The Upanishads form the final part of the Vedas of India, which are among the oldest and most incisive religio-philosophical works of mankind, known to us today. The Vedas are four in number namely, the Rg, Yajur, Sama and Atharva. They are composed in poetic or musical metres as also in prose, in an archaic form of Sanskrit generally referred to as Vedic Sanskrit. That form of the language got reorganised into the form that exists today, referred to as Classical Sanskrit, under strict and comprehensive rules of linguistics and grammar by Panini, who is believed to have lived in the 8th Century AD. Words and concepts, especially those having religious or philosophic import, whether expressed in Vedic or Classical Sanskrit, pose considerable difficulty of understanding to people of other linguistic or cultural groups. Even modern Sanskrit scholars of today, familiar with the classical form, have occasional difficulty with the Vedic form, and have often to take the help of related works of the great commentators of the post-Vedic centuries.Vidya Vrikshah presents the Upanishads here, in a uniform format, where the original text of each sloka or stanza in Sanskrit, is followed in English, first by a word-by-word meaning, then a running translation of the stanza, and finally, a brief explanation where we have attempted to convey the sloka’s essential purport in as simple a manner as possible. Our intent is to bring an understanding of the Upanishads within the reach of common people today, across linguistic and cultural barriers. These presentations are prepared as a labor of love by ordinary members of the community who have studied these texts and wish to share their understanding with others who have not read them. In other words, they are prepared by lay people for lay people, not, as is more usual, by scholars for scholars. But scholars may nevertheless find them useful because they provide ready access to the original texts, and facilities for viewing or printing them in any language script, as also the help of some useful referencing tools that are included with the presentations. The effort is simply to promote wider study and understanding of the texts in their cultural context, by anyone, anywhere in the world. They do not seek acceptance, justification or rationalization of any kind for what the texts convey or teach.Ancient Indian tradition has it that the Vedas were first "heard" (meaning, received as inspiration or revelation) by Brahma the Creator, at the dawn of creation of the Universe. Passed down the Yugas or ages through a teacher-disciple chain, this knowledge got scattered and perhaps diluted, and parts of it were even lost with the passage of time. The Yugas mentioned here refer to a cosmic time cycle of four Yugas, namely, the Krita, Treta, Dvapara and Kali Yugas (we are currently in the Kali Yuga) which together last 12000 cosmic years, one cosmic year being equal to 300 human years. The ancient Indians did indeed have well defined concepts in relation to the cosmic and the human scales of space and time !At the beginning of the Dvapara Yuga then, finding the Vedic knowledge in disarray, the sage Vyasa collected the knowledge corpus together again, arranged them into the four Vedas, and imparted them to four of his disciples, to be preserved, propagated and passed down to posterity. Six supporting disciplines were also evolved, namely, Siksha (Phonetics), Vyakarana (Grammar), Chandas (Poesy), Nirukta (Etymology), Kalpa (Ritual procedures) and Jyotisha (Astronomy and Astrology, dealing respectively, with details of the postions and influences of the stars, which were used for determining the calendar and timing of all human activities). These disciplines, called the Vedangas (or limbs of the Vedas) were intended to provide the strict framework in which observance, propagation and preservation of the Vedas in their pristine purity could be ensured for all time, despite the oral mode of transmission. The accuracy and authenticityof the texts available today, despite the passage of so many centuries, provide living testimony to the remarkable efficacy of these disciplines. In particular, the techniques of memorising and recciting the texts, however voluminous, are so carefully designed, that even today, it is common for priests and scholars, who have been trained in this tradition, to pick on any word at any point in any text, and recite it from memory from that point onwards, for hours !Successive generations of teachers and disciples carried the Vedas to different parts of India, and over long periods of time, the processes of their observance, propagation and preservation got institutionalised into Sakhas or Schools, each preserving and carrying forward a particular Vedic rescension. The Muktikopanishad has it that at one time, there were 1180 Sakhas in existence. Today, scattered segments remain, of only 8 Sakhas.The texts of each Veda falls broadly into four sequences. The first is the Samhita or Mantra text of all prayers and rituals Next comes the Brahmana portion that provides the explanatory text. These two portions provide a framework of religious discipline of daily rituals and periodic special observances for the large majority of common people, that would influence them to lead simple, honest and purposeful lives. Next come the Aranyakas, which contain reflections on the inner meaning of the rituals, and are meant to provide food for introspection by people in their later years, when they could retire to forest hermitages for the purpose. (Aranya means forest) Last come the Upanishads for those exceptional people who are seeking the true meaning of life in terms of the highest philosophical truths behind all existence. The Muktikopanishad says that each Veda Sakha had its own Upanishad. Today only around 200 Upanishads are known, and 108 of them are considered worthy of serious study. Of these again only 10 have come to acquire central importance, as they were singled out for detailed commentaries by Sankara in the 7th. Century AD, and by the line of great commentators who followed him in later centuries. Our presentations here cover only these ten Upanishads, and they are the Isa, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Munda, Mandukya, Taittari, Aitareya, Chandogya and Brhadaranyaka Upanishads.The Upanishads, together with the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras are referred to as the Prastanatraya, or three-fold Ultimate authority on which the religio-philosophical canon of Vedanta rests. They are also referred as the "Sruti", or that which was "heard", implying knowledge received by inspiration or revelation directly from God, first by Brahma at the dawn of Creation, and later, by the many seers of later ages. Higher Knowledge thus intuited, was always considered heard directly from God, and hence named "Sruti", in contradistinction to "Smriti", or texts of lower levels of Knowledge that originated, as this name suggests, from man’s own mind.. And when seers who were deeply revered and seen to be in constant communion with God, declared that certain knowledge was heard, that is, received direct from God, it was accepted to be so by all people. Thus, over the ages, "Sruti" came to be regarded as the infallible, absolute and ultimate authority for whatever knowledge they conveyed. All later works had indeed to establish their credentials only by drawing from the authority of "Sruti".If the overall body of the Vedic texts today sometimes show deviation from a clearcut structure, or occasionally present mixed sequences or even seeming contradictions of fact and thought, it could well be because they were built by additions to the knowledge corpus from time to time, over long periods of time, by different seers, based on the unique intuitions or spiritual experiences of each of them. The traditional description of the Vedas as "anadi" or without beginning, "ananta", or without end, and "aupurusheya", or of divine origin, is quite simply an affirmation that knowledge itself is eternal, self-existent and ever available to be discovered and articulated from time to time by the seers. If nothing is known of the personal identities of these seers of remote antiquity, it is because they considered that their own identities was of no consequence, and that they were no more than conduits through whom the word of God got articulated. How far have we travelled, or should we say, how much have we descended, in our values, that we we make personal claims to knowledge in terms of authorship, copyrights and intellectual property ! !Every human being has to survive in an external world of events. The individual experiences the external world through his external sensory organs of sight, smell, sound, taste and touch, all of course, within a constantly changing context of space and time. He responds to external events in the light of his internal understanding and evaluations, and in this he is aided and influenced, not only by his faculty of reason, by a whole range of other faculties like intellect, instinct, inspiration, faith and even emotion. His inner faculties suffer none of the physical limitations that characterise his external faculties of perception His internal faculties enable him to visualise states of infinity, eternity and total bliss. When his responses to the external world are influenced by these inner perspectives and values, his actions acquire deeper purpose and value and his life becomes one of greater harmony, joy and fulfillment.Different cultures and societies have pursued the goal of human fulfillment in different ways. Inspired by the Greeks, Western civilisation has sought an objective materialistic destiny for man through the path of Science, a path determined by exclusively committing the capabilities and potential of the mind to study of what was strictly within the reach of man’s external sense organs and what was observable, demonstrable and replicable in the external world. The explorations of the external world within these self-imposed parameters of scientific validity have certainly given phenomenal results in pressing Nature into the service of man. But today, at the final frontiers of the physically observable or measurable, these self-imposed parameters are proving to be barriers to further scientific exploration, and their utility and validity are coming into serious question. Traversing the world of matter through successive discoveries, first of the elements of matter, then of atoms and finally of sub-atomic particles, science has reached a point where the ultimate particle of matter has disapppeared and has reappeared as a pulse of energy. In science today, the principle of certainty has yielded place to the principle of uncertainty, and the reality of matter contends with a new reality called anti-matter. Turning our gaze into outer space, we see today the light of stars that have themselves perhaps ceased to exist long ago And turning the search into the internal world of all living matter, science has reached the cell as the ultimate unit of living matter, but beyond it’s molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, and content of energy, no answer is in sight of what it is that divides the living from the lifeless.Clearly science has reached a point where its explorations cannot proceed much further if consciously confined to the reach of the external physical senses, however much such reach can be extended by the instruments and methods of science. There is incidentally, a curious self-contradiction in the operation of science here. The phenomenal capabilities of the mind have been single-mindedly (a language usage reflecting restriction imposed on the mind !) pressed into designing instruments and methods to extend the reach of the external senses. but not to study the reach of the mind itself. What studies have been made of the mind is again within the same self-imposed constraints of the instruments and methods used to study matter. And within the brain itself, there is no clue in sight as to where matter ends and thought begins or what joy and sorrow really are, though these impact so deeply on our lives. No effort has been made to explore the virtually limitless reaches of the mind, by using the mind itself, to see beyond the reach of the external senses. No effort has been made to explore other inner faculties and capabilities that add several dimensions to the capabilities of the mind – things like intellect, instinct, inspiration, faith or even emotion, despite the obvious role these have played in the extraordinary accomplishments of scientists, saints.or even in the every day heroism of thousands of common people. On the other hand these faculties have been consciously excluded from the scope of science and relegated as appropriate only to the field of metaphysics and religion, simply because they were not measurable.Seers of ancient India recognised that an integrated understanding of our internal and external world required an integrated understanding of our internal and external faculties of perception. And their very first direct and obvious conclusion was that the external faculties, could serve only to study the external, not the internal world. Even what these faculties recorded of the external world were restricted by their own physical structure to narrow confines of time and space, and hence could only provide a partial view. Internal faculties, however, could transcend all these limitations, and could provide a fuller view of the totality of experience, both internal and external. Uncompromising observation and experience, analysed and understood in the light of logic taken to it’s ultimate limits, led the ancient seers to the conviction that all existence, living or otherwise, sprang ultimately from one single Reality that they called Brahman; and that all seemingly individual existences sprang from the very same Reality, which was referred to as the Atman in the individual context. This finding found it’s loftiest expression in the Vedas, often in what are called the Mahavakyas or Great Aphorisms, like "Tat Tvam Asi", or "That Art Thou", where That refers to the Brahman and Thou to the Atman, meaning that it is the same Ultimate Reality that pervades our internal and external worlds.It is not as if the ancient Indian seers paid less attention to an understanding of the external objective Universe. They studied it with as much meticulous attention as they did the internal world of man. They were able to advance knowledge in subjects like Astronomy, Mathematics and Medicine, far in advance of other contemporary human societies and also project facts and concepts that Science is finding relevant today.. But they realised that Knowledge by itself was of little worth unless it remained integrated with the highest internal values and unless these values were reflected in our responses to the external world. And they insisted that it was all of man's internal faculties together with their potential, that raised an edifice of worth and value within man. It is this that could guide his thoughts, words and actions in ways that could contribute far more to personal and social well-being than any one-sided materialistic pursuit divorced from value. This vision fortunately remains embedded to this day, in the psyche of India’s millions, despite the inroads over the centuries of other faiths, cultures and races, and also the inroads in contemporary times, of the materialist culture, fostered by the self-limiting outlook and methods of science.The Upanishads tell us repeatedly that Brahman or Atman are not just sterile intellectual constructs of a theoretical philosophy but are realities that can be experienced by every individual. In simpler terms they can be described as a destination of perfection, a conscious and very real goal, which the individual must constantly endeavour to reach. Life provides the opportunities and faculties, the means to reach that destination. The Upanishads provide a ringing reaffirmation of the inner strengths and potentials of man and that it is through them that man can elevate himself and find fulfillment.The Upanishadic declaration of the identity of the Atman of the individual and the Brahman behind all existence is also a declaration of the identity of all living beings across the separating lines we have created within mankind, between individuals, neighbours and members of different areas, religions, races and of the different social, political and economic entities of the world. A living commitment to this higher identity alone can end the conflicts between man and man, which is the source of all human sorrow and suffering. This commitment alone can lead mankind to it’s true destiny.Every Upanishad starts and ends with an invocation, which is generally in the form of a prayer or affirmation of a philosphical truth. The first Upanishad that we present here is the Isavasya Upanishad. It would be fitting to quote it’s invocation at this point, because it virtually sums up the central message of the Upanishads :` p:ÜN:üm:dH p:ÜN:üem:dø p:ÜN:aüt:Î p:ÜN:üm:Ødcy:t:ðp:ÜN:üsy: p:ÜN:üm:aday: p:ÜN:üm:ðv:av:eS:\y:t:ð` S:a¡nt:H S:a¡nt:H S:a¡nt:HOM, Purnmadah purnamidam purnat purnamudacyatePurnasya purnmadaya purnamevavasishyateOM Shantih Shantih Shantih.This translates as follows : THAT is Infinite. THIS too is Infinite.And though it is from THAT which THIS has manifested, THAT alone remains unchanged. Peace ! Peace ! Peace !The meaning is as follows :THAT refers to the one ultimateeternal existence. THIS refers to this transient existence whichsubsists in and which manifests from THAT. Yet all such transientmanifestation does not alter THAT which remains infinite and eternal.
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