by Roopa Pai
Once, when the two were bathing in the river (so the story goes), a crocodile clamped its jaws on Shankara’s leg and began to drag him down.
‘You have never given me permission to become a sannyasi, Mother,’ yelled Shankara, ‘at least give it to me now, in my last moments, so I can die happy!’
‘You have my blessing!’ sobbed his petrified mother. Instantly, the croc let Shankara go.
Soon after, the grateful eight-year-old set out happily on his chosen path. The story goes that he walked some 2,000 kilometres from his home in Kaladi to the ashram of his chosen guru, Govinda Bhagavatpada, on the banks of the river Narmada in central India. When the guru asked him who he was, the boy answered, ‘Neither fire nor air not water nor earth nor space am I, but the indestructible Atman that is hidden inside all names and forms.’ Impressed with the boy’s instinctive understanding of the ultimate reality, the guru accepted Shankara as his disciple.
In the next four years, Shankara attained mastery of the scriptures. Around this time, an intense monsoon broke. The Narmada was in spate, its dark, roiling waters rising wildly and threatening to flood a cave where Bhagavatpada sat in the deepest of deep meditative states, Samadhi. The students of the gurukul were in a tizzy, for they were completely forbidden to disturb their guru when he was in Samadhi. It was Shankara who placed his kamandala at the mouth of the cave then, calmly proclaiming that it would contain the floodwaters within itself. To everyone’s wonder, that was exactly what happened. When the guru later heard what had happened, he blessed Shankara, saying, ‘Just as you contained the flood in your little kamandala, may you distil the essence of the scriptures into your writings.’
Encouraged by his guru’s words, Shankara began to write commentaries on the Upanishads, the Brahamasutra and the Bhagavad Gita. At the age of sixteen, he was done with the writing, and ready, with his guru’s blessings, to embark on the next phase of the journey – spreading the good word. For the next sixteen years, Shankara walked across the length and breadth of the country, spreading the explosive and egalitarian message of the philosophy called Advaita* and engaging in public debates with scholars who espoused a different point of view on what the scriptures said or the right way to live.
* One of the three most popular schools of Vedantic thought of the past millennium, Advaita (which means ‘not two’) philosophy takes its cue from the Upanishads, reiterating that there is no difference, none at all, between Atman (one’s indestructible soul) and Brahman (the constant, unchanging reality that is the life-force of the universe). In other words, there is no ‘other’ – beyond our bodies and our minds and our intellect, we are all the same and we are all divine. Advaita thought existed before Shankara, but he is its best-known and most influential teacher.
Gurus who came after, like the 11th century saint Ramanuja and the 12th century teacher Madhvacharya, however, disagreed with Advaita, saying that it only suited monks who had rejected the world. Both also accused Shankara of considering only those sections of the Upanishads that supported his own theories. The world, said Ramanuja and Madhva, was real, not something you could detach from and wish away, and the path to liberation lay in embracing one’s worldly responsibilities and fulfilling one’s duties as householders and soldiers and priests, all the while leading morally upright lives.
They came up with their own different and more ‘practical’ philosophies, which they said encapsulated the true message of the Upanishads.
Ramanuja’s version was Vishishta-advaita, which believes that Atman and Brahman are not the same (i.e., you are not God), but agrees that every Atman can attain Brahman because they share the same divine essence. Madhva’s radically different version was Dvaita, which insists that Atman and Brahman are not at all the same. There is only one Brahman, and while some Atmans can attain Brahman by choosing to do what is morally right, those Atmans that insist on choosing to do the wrong thing are doomed forever.
Despite their differences with Advaita, or perhaps because of it, both Vishishta-advaita and Dvaita found their own loyal sets of followers. To this day, these three schools of Vedantic philosophy continue to influence millions of Hindus in India and across the world.
Shankara’s peregrinations, and his inclusive philosophy, expressed in pithy and powerful phrases like ‘Brahman Satyam, Jagan Mithya, Jeevo Brahmaiva Na Para’ (Brahman is the only truth, the only constant – focus on it; Jagan, the world, is only a material reality – stay detached from it; Jeeva, the individual soul, is no different from Brahman, the soul of the universe – believe it!) caught the imaginations of the splintered Hindus and gave them a guiding slogan to rally around.
It helped that for all his high-level philosophical musings, Shankara was also a practical soul – to bring together different groups that worshipped different gods and fought about which one was greater, he formulated a system of worship that included the six most popular gods of the time – Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, Ganesha, Muruga (Karthikeya) and Surya (quite a different list from the top gods of Vedic India, what?) – while repeating that they were all really one and the same. He even formulated a system of ritual worship for each of these gods, to be followed at their respective temples, cleverly nipping in the bud all the conflicts that might arise over those.
Adi Shankaracharya by legendary painter Raja Ravi Varma
Shankara was also a most efficient organizer, with a great vision to boot. In the course of his travels, he established the Chaturdham [aka Char Dham, the four centres of Advaita in the four corners of the country – the Sringeri Math in Sringeri (in present-day Karnataka), the Sarada Math in Dwarka (Gujarat), the Jyotir Math in Badrinath (Uttarakhand) and the Govardhan Math in Puri (Odisha)] – put his most enlightened followers at the head of each, and entrusted each Math with the guardianship and propagation of one of the four Vedas.
He also continued to write extensively. Apart from some eighteen commentaries on existing texts, including ten of the Upanishads, Shankara left as his legacy twenty-three books explaining every nuance of the Advaita philosophy and seventy-two beautiful devotional hymns that are sung to this day.
Then, having made sure that the main teachings of the Vedanta, as he saw them, had been restored to the front and centre of the Indian philosophy stage, he went off on an expedition to the holy site of Kedarnath, and was never seen again. At the time he left, Shankara was all of thirty-two.
But his life’s work had been done. To this day, some 1,200 years after his death, he is loved, revered and celebrated as one of the Jagadgurus – Supreme Teachers – of the Upanishads.
Now that you have read this far, have you noticed one big difference between the Vedas and the Upanishads? That’s right – while the Vedas describe rituals and invoke gods of one particular culture or people, the Upanishads talk about universal truths that anyone from any culture can relate to and live by. But perhaps what is even more wonderful about the latter is that they allow for several interpretations, including some seriously contradictory ones – the debate is never over, the jury is always out.
In the next ten chapters, as we skim (very lightly, and in no way exhaustively!) the surface of the ten greatest Upanishads, you will have a chance to experience their power, beauty and wisdom for yourself (finally!). And you will see what a...
Aaaarghhh! Enough with the build-up already! On to the No. 1 Upanishad on the Muktika’s list – the Isha!
९
ISHA
The Upanishad of the Sameness of All Things
In which we learn that the single-minded pursuit of knowledge can, um, throw you into the most blinding darkness
Aum!
That is complete, and This is complete,
From That completeness comes This completeness;
If you take completeness away from completeness,
Only completeness remains.
Aum Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
THE BACKSTORY
At a mere eighteen verses (one version has only seventeen), the Isha
(say ee-sha) Upanishad (aka the Ishaavaasya Upanishad or the Ishopanishad) is one of the shortest of them all. But what makes it special is that unlike other Upanishads, the Isha is not the fourth layer of the Shukla Yajur Veda; instead, it is part of its Samhita (or the first layer) itself, as its fortieth, and concluding, chapter. Remarkably, while the rest of the Samhita is all about the yagna rituals (which is really what the Yajur Veda is about), the fortieth chapter is highly philosophical, and in fact, disses those who focus only on the rituals and not on the truth behind them!
The Isha gets its name from the very first word of its very first verse, ‘Ishaavaasyam’. Isha simply means Lord or Ruler (it is the root word of ‘Ishvara’, the Vedic term for the Supreme Being*). While some Upanishads are written as stories, the Isha isn’t. It is a straightforward set of philosophical reflections on:
1. Brahman and Atman (but of course!);
2. True Knowledge (vidya) vs False Knowledge (a-vidya);
3. The specific fates that await those who seek vidya alone and those who revel in a-vidya alone (both are tossed into the dark worlds of ignorance); and
4. The ways in which death can be overcome and immortality gained.
Whoa! That’s a lot to pack into eighteen verses, but the Isha does it remarkably well.
* Think! You have encountered the word Isha as part of the names of many, many Hindu gods – and people! For instance, Ganesha, or Ganesh, is formed from the words ‘Gana’ and ‘Isha’ and means ‘Lord of the Ganas’, while Suresh is Indra, the ‘Lord of the gods (or Suras)’, Naresh is ‘Ruler of Men (or Naras)’, Umesh is the ‘Lord of Uma (or Parvati)’ and therefore another name for Shiva. And Sarvesh and Rajesh and Paramesh? Go on, figure them out yourself!
THE STORY
RENOUNCE AND REJOICE!
Shloka 1
Ishaavaasyam idam sarvam yat kim cha jagatyaam jagat
Tena tyaktena bhunjeetaa, maa grudhah kasyasvid dhanam
The whole world is Isha’s abode;
He dwells in everything, of everyone He is a part,
So covet not what is another’s,
Instead, renounce and rejoice, dear heart!
Mahatma Gandhi once said, famously, that if all the Upanishads and all the other Indian scriptures were suddenly and irretrievably lost to humankind, and only the first verse of the Isha Upanishad (the one above) were left in the memory of the Hindus, Hinduism would live forever.
His words may seem an exaggeration, but if you take a closer look, the verse does seem to contain a lot of the core principles of Hinduism – (a) your soul is divine, i.e., you are divine, for the Supreme Being lives within you; (b) setting aside external appearances, no other animal, vegetable or mineral is really different from you because it contains the same divine essence as you do; and (c) to ‘renounce attachment’ to things and people is the only way to bliss.
How can ‘renouncing attachment’ bring bliss? Well, although something ‘appears’ to be yours – your parents, your high rank in class, your position as vice prefect at school, even your opinions – it really isn’t. In fact, says the Isha, you have only been given all of it as a gift, a blessing, on short-term lease, by the One who actually owns it all. Which is why, getting too attached to any of it is foolish. It’s like getting attached to a book you have borrowed from the library and insisting that it is yours simply because it is in your room at this moment, even though you know you have to return it the next day.
Of course, ‘renouncing attachment’ to your parents does not mean you don’t care what happens to them (just like ‘renouncing attachment’ to a library book does not mean you can let your dog chew it up). It just means that you treat their time with you, and yours with them, as a precious gift. It means that you respect them and their right to guide you in ways that seem right to them. It means you don’t get mad at them because they seem to favour your sibling over you, or because they decided to go off on a holiday by themselves (how selfish are they!). Instead, says the Isha, be grateful for all that they have done for you. When you do this, i.e., flip that perspective switch inside your head, you stop thinking of your parents as your property and stop expecting them to treat you, and you alone, as the centre of their universe. In other words, you ‘renounce attachment’ to their actions towards you.
The concept of renouncing attachment to your opinions, your prejudices, your fears, your loves and your hates is easier to understand, but is equally difficult to practise (what might help, somewhat, is to sing ‘Let It Go’ from the movie Frozen at the top of your lungs while you’re trying to renounce something, like, say, your dislike for the partner you’ve been saddled with for the history project). You do see why this renouncing must be done, though, right? If you don’t, you will eventually turn into a petty, bitter and angry person, and you certainly don’t want that.
Think about it. When you stop having expectations of other people, and are grateful instead, when you are willing to keep an open mind to let fresh, exciting and contradictory opinions flow in, leading to a more informed, empathetic and better understanding of situations and people, what else but bliss can follow?
PS: Now ask your parents to read this section, substituting ‘children’ for ‘parents’ in the para about renouncing attachment to parents, and watch... ahem... their reaction. It’s your Dharma as their child to make sure the Isha’s wisdom reaches them too!
MIRROR, MIRROR, EVERYWHERE!
Shloka 6-7
He who sees all beings in himself
And himself in every being there is,
Love fills him, and disgust flees –
As delusion recedes, he brims with bliss.
These two shlokas need no real explanation, but their egalitarian message, which follows from shloka 1, is vitally important. When you see every person around you as having the same essence as you, you will be less likely to dislike or hate him or her; instead, you will see their victories as your victories, their happiness as your own.
The real source of our unhappiness comes from seeing others as different from us; all our negative emotions – envy of others’ successes, anger at other people’s attitudes towards us, revulsion at the way others look or dress or act, or at the gods they worship or the food they eat – stem from the delusion that they are different from us.
The same thing applies to our relationship to other creatures – animals, birds, insects. When we judge them in relation to ourselves – as lovable or repulsive, threatening or non-threatening, useful or irrelevant – we unconsciously place a value on their lives, deciding which creatures (or trees, or mountains) are more important than others, and which, therefore, are more deserving of our respect, care and protection.
If we see ourselves ‘in every being there is’, however, we become instantly conscious of how each of them fits into the ecosystem of the universe in a complex but vital way. We understand, deep down and for real, that every creature has as much of a right to its life as we do to ours. Suddenly, every creature’s pain will begin to resonate with us; never again will we be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities against animals, trees, rivers, the air, the earth.
The Isha insists that the ‘separateness’ that we see between us and everyone and everything else is like a veil drawn over the eyes of our souls. It exhorts us to rip the veil apart and see the world for what it really is – a place in which the countless wonderful manifestations of the One gather to dance and play. Once we realize this, it is only one more step to treating our fellow creatures right.
THIS OR THAT? NAAH. THIS AND THAT? ALWAYS!
Shloka 9-14
Into blinding darkness
Enter those who worship ignorance;
A worse fate awaits those that delight in knowledge;
Into darkest night
Enter those who believe only in what the senses experience;
A worse fate awaits those who insist that the only truth is what the senses cannot;
For He is different from ignorance,
a
nd different from knowledge –
So the wise tell us.
He is different from what is visible,
and different from what is not –
So the wise tell us.
He is beyond all that exists – transcendent,
And inside all that exists – immanent,
So the wise tell us.
Knowing one and not the other
Is futile; he who knows
Both ignorance and knowledge,
He who experiences
Both the world outside and the world inside,
He who rejoices
In both the transcendent and the immanent –
He is blessed,
For he passes beyond death by the one
And wins immortality by the other.
Eh? A man who delights in knowledge will come to a worse fate than one who is happy to wallow in ignorance, i.e., someone who is content doing mindless action? Yup, according to the wise sage who composed the Isha (Nope, we haven’t got our lines crossed here)!
How can that be? After going on and on about how the world outside is a delusion and an illusion, how can the Isha sit there and tell us, smugly, that the man who believes that there is a world of the spirit (that which is not visible) that is greater than the material world (that which is visible),* is hurtling towards a night darker than someone who believes the opposite?
*You will hear the word ‘material’ used a lot when the scriptures are discussed – material world, material possessions, material pleasures. What does the word really mean? Well, the root word of ‘material’ is ‘matter’, so material means anything that is made of matter, anything that you can touch and feel and see, that has form and that you can measure. Material things are things like wealth, measured by possessions; or success, measured by your position in a race or in an organization; or power, measured by how many people you can influence. Even something like beauty (of the body) is material, for the body is matter too. The word ‘physical’ is often used interchangeably with ‘material’, because it means the same thing. The ‘opposite’ of material (and physical) is spiritual, and it refers to the spirit of something, its essence, which cannot be seen or touched or measured, but can only be experienced. Spiritual ‘things’ are feelings, thoughts, emotions, happiness, grief... Most scriptures of most religions will advise you not to give too much importance to physical or material things, and to focus instead on spiritual things.