THE GREAT ARANYAKA A COMMENTARY ON THE BRIHADARANYAKA UPANISHAD The Great Aranyaka FOREWORD THE Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad, at once the most obscure and the profoundest of the Upanishads, offers peculiar difficulties to the modern mind. If its ideas are remote from us, its language is still more remote. Profound, subtle, extraordinarily rich in rare philosophical suggestions and delicate psychology, it has preferred to couch its ideas in a highly figurative and symbolical language, which to its contemporaries, accustomed to this suggestive dialect, must have seemed a noble frame for its riches, but meets us

The Secret of the Isha IT IS now several thousands of years since men ceased to study Veda and Upanishad for the sake of Veda or Upanishad. Ever since the human mind in India, more and more intellectualised, always increasingly addicted to the secondary process of knowledge by logic and intellectual rationalism, increasingly drawn away from the true and primary processes of knowledge by experience and direct perception, began to dislocate and dismember the many-sided harmony of ancient Vedic truth and paved it out into schools of thought, a system of metaphysics, its preoccupation has been rather with the opinions of later Sutras and Bhashyas than with the e

PHILOSOPHY OF THE UPANISHADS ONE The Discovery of the Absolute Brahman THE idea of transcendental Unity, Oneness, and Stability behind all the flux and variety of phenomenal life is the basal idea of the Upanishads: this is the pivot of all Indian metaphysics, the sum and goal of our spiritual experience. To the phenomenal world around us stability and singleness seem at first to be utterly alien; nothing but passes and changes, nothing but has its counterparts, contrasts, harmonised and dissident parts; and all are perpetually shifting and rearranging their relative positions and affections. Yet if one thing is cer

Readings In The Taittiriya Upanishad The Knowledge of Brahman The knower of Brahman reacheth that which is supreme. This is that verse which was spoken; “Truth, Knowledge, Infinity the Brahman, He who knoweth that hidden in the secrecy in the supreme ether, Enjoyeth all desires along with the wise-thinking Brahman.” This is the burden of the opening sentences of the Taittiriya Upanishadʼs second section; they begin its elucidation of the highest truth. Or in the Sanskrit, brahmavid āpnoti param— tad eṣābhyuktā — satyam jñānam anantam brahma — yo veda nihitam guhāyām — parame vyoman —

EARLY TRANSLATIONS OF SOME VEDANTIC TEXTS The Karikas of Gaudapada THE Karikas of Gaudapada are a body of authoritative verse maxims and reasonings setting forth in a brief and closely-argued manual the position of the extreme Monistic School of Vedanta philosophy. The monumental aphorisms of the Vedanta Sutra are meant rather for the master than the learner. Gaudapadaʼs clear, brief and businesslike verses are of a wider utility; they presuppose only an elementary knowledge of philosophic terminology and the general trend of Monistic and Dualistic discussion — this preliminary knowledge granted, they provide the student with an admirab

PRASHNA UPANISHAD PRASHNA UPANISHAD (Being the Upanishad of the Six Questions) first question OM! Salutation to the Supreme Spirit. The Supreme is OM. Sukesha the Bharadwaja; the Shaibya, Satyakama; Gargya, son of the Solar race; the Koshalan, son of Ashwala; the Bhargava of Vidarbha; and Kabandhi Katyayana; — these sought the Most High God, believing in the Supreme and to the Supreme devoted. Therefore they came to the Lord Pippalada, for they said: “This is he that shall tell us of that Universal.ˮ The Rishi said to them: “Another year do ye dwell in holine

SUPPLEMENT The Ishavasyopanishad WITH A COMMENTARY IN ENGLSIH With God all this must be invested, even all that is world in this moving universe; abandon therefore desire and enjoy and covet no manʼs possession. the guru The Upanishad sets forth by pronouncing as the indispensable basis of its revelations the universal nature of God. This universal nature of Brahman the Eternal is the beginning and end of the Vedanta and if it is not accepted, nothing the Vedanta says can have any value, as all its propositions either proceed from it or at least presuppose it; deprived of this central and highest truth,

SIX The Triple Brahman PARABRAHMAN is now on the way to phenomenal manifestation; the Absolute Shakespeare of Existence, the infinite Kavi, Thinker and Poet, is, by the mere existence of the eternal creative force Maya, about to shadow forth a world of living realities out of Himself which have yet no independent existence. He becomes phenomenally a Creator, and Container of the Universe, though really He is what He ever was, absolute and unchanged. To understand why and how the Universe appears what it is, we have deliberately to abandon our scientific standpoint of transcendental knowledge and speaking the language of Nescience, represent the Absolu

NILARUDRA UPANISHAD NILARUDRA UPANISHAD Om. Thee I beheld in thy descending down from the heavens to the earth, I saw Rudra, the Terrible, the azure-throated, the peacock-feathered, as he hurled. Fierce he came down from the sky, he stood facing me on the earth as its lord; the people behold a mass of strength, azure-throated, scarlet-hued. This that cometh is he that destroyeth evil, Rudra the Terrible, born of the tree that dwelleth in the waters; let the globe of the storm winds come too, that destroyeth for thee all things of evil o

-33_Sadananda's Essence of Vedanta.htm SADANANDA'S ESSENCE OF VEDANTA INVOCATION To the Absolute I take refuge with Him who is sheer Existence, Intelligence and Bliss, impartible, beyond the purview of speech and mind, the Self in whom the whole Universe exists — may my desire and purpose attain fulfilment. To the Masters After homage to the Masters who in deed as well as word delight in the One without second and from whom the seemings of duality have passed away, I will declare the Essence of Vedanta according to my intellectual capacity. PRELIMINARY STATEMENT The Training of the Vedantin