Isavasya Upanishad : ( 26/12/2012. )

10/12/2018 Mantras 9 to 11. continued Performance of actions with the full knowledge that it is the law of life that manifests itself as action and therefore without any reason for the desire for the results of such actions makes one get disgusted with the world of actions, frees him from attachment and liberates him from the trammels of death. Through the knowledge of the divine being, viz., the divinity whose upasana is performed, one attains to that divinity, and opens the door to immortality. Upasana of any divinity, when it is performed with a desire to attain that divinity alone, gives one the temporary freedom of the attainment of that divinity, and later makes one take birth as an individual; but when action is combined with this knowledge, action becomes selfless. Action has got a quality of producing pain, and knowledge by nature is illuminating. When action is illuminated by knowledge, it becomes the source of the experience of pain born of viveka, not pain born...

20/11/2018 Mantras 9 to 11. continued Those who worship vidya, i.e., the knowledge of different divinities or celestial beings, appear to fall into greater darkness. They have knowledge, and hence egoism, too. Here knowledge does not mean the knowledge of Brahman, but lower, relative knowledge. Those who worship a celestial being, a divinity or God himself with form are led to the belief that their state is the all. Because what they aspire for is superior to the human region it appears as though it is good and worth coveting. In fact this knowledge is imperfect, capricious and perishable, because it is objective and not absolute. There is no hope of further rising up in the case of those who are satisfied with the present lot. This vidya is worse than avidya, because avidya at least produces pain and makes one understand that the present condition is unsatisfactory, while vidya deceives a person into the belief that he is perfect and there is no need for further progress. ...

29/10/2018 Mantras 9 to 11. Into dense darkness they enter, who worship avidya, into greater darkness, as it were, they enter, who worship vidya. The results achieved through the worship of vidya and avidya are different from each other. One who knows vidya and avidya together crosses over death through avidya and becomes immortal through vidya. Avidya is lack of knowledge of the Self, giving rise to desire and action. It is ignorance which extends through various degrees in the world of manifestation. Absence of Self-knowledge always expresses itself as a desire or a wish for something external, whether seen or unseen. The experiences of those who believe in the reality of these phenomenal worlds are always negative and objective. They try their best to develop relationships and contacts with the objects of these worlds, thinking that they can acquire perfect happiness thereby. All contacts end in sorrow, all actions give rise to perishable fruits. Nothing that...

09/10/2018 Mantra 8 The Atman is everywhere, pure, bodiless, scatheless, muscleless, taintless, untouched by sin, omniscient, wise, omnipotent, transcendent and Self-existent. It is this Atman that is the basis of the division of actions among the divinities presiding over time. These characteristics of the Atman deny the possibility of its having either the physical, the subtle or the causal body. It is described as being free from bodily parts like muscles, the substance of the subtle body and the impurity of the causal body. For the same reason, it is untainted by actions, whether virtuous or vicious. On the basis of the Self does the cosmic creator, Hiranyagarbha, allot the different functions to the respective divinities concerned with the rule over time. This allotment of duties is based on the Law of the Absolute Self; and hence this Law can be overruled by none. The world works with great system and order because it is based on the system of the Absolute. The law of ac...

20/09/2018 Mantras 6 and 7. Who sees all beings in his own Self and the Self in all beings, - he does not shrink away from anything, i.e., does not get disgusted with anything. In whom, the knower, all beings have become the Self, - to him, who beholds unity, where is delusion, where is sorrow? The person who has established himself in the Absolute Self sees everything situated in himself, because he is the support and the possibility of all beings. This realisation comes to him through absolute renunciation which means the transcendence of all particular forms and diving into the general substance which enters into the very fibre of the particularities. Because of this knowledge of the oneness of all beings there is no reason for him to get disgusted with any form or to be attached to any form. He knows that he lives in all bodies and that it is his spirit that works the life of the different individuals. He is the cosmic life in which all individual lives are included. Bec...

28/08/2018 Mantram - 5 It moves, and it moves not. It is far, and it is near. It is inside all this, and also outside all this. The movement of the Atman is like the movement of the sun with reference to a perceiver. The sun does not really move; only the clouds move. It is the mind that shifts its centres of thought, and consciousness appears to follow it because of its omnipresent nature. The mind cannot move outside the reality of the Atman. Its motion is within Truth, but, because it works in terms of forms or particular centres, it moves and changes itself. And because the Atman-consciousness is reflected through the mind, the reflection appears to move when really the medium it is that moves. In itself, the Atman does not move, because it is eternal. It is very far, because it is infinite and without boundaries. Also it appears to be very far to the ignorant, because it is not possible to know it even in crores (tens of millions) of births through any worldly means. It...

05/08/2018 Mantram - 4. The Atman is motionless, one alone, swifter than the mind. It is not overtaken by the senses, because it is prior to them. It is ahead of them. Others run fast to overtake it, but it is before them even while sitting. On the basis of this Self does Hiranyagarbha make actions possible. The Self is motionless, because it is eternal. It is one, because duality is non-eternal. Individuality and motion mean changing from one condition to another, which means death. The Self, being permanent, is free from individuality and motion. Because the Self is omnipresent it exists wherever the mind goes and is even beyond the province of the mind. The mind may run with the greatest speed to any place or time, but the Self is already there, it being the very implication of the existence and activity of the mind. The senses cannot overtake the Self because the senses have got two defects. One is that they always run away from the Self, and the other is that they cannot ...

05/07/2018 Mantram - 3. Devilish are the worlds covered over by dense darkness, which are reached by those who have killed their Self. The regions experienced by the destroyers of the Self, i.e., those who are ignorant of the Self, are devilish or godless because they are destitute of purity and light, devoid of sattva-guna, cut off from the knowledge of Truth. They are devilish because experiences there are extremely painful and antagonistic to the Divine Presence. People who reject the Divine Self and love the undivine matter, which is subjectively called the body and objectively the world, have such experiences as are characterised by extreme repentance for having committed the evil of not knowing the Self. The asuras or the devils are those who have deserted the One Immutable Being. In this sense all individuals are asuras in different degrees, because they experience the material sheaths or the bodies. These realms of these unfortunate beings are enveloped by dense darkne...

14/06/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 6. Action, ordinarily, therefore, is a movement of the self towards the not-self and extra-ordinarily a movement of the not-self towards the Self. But generally the latter process is not included in the category of what we understand by action. The latter is the natural absorption of the Spirit into itself, a genuine unfoldment, or rather the pristine illumination of itself to itself. It is therefore the process of the cessation of action, though all processes are actions in the strict sense. By action we mean the expression of a desire, and movement towards Truth is not the effect of a desire, because it is a desire to destroy desire, an effort to stop effort. Such a desire is not a desire, and such an action is not an action. It is the flaming march of the soul towards its extension into infinity. When Shankara contends that action and knowledge are like darkness and light respectively, he refers to the action of the ego directed to the acquisit...

29/05/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD 5. Action is generally an effort towards the achievement of an end. Man does not simply exist. He ever tries to become something else. He is never satisfied with simply existing. He wishes to change, to become. The impulse for action is ingrained in the very constitution of the individual. Action has become an indispensable part of the individual self. Action cannot be cast off, because it is not separate from the form of the make-up of the individual. The whole life of man is action. It is the nature of his action that determines the nature of his life. Action is the expression of the will to live through an instrument of action, namely, the mind and the body. Jijivisha or wish to live has as its effects the desire to possess and develop relations with external phenomena, which are created by the same desire in the fashion of its own constitution so that it may find what it wishes to find. That undesirable objects and conditions also are found...

17/05/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 4. Sri Adi Swami Sankaracharya discusses the nature of action and knowledge and their relation between one another. Knowledge as Shankara understands it is not the knowledge that the human being is familiar with. The knowledge of the human being is knowledge of something other than the knower. It is always knowledge of some object or objects. It is divided knowledge that separates the object from the subject. It is incomplete knowledge, for, by it, it is not possible to know the subject and the object at one and the same time. When the one is known, the other is discarded and forgotten. It is not possible to have whole knowledge through a process, and perception or human knowledge is evidently a process. Process means change, and change is movement towards some thing or some state which marks the process as distinct from perfection. Hence, human knowledge is a perishable process of an ever non-enduring struggle for perfection. A struggle is ...

05/05/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 3. The first mantram refers to jnana-nishtha, and is meant for those who have the ability to abandon all desires and establish themselves in knowledge alone. But on others who are not yet ready for such a state the performance of action in conformity with the natural inclination of the individual is enjoined : “By doing action alone here one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in your case; there is no other way than this. Action dose not cling to man.” One can wish to live as an individual only by performing actions. As long as there is the strong feeling that on is a human being alone, the laws pertaining to the human being have to be observed. One cannot live in one plane and observe the rules of another plane. The notion of one’s being an individual is inseparably connected with the ideas of and the necessity for desire and action. The very fact of individuality denotes that individuality is not complete and one can never re...

14/04/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 2. Introductory :- The nature of the Self is not in any way connected with the processes or the results of action that takes the Self to be limited, impure and diverse. Knowledge pertains to the essential nature of the Self. Knowledge neither creates nor modifies nor obtains nor purifies the Self, because the relationship between knowledge and the Self is not one of doer and doing. All the Upanishads exhaust themselves in ascertaining the fundamental characteristics of the Self. The mantras of the Isavasyopanishad negate the conception which the Mimamsakas have of the Self, and assert that the true Self is secondless, non-doer, non-enjoyer, pure and ever untainted by sin. Mantram. 1 :- All this is pervaded by the Lord, whatever is moving (and not moving) in this world. By such renunciation enjoy (or protect). Do not covet the wealth of anyone. Vasyam or avasyam means fit to be dwelt by or clothed by or covered over by. The universe is to be cov...

25/03/2018 ISAVASYOPANISHAD - 1. 1.Santi Mantra That is full; this is full. From the full the full proceeds. Taking the full from the full, the full alone remains. That Absolute is full. This created being is also full. Brahman is infinitude and is therefore full. That which proceeds from the full or the infinite must be either real or unreal. If it is real, it must also be full, because a part cannot be ever-enduring, and that which is not always enduring is not real. If it is unreal, nothing proceeds at all. This means to say that either infinity is the product of infinity or nothing proceeds from infinity. Infinity cannot proceed from infinity, because, thereby, there would be two infinities. Hence, the proceeding of infinity from infinity does not change infinity, because infinity alone remains even after that. The drift of the statement is that infinity is unchanging and this mantra is a figurative way of saying that nothing proceeds from infinity. Even the id...