Isavasya Upanishad : ( 26/12/2012. )

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