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Isha Upanishad
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îsHâ vâsyamidaM sarvaM yat kińca jagatyâM jagat, tena tyaktena bhuńjîthâ mâ gRidhaH kasya sviddhanam.
1. 1.
All this is for habitation[1] by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe
of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst
enjoy; lust not after any man's possession. kűrvanneveha karmâni jijîviSecchataM samâH, evaM tvayi nânyatheto'sti na karma lipyate nare.
2. 2.
Doing verily[2]
works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus
it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a
man.[3] asűryâH nâma te lokâ andhena tamasâvRitâH, tâMste pretyâbhigacchanti ye ke câtmahano janâH.
3. 3.
Sunless[4]
are those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom whereto all they in
their passing hence resort who are slayers of their souls. anejadekaM manaso javîyo nainaddevâ âpnuvan pűrvamarSat, taddhâvato'nyânatyeti tiSThat tasminnapo mâtarisHvâ
dadhâti. 4. 4.
One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for
It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others
as they run. In That the Master of Life[5] establishes the Waters.[6] tadejati tannaijati tad dűre tadvantike, tadantarasya sarvasya tadu sarvasyâsya bâhyataH.
5. 5.
That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That
is within all this and That also is outside all this. yastu sarvâni bhűtâni âtmanyevânupasHyati, sarvabhűteSu câtmânam tato na vijugupsate. 6. 6.
But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences
in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught. yasmin sarvâni bhűtâni âtmaivâbhűd vijânataH, tatra ko mohaH kaH sHoka ekatvamanupasHyataH.
7. 7.
He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that
are Becomings,[7]
for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence
shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness? sa paryagâcchukramakâyamavranamasnâviraM sHuddhamapâpaviddham, kavirmanîSî paribhűH svayambhűryâthâtathyato'rthân
vyadadhâcchâsHvatîbhyaH samâbhyaH. 8. 8.
It is He that has gone abroad—That which is bright, bodi-less, without
scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The
Seer, the Thinker,[8]
the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects
perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal. andhaM tamaH pravisHanti ye'vidyâmupâsate, tato bhűya iva te tamo ya u vidyâyâM ratâH. 9. 9.
Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they
as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge
alone. anyadevâhurvidyayâ'nyadâhuravidyayâ, iti sHusHruma dhîrânâM ye nastadvicacakSire. 10. 10.
Other, verily,[9]
it is said, is that which comes by the Knowledge, other that which
comes by the Ignorance; this is the lore we have received from the
wise who revealed That to our understanding. vidyâńcâvidyâńca yastadvedobhayaM saha, avidyayâ mRityuM tîrtvâ vidyayâmRitamasHnute.
11. 11.
He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance,
by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys
Immortality. andhaM tamaH pravisHanti ye'sambhűtimupâsate, tato bhűya iva te tamo ya u sambhűtyâM ratâH.
12. 12.
Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Non-Birth, they
as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone. anyadevâhuH sambhavâdanyadâhurasambhavât, iti sHusHruma dhîrânâM ye nastadvicacakSire. 13. 13.
Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Birth, other
that which comes by the Non-Birth; this is the lore we have received
from the wise who revealed That to our understanding. sambhűtińca vinâsHańca yastadvedobhayaM saha, vinâsHena mRityuM tîrtvâ sambhűtyâ'mRitamasHnute.
14. 14.
He who knows That as both in one, the Birth and the dissolution of
Birth, by the dissolution crosses beyond death and by the Birth enjoys
Immortality. hiranmayena pâtrena satyasyâpihitaM mukham, tat tvaM pűSannapâvRinu satyadharmâya dRiSTaye.
15. 15.
The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do
thou remove, O Fosterer,[10] for the law of the Truth, for sight. pűSannekarSe yama sűrya prâjâpatya vyűha rasHmîn
saműha, tejo yat te rűpaM kalyânatamaM tatte pasHyâmi
yo'sâvasau puruSaH so'hamasmi. 16. 16.
O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of
the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light;
the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold.
The Purusha there and there, He am I. vâyuranilamamRitamathedaM bhasmântaM sHarîram, AUM krato smara kRitaM smara krato smara kRitaM
smara. 17. 17.
The Breath of things[11] is an immortal Life, but of this body ashes are
the end. OM! O Will,[12]
remember, that which was done remember! O Will, remember, that which
was done remember. agne naya supathâ râye asmân visHvâni deva vayunâni
vidvân, yuyodhyasmajjuhurânameno bhűyiSThâM te namaukti.m
vidhema 18. 18.
O god Agni, knowing all things that are manifested, lead us by the
good path to the felicity; remove from us the devious attraction of
sin.[13]
To thee completest speech of submission we would dispose.[14] in SABCL, Volume 12 "The Upanishads" pages 63-68 published by Sri Aurobindo Ashram - Pondicherry diffusion by SABDA [1] There are three possible senses of
vâsyam, “to be clothed”, “to be worn as garment” and “to
be inhabited”. The first is the ordinarily accepted meaning. Shankara
explains it in this significance, that we must lose the sense of
this unreal objective universe in the sole perception of the pure
Brahman. So explained the first line becomes a contradiction of
the whole thought of the Upanishad which teaches the reconciliation,
by the perception of essential Unity, of the apparently incompatible
opposites, God and the World, Renunciation and Enjoyment, Action
and internal Freedom, the One and the Many, Being and its Becomings,
the passive divine Impersonality and the active divine Personality,
the Knowledge and the Ignorance, the Becoming and the Not-Becoming,
Life on earth and beyond and the supreme Immortality. The image
is of the world either as a garment or as a dwelling-place for the
informing and governing Spirit. The latter significance agrees better
with the thought of the Upanishad. [2] Kurvanneva. The stress of the word eva
gives the force, “doing works indeed, and not refraining from them”. [3] Shankara reads the line, “Thus in
thee - it is not otherwise than thus - action cleaves not to a man.”
He interprets karmâni in the first line in the sense of Vedic
sacrifices which are permitted to the ignorant as a means of escaping
from evil actions and their results and attaining to heaven, but
the second karma in exactly the opposite sense, “evil action”. The
verse, he tells us, represents a concession to the ignorant; the
enlightened soul abandons works and the world and goes to the forest.
The whole expression and construction in this rendering become forced
and unnatural. The rendering I give seems to me the simple and straightforward
sense of the Upanishad. [4] We have two readings, asűryâH,
sunless, and asűryâH, Titanic or undivine. The third verse
is, in the thought structure of the Upanishad, the starting-point
for the final movement in the last four verses. Its suggestions
are there taken up and worked out. The prayer to the Sun refers
back in thought to the sunless worlds and their blind gloom, which
are recalled in the ninth and twelfth verses. The sun and his rays
are intimately connected in other Upanishads also with the worlds
of Light and their natural opposite is the dark and sunless, not
the Titanic worlds. [5] MâtarisHvan seems to mean “he who extends himself in the Mother or the container”
whether that be the containing mother element, Ether, or the material
energy called Earth in the Veda and spoken of there as the Mother.
It is a Vedic epithet of the God Vayu, who, representing the divine
principle in the Life-energy, Prana, extends himself in Matter and
vivifies its forms. Here it signifies the divine Life-power that
presides in all forms of cosmic activity. [6] Apas, as it is accentuated in the version of the White Yajurveda, can mean
only “waters”. If this accentuation is disregarded, we may take
it as the singular apas, work, action. Shankara, however, renders
it by the plural, works. The difficulty only arises because the
true Vedic sense of the word had been forgotten and it came to be
taken as referring to the fourth of the five elemental states of
Matter, the liquid. Such a reference would be entirely irrelevant
to the context. But the Waters, otherwise called the seven streams
or the seven fostering Cows, are the Vedic symbol for the seven
cosmic principles and their activities, three inferior, the physical,
vital and mental, four superior, the divine Truth, the divine Bliss,
the divine Will and Consciousness, and the divine Being. On this
conception also is founded the ancient idea of the seven worlds
in each of which the seven principles are separately active by their
various harmonies. This is, obviously, the right significance of
the word in the Upanishad. [7] The words sarvâni bhűtâni,
literally, “all things that have become”, is opposed to Atman, self-existent
and immutable being. The phrase means ordinarily “all creatures”,
but its literal sense is evidently insisted on in the expression
bhűtâni abhűt “became the Becomings”. The idea is the acquisition
in man of the supreme consciousness by which the one Self in him
extends itself to embrace all creatures and realises the eternal
act by which that One manifests itself in the multiple forms of
the universal motion. [8] There is a clear distinction in Vedic
thought between kavi, the seer and manîSî, the thinker.
The former indicates the divine supra-intellectual Knowledge which
by direct vision and illumination sees the reality, the principles
and the forms of things in their true relations, the latter, the
labouring mentality, which works from the divided consciousness
through the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation
in form and upward to their reality in the self-existent Brahman. [9] Anyadeva - eva here gives to anyad the force, “Quite other than the result
described in the preceding verse is that to which lead the Knowledge
and the Ignorance.” We have the explanation of anyad in the
verse that follows. The ordinary rendering, “Knowledge has one result,
Ignorance another”, would be an obvious commonplace announced with
an exaggerated pompousness, adding nothing to the thought and without
any place in the sequence of the ideas. [10] In the inner sense of the Veda Surya,
the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which
exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His
principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda
“Sight”. His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast.
He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man's
dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness.
He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and
leads him to the highest Sight. He is Yama, Controller or Ordainer,
for he governs man's action and manifested being by the direct Law
of the Truth, satyadharma, and therefore by the right principle
of our nature, yâthâtathyataH, a luminous power proceeding
from the Father of all existence, he reveals in himself the divine
Purusha of whom all beings are the manifestations. His rays are
the thoughts that proceed luminously from the Truth, the Vast, but
become deflected and distorted, broken up and disordered in the
reflecting and dividing principle, Mind. They form there the golden
lid which covers the face of the Truth. The Seer prays to Surya
to cast them into right order and relation and then draw them together
into the unity of revealed truth. The result of this inner process
is the perception of the oneness of all beings in the divine Soul
of the Universe. [11] Vayu, called elsewhere Matarisvan, the Life Energy in the universe.
In the light of Surya he reveals himself as an immortal principle
of existence of which birth and death and life in the body are only
particular and external processes. [12] The Vedic term kratu means
sometimes the action itself, sometimes the effective power behind
action represented in mental consciousness by the will. Agni is
this power. He is divine force which manifests first in matter as
heat and light and material energy and then, taking different forms
in the other principles of man's consciousness, leads him by a progressive
manifestation upwards to the Truth and the Bliss. [13] Sin, in the conception of the Veda,
from which this verse is taken bodily, is that which excites and
hurries the faculties into deviation from the good path. There is
a straight road or road of naturally increasing light and truth,
RijuH panthâH, Ritasya panthâH, leading over infinite
levels and towards infinite vistas, vîtâni pRiSThâni, by
which the law of our nature should normally take us towards our
fulfilment. Sin compels it instead to travel with stumblings amid
uneven and limited tracts and along crooked windings (duritâni,
vRijinâni). [14] The word vidhema is used of
the ordering of the sacrifice, the disposal of the offerings to
the God and, generally, of the sacrifice or worship itself. The
Vedic namas, internal and external obeisance, is the symbol
of submission to the divine Being in ourselves and in the world.
Here the offering is that of completest submission and the self-surrender
of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the divine
Will-force, Agni, so that, free from internal opposition, it may
lead the soul of man through the truth towards a felicity full of
the spiritual riches, râye. That state of beatitude is the
intended self-content in the principle of pure Love and Joy, which
the Vedic initiates regarded as the source of the divine existence
in the universe and the foundation of the divine life in the human
being. It is the deformation of this principle by egoism which appears
as desire and the lust of possession in the lower worlds. |
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