, riddles and verses, they explore questions that had barely been asked before: What is the ultimate reality behind the world? What is the self — the “I” that sees, hears, thinks and dies? What happens at death? How can one be free? Their central answer, stated in many ways, is that the ultimate reality, Brahman, and the innermost self, ātman, are one: tat tvam asi, “that thou art”. They also introduce, or give the first clear statement of, the ideas of Karma, rebirth (Saṃsāra) and liberation (Mokṣa) that would shape all of Indian religion — Hindu, Buddhist and Jain alike. The Upaniṣads are the source of Vedānta, the most influential tradition of Hindu philosophy, and, through Schopenhauer, Emerson, Yeats, Eliot and Schrödinger, one of the great gifts of India to world thought.

What the word means

Upaniṣad is formed from upa (“near”), ni (“down”) and sad (“to sit”) — “sitting down near”, as a student sits close to a teacher to receive instruction. In the texts themselves the word means something like “secret connection” or “hidden teaching”: the Upaniṣads are full of equivalences — this ritual element is that cosmic power; breath is wind; the eye is the sun — and the deepest of these equivalences, the identity of self and Brahman, was taught only to qualified students, often in private. “This should not be taught to anyone who is not a son or a pupil,” says the Chāndogya; “even if someone should give him this earth surrounded by water and full of wealth” (3.11.6).

Historical background

From sacrifice to self

The Upaniṣads grew out of the ritual culture of the late Vedic period. Each of the four Vedas had attached to it brāhmaṇas (prose explanations of the sacrifice) and āraṇyakas (“forest books”, on esoteric rites). The oldest Upaniṣads are continuations of these: the Bṛhadāraṇyaka is the end of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa of the White Yajur Veda; the Chāndogya belongs to a Brāhmaṇa of the Sāma Veda. Their early sections still speak the language of ritual — the horse sacrifice, the chants, the fires. But they increasingly turn the ritual inward, asking what its elements mean and finding the meaning in breath, mind and self. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka begins by identifying the sacrificial horse with the cosmos — its head is the dawn, its eye the sun, its breath the wind — and ends in dialogues where the true sacrifice is knowledge.

Where and when

The early Upaniṣads were composed in the kingdoms of the middle and eastern Gaṅgā plain — Kuru-Pañcāla in the west, Kāśī (Varanasi), Kosala and Videha in the east — during a period of urbanisation, the rise of kingdoms, iron technology, trade and new social classes, roughly the eighth to sixth centuries BCE. It was also the age of the śramaṇas, wandering ascetics who rejected the Vedic sacrifice; the Gautama Buddha and Mahāvīra were born around the end of this period. The Upaniṣads and the śramaṇa movements share many concerns — renunciation, rebirth, liberation, the nature of the self — and argued with each other.

The traditional count of Upaniṣads is 108, and over 200 texts bear the name; but the oldest and most authoritative are about thirteen principal Upaniṣads, those commented on by Śaṅkara and other great teachers: Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Kauṣītaki, Kena, Kaṭha, Īśā, Śvetāśvatara, Muṇḍaka, Praśna, Māṇḍūkya and Maitrī. Patrick Olivelle’s widely accepted chronology places the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya first (perhaps 7th–6th century BCE), followed by the Taittirīya, Aitareya and Kauṣītaki (6th–5th), then the verse Upaniṣads — Kena, Kaṭha, Īśā, Śvetāśvatara, Muṇḍaka (last centuries BCE) — and finally the Praśna and Māṇḍūkya (around the turn of the era).

The people of the Upaniṣads

One of the most striking things about the Upaniṣads is their cast of characters. There are Brahmin sages — Yājñavalkya, the brilliant and arrogant star of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, and Uddālaka Āruṇi, who teaches his son with salt and water. There are kings who know more than the priests — Janaka of Videha, who holds philosophical tournaments; Ajātaśatru of Kāśī, who teaches the proud Brahmin Gārgya; Pravāhaṇa Jaivali, who reveals the doctrine of rebirth to Uddālaka, saying it “has never before been known to Brahmins”. There are women philosophers: Gārgī Vācaknavī, who presses Yājñavalkya with questions about what the world is woven on until he warns her that her head will fall off, and Maitreyī, his wife, who asks whether wealth can make her immortal. There is Satyakāma Jābāla, the son of a servant woman who does not know who his father is, admitted as a student because he told the truth. And there is the boy Naciketas, who goes to the house of Death and refuses every bribe until Death tells him what happens after we die.

The great teachings

Brahman

Brahman (from bṛh, “to grow, to be great”) originally meant the power of the sacred word in the Vedic ritual. In the Upaniṣads it becomes the name for the ultimate reality: the source from which all things come, in which they live, and into which they return. The Taittirīya defines it: “That from which these beings are born, by which, once born, they live, and into which they enter at death — seek to know that. That is Brahman” (3.1). It is described as “reality, knowledge, infinity” (satyaṃ jñānam anantaṃ brahma, Taittirīya 2.1), and later tradition summarises it as saccidānanda — being, consciousness, bliss. “All this is Brahman” (sarvaṃ khalv idaṃ brahma, Chāndogya 3.14.1).

Ātman

Ātman originally meant “breath”, then “body”, then “self” — the reflexive pronoun. The Upaniṣads search for the true self, peeling away what is not it. In the Chāndogya, the god Indra and the demon Virocana go to the creator Prajāpati to learn about the self. Prajāpati first tells them it is the body reflected in water; Virocana, satisfied, goes off and teaches the demons that the body is the self. Indra, troubled — the body ages and dies — returns three times, and learns successively that the self is not the dream self, nor the self of deep sleep, but the immortal, bodiless self that uses the body as an instrument (8.7–12). The Taittirīya describes five “sheaths” (kośas) around the self — of food (the body), breath, mind, understanding and bliss — each subtler than the last.

Their identity

The great discovery is that the self, found within, is the same as the reality found without. Uddālaka shows his son Śvetaketu a lump of salt dissolved in water: the salt cannot be seen or grasped, yet every sip tastes salty. “That which is the finest essence — this whole world has that as its self. That is the truth. That is the self. That thou art (tat tvam asi), Śvetaketu” (Chāndogya 6.13). See Tat Tvam Asi — Salt in Water and Ātman is Brahman.

Later tradition gathered the Upaniṣads’ identity statements as the four mahāvākyas, “great sayings”, one from each Veda: prajñānaṃ brahma, “consciousness is Brahman” (Aitareya); ahaṃ brahmāsmi, “I am Brahman” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka); tat tvam asi, “that thou art” (Chāndogya); ayam ātmā brahma, “this self is Brahman” (Māṇḍūkya).

The unseen seer

Yājñavalkya approaches the self from the other side: it is the subject that can never be an object. “You cannot see the seer of seeing, you cannot hear the hearer of hearing, you cannot think the thinker of thinking, you cannot know the knower of knowing. He is your self, which is in all things” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 3.4.2). Since it can never be an object, it can only be described negatively: “not this, not this” (neti neti) — “ungraspable, for it cannot be grasped; indestructible, for it cannot be destroyed; unattached, for it does not attach itself; unbound, it does not tremble, it is not injured” (4.5.15).

States of consciousness

The Upaniṣads explore consciousness through its states. In waking, the self experiences the external world. In dreaming, it creates its own world from the impressions of waking: “There are no chariots there, no horses, no roads — but he creates chariots, horses and roads” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 4.3.10). In deep, dreamless sleep, it is free of desire and duality, “like a man embraced by his beloved wife, who knows nothing within or without” (4.3.21). The Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad adds a fourth (turīya), the pure self underlying all three, and maps the states onto the sacred syllable Oṃ.

Karma, rebirth and liberation

The early Upaniṣads contain the first clear statements of rebirth governed by action. “As a man acts, as he behaves, so he becomes… As his desire, so his will; as his will, so his action; as his action, so he becomes” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 4.4.5). The doctrine of the “two paths” — the path of the gods, from which there is no return, and the path of the fathers, which leads back to birth — is taught by a king to a Brahmin as a new teaching. Liberation comes through knowledge of the self: “When all the desires that dwell in the heart are cast away, the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here” (4.4.7).

Knowledge over ritual

The Upaniṣads do not reject the Vedic ritual outright, but they subordinate it. The Muṇḍaka calls the sacrifices “unsafe boats” (1.2.7) and distinguishes “lower knowledge” — the four Vedas, phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metre and astronomy — from “higher knowledge, by which the imperishable is grasped” (1.1.4–5). This shift from ritual action to liberating knowledge is the hinge between the religion of the Vedas and the philosophies of classical India.

The voices of the Upaniṣads

The Upaniṣads are not treatises. They are a mixture of myth, ritual speculation, dialogue, debate, poetry and prayer, and their best passages are unforgettable as literature:

• The prayer from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (1.3.28), recited daily by millions: asato mā sad gamaya, tamaso mā jyotir gamaya, mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ gamaya — “Lead me from the unreal to the real; lead me from darkness to light; lead me from death to immortality.”
• The thunder’s teaching (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 5.2): gods, humans and demons ask the creator for instruction; he says “Da” to each; the gods understand dāmyata, “be self-controlled”, humans datta, “give”, demons dayadhvam, “be compassionate” — “and the divine voice of the thunder repeats: da! da! da!” T. S. Eliot ends The Waste Land with it.
• The opening of the Īśā: “All this, whatever moves in this moving world, is pervaded by God. Enjoy it through renunciation; do not covet anyone’s wealth.”
• The Kaṭha’s chariot, its razor’s edge, its call: “Arise! Awake! Approach the great and learn” (uttiṣṭhata jāgrata prāpya varān nibodhata, 1.3.14) — Vivekananda’s motto.
• The Muṇḍaka’s two birds on one tree, one eating, one watching (3.1.1).
• The Śvetāśvatara’s cry: “Hear, children of immortality (amṛtasya putrāḥ)” (2.5).
• And the peace invocation of the Īśā and Bṛhadāraṇyaka: pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idam 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.”

How the Upaniṣads were read

Because the Upaniṣads speak in many voices, later schools read them differently. Ādi Śaṅkara took the identity passages (tat tvam asi, neti neti) as primary and read the Upaniṣads as teaching that Brahman alone is real and the self is identical with it (Advaita Vedānta). Rāmānuja gave equal weight to passages describing Brahman as the “inner controller” of all beings, whose body they are, and read them as teaching a personal God (Viśiṣṭādvaita). Madhva read them as teaching eternal difference (Dvaita Vedānta). Buddhists, meanwhile, rejected the Upaniṣadic self altogether (Anattā (No-Self)), and the Buddha’s teaching of no-self has often been read as a direct response to Yājñavalkya and Uddālaka.

The Upaniṣads and the world

The Upaniṣads first left India in Persian. In 1657 the Mughal crown prince Dārā Shikoh, a Sufi mystic who believed that Islam and Hinduism were “two oceans” of one truth, had fifty Upaniṣads translated into Persian as the Sirr-i-Akbar, “The Greatest Secret”; he was executed two years later by his brother Aurangzeb, partly for heresy. In 1801–02, the French scholar Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron published a Latin translation of the Persian, the Oupnek’hat. Arthur Schopenhauer read it and wrote that it had been “the consolation of my life and will be of my death”. Through him, and through translations by Max Müller and others, the Upaniṣads entered European and American thought: Emerson’s “Brahma”, Thoreau’s Walden, W. B. Yeats’s translation (with Shri Purohit Swami, 1937), T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and the physicists Erwin Schrödinger and Robert Oppenheimer. In India, they became the centre of the nineteenth-century Hindu renaissance — Rammohun Roy, Vivekananda, Tagore, Aurobindo, Gandhi — and supplied the national motto, satyameva jayate, “truth alone triumphs” (Muṇḍaka 3.1.6).

The Upaniṣads in conversation

Two phrases hold the whole: tat tvam asi, “that thou art”, the identity of self and ultimate reality, and neti neti, “not this, not this”, the self that can never be found as an object because it is the one looking. And for a prayer that belongs to everyone: asato mā sad gamaya — “lead me from the unreal to the real”.