Upanishads
19 quotes
Biography
The Upanishads are Sanskrit texts of the late Vedic and post-Vedic periods that "document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions" and the emergence of the central religious concepts of Hinduism. They are the most recent addition to the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, and deal with meditation, philosophy, consciousness, and ontological knowledge.
"सत्यमेव जयते (satyameva jayate)"
"See how it was with those who came before, How it will be with those who are living. Like corn mortals ripen and fall; like corn They come up again."
"Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins. The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer."
"As large as this ether (all space) is, so large is that ether within the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained within it, both fire and air, both sun and moon, both lightning and stars; and whatever there is of him (the Self) here in the world, and whatever is not (i. e. whatever has been or will be), all that is contained within it."
"This earth is the honey (madhu, the effect) of all beings, and all beings are the honey (madhu, the effect) of this earth."
"When the speech of this dead person enters into the fire, breath into the air, the eye into the sun, the mind into the moon, the hearing into space, into the earth the body, into the ether the self, into the shrubs the hairs of the body, into the trees the hairs of the head, when the blood and the seed are deposited in the water, where is then that person?"
"The gods love what is mysterious, and dislike what is evident."
"Know that all this, whatever moves in this moving world, is enveloped by God. Therefore find your enjoyment in renunciation; do not covet what belongs to others."
"That which is not uttered by speech, that by which the word is expressed, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which one does not think with the mind, that by which, they say, the mind is thought, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not see with the eye, that by which man sees the activities of the eye, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not hear with the ear, that by which man hears the ear’s hearing, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped. That which man does not smell with the organ of smell, that by which the organ of smell is attracted towards its objects, know That alone to be Brahman, and not this (non-Brahman) which is being worshipped."
"Thinking evolves the objective. All the three worlds exist through thinking. The Kosmos melts away on its dissolution. This thinking should carefully be diagnosed."
"Knowledge of the Divine dissolves all bonds, and gives freedom from every kind of misery including birth and death. S'vetasvataropanishad."
"Mind being nearest mind, those who abandoning the true secret, apply themselves only to the body, are described as lost in physical attachment. Yogavasishtha."
"You may drink the ocean dry; you may uproot from its base the mountain Meru; you may swallow fire. But more diffucult than all these, oh Good One! is control over the mind. Panchadasi."
"The light breaking upon the mind should not be excluded by that false logic which puts forth unholy guesses of every kind up to the obliteration even of the facts of consciousness. Yogavasishtha."
"Trees continue to vegetate, and so do live on beasts and birds; he alone lives whose mind lives not in consequence of taking on a variety of forms. All holy writ is so much burden to him who has not acquired self-control, the body is so much burden to him who knows only the anatman (no-self.)"
"The view of things … that all plurality is only apparent, that in the endless series of individuals, passing simultaneously and successively into and out of life, generation after generation, age after age, there is but one and the same entity really existing, which is present and identical in all alike; — this theory … may be carried back to the remotest antiquity. It is the alpha and omega of the oldest book in the world, the sacred Vedas, whose dogmatic part, or rather esoteric teaching, is found in the Upanishads. There, in almost every page this profound doctrine lies enshrined; with tireless repetition, in countless adaptations, by many varied parables and similes it is expounded and inculcated."
"There is no kind of framework within which we can find consciousness in the plural; this is simply something we construct because of the temporal plurality of individuals, but it is a false construction....The only solution to this conflict insofar as any is available to us at all lies in the ancient wisdom of the Upanishad."
"The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West."
"The Danish nuclear physicist Niels Bohr once wrote, “I go into the Upanishads to ask questions,” and the Upanishads, the midwife birthing early Hinduism out of Vedic religion, ask these questions with even more urgency than Don Quixote or Holden Caulfield."