by Roopa Pai
Practise right conduct, while learning and teaching;
Stay true to yourself, while learning and teaching;
Perform the rituals, while learning and teaching;
Beget children, while learning and teaching;
Practise austerity, self-control, tranquillity, compassion –
While learning and teaching, learning and teaching.
In other words, this teacher in the Taittiriya is saying – live a full, rich and upright life, but never, ever stop learning and passing on what you’ve learnt. Whether you are student or teacher, self-learning – svaadhyaaya – is vital, because the pursuit of knowledge, when it becomes a joyful, lifelong enterprise, staves off boredom and depression, keeps the brain agile and ensures that you stay engaged with a constantly changing world. As for teaching – pravachana – why, that is super-important too, for not only is the passing on of knowledge a noble act in itself, but it’s also one of the best ways to get a better understanding of what you have learnt – you have to know something really well before you can teach it to someone else.
More importantly, one in the absence of the other is incomplete – gaining knowledge without passing it on is selfish, and simply passing on what you learnt a long time ago, without bothering to update your knowledge with more recent information, is a disservice both to yourself and your student. Taken together though, so the Upanishad tells us, svaadhyaaya–pravachana are magic. Try it and see!
Anuvaka 11 – Commencement speech to graduating students
Yup, convocation addresses and commencement speeches are not a modern invention – they were given to graduating students even 2,500 years ago in Indian gurukuls! And not much has changed in their content either.
So what exactly did the teachers of the Taittiriya Upanishad tell their graduating class? Here’s the entire list. Place a tick or a cross next to each point depending on whether you think it is good advice (or not) for a twenty-one-year-old in the 21st century.
(Quick quiz: Part of this commencement speech is a very famous Sanskrit verse that urges you to treat your parents, teachers and guests as gods (points no. 8–11). Can you remember the original verse? Hint: Point no. 11 has a connection with Aamir Khan.)
1. Do not neglect the truth.
2. Do not neglect the law.
3. Do not neglect your health.
4. Do not neglect your daily svaadhyaaya and pravachana.
5. Do not neglect the rites and rituals.
6. Do earn money – prosperity is essential to a good life.
7. Do have children – it is your responsibility to further the race.
8. See your mother as a god.
9. See your father as a god.
10. See your teacher as a god.
11. See your guest as a god.*
12. Do only good and irreproachable deeds, not others.
13. Follow only good and irreproachable practices, not others.
14. When you’re with wise and good people, don’t talk or argue unnecessarily – listen instead.
15. When you’re with wise and good people, give of yourself generously, with faith and humility.
16. If you are not sure what the right thing to do is in any situation, observe the actions of gentle, law-abiding, wise people around you, and do what they do.
17. If you are not able to decide who is right in a situation, especially when people around you are being critical of one or the other, observe the actions of experienced, qualified, law-abiding, gentle people around you, and do as they do.
*The original Sanskrit verse, as you must have guessed by now, is: Maatr devobhava, Pitr devobhava, Acharya devobhava, Atithi devobhava. And the Aamir Khan connection? Some years ago, ‘Atithi Devobhava’ was chosen as the tagline of a campaign by the Union tourism ministry to urge Indians to make foreign tourists feel welcome and safe in our country. Aamir Khan was the celebrity ambassador of that campaign.
Did you notice how, in points 16 and 17, the quality of gentleness is held up as being something to look for in a mentor? You can, and should, look up to people who are smart and successful and qualified and cool, of course, but unless they are also gentle – alooksha – say the Upanishads, be careful about making them your role models. That’s a wise, heart-warming piece of advice if there ever was one.
BRAHMANANDAVALLI – THE CREEPER OF SUPREME BLISS
The Brahmanandavalli comes at the core Upanishadic question – Who am I, really? – from a different angle, declaring that our true self, Atman, lies hidden inside several sheaths, or kosha, of superficial or false knowledge. It also includes a ‘bliss ladder’ to explain just how ginormous Brahma-bliss (topmost rung of ladder) is, compared to human bliss (bottom-most rung).
Anuvaka 2-5: The Kosha Question
The Taittiriya talks about the Self as being veiled in five separate sheaths – the panchakosha. Each sheath or kosha feels so real that we are often deceived into believing that one of the sheaths is who we are. Let’s try to get past the panchakosha, one by one, and see if we can reach Supreme Bliss.
***
Now then, when you ask yourself the question – ‘Who am I?’ – what is the first, most obvious answer that comes to mind? The body, of course. ‘I am my body,’ you say. ‘The colour of my skin and hair and eyes, this particular kink in my pinky finger, the way my hair frizzes on a humid day, the smell of my sweat, my incipient beard, my crooked teeth – these are all uniquely me. This is who I am.’
Great. Now, what are you made of? In other words, what is your body, which you identify as you, made of? You might say your body is made of blood and muscle and bones, or go a little deeper and say it is composed of cells and tissues, or go even more basic and say it is built of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. The Upanishad, however, takes a macro view. Essentially, says the Upanishad, your body is made of nothing but... food. It is food, after all, that grows your body, makes it possible for it to carry out its functions and gives it the strength to do what it does – walk, swim, cycle.
From food, surely, are made all creatures –
By food alone they live, and survive, and thrive,
And into food they pass in the end.
Food is Brahman, the foremost of all beings,
The healing herb, the eldest, most revered –
For it is eaten by all beings, and eats all beings.*
*Food eats all beings? But of course, since all beings are food. Ta-da! Think about it. When animals and people die, their bodies become part of the earth. Plants grow out of the earth, and are eaten by animals and people. Food (or a being whose body is made of food) eats all beings (whose bodies have nourished the soil so that new food can grow) This is why there is so much reverence for food in Indian thought, and why we have traditionally been so reluctant to waste it or treat it casually. Food, we believe, is us, and our ancestors, and Brahman himself.
But hang on a minute – is your body really you? For the body changes every year, every day, every minute (approximately ninety-six million of your cells die every minute and ninety-six million new ones are added within the same time), but the person you think of as ‘you’ remains unchanged. Your memory, your intelligence, your awareness, tells you that the little baby in that cute photograph on the fridge is as much you as the toddler with the goofy grin in the family album, who is as much you as the fourth-grader with missing front teeth, who is as much you as the tenth-grader who was just voted captain of your house at school.
Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that someone was in an accident and shattered a joint, which then had to be replaced with a metal one – would he still be he? Of course he would, even though his body has changed irrevocably. Do you see why, therefore, your body cannot be you? There is something else, clearly, that is the real you.
The Upanishad calls this first sheath, i.e., the ‘body sheath’ the ‘Annamaya Kosha’, or the food sheath. It is part of you, but since ‘you’ can see it and feel it and smell it, it cannot be you. The real you is the
guy inside, the one seeing and feeling and smelling the body. The body is the object, not the subject. You – the experiencer and enjoyer of the body – are the subject. Therefore, you are not the body sheath.
So ignore the material* sheath, the Annamaya Kosha, for now, and let’s go deeper.
*As explained earlier in the book, material simply means ‘something that is made of matter’.
***
What keeps the body alive, apart from food? Why, it’s the lifebreath, prana, without which the body is but inanimate matter! The next kosha, the next sheath, therefore, is the Pranamaya Kosha, the Sheath of the Lifebreath. The Taittiriya asks you to think of this sheath as also having the shape of your body, with different breaths taking on different shapes – Prana is the head, Vyana the right arm, Apana the left. It rests on the earth, this human-shaped Pranamaya Kosha, and is filled with space.
Breath, verily, is the life of all beings;
The gods live by it, as do men and beasts;
It is the true sign of life, the fount of vitality,
The soul of the body, the reason it is alive.
Worship the lifebreath as Brahman,
And you will be blessed, for it is indeed Him.
The lifebreath may be Brahman, but is it you? It is part of you, of course, but is it the person you refer to as you? Let’s see. You can feel your breath, you can observe it if you try (during a pranayama session, for instance), and you can become conscious of it when you want to be, which means, once again, that your breath is the object – the observed – and not the subject, the observer. You, on the other hand, are the one looking at your breath – you are the observer, not the observed.
Plus, your breath is changing all the time – deep and long when you are calm, ragged when you are sad, shallow when you are stressed, quick and short when you exercise. But the entity you think of as ‘you’ is the same, unchanging, constant, whether you are breathing in or out, whether you’re sprinting down the street, or in deep sleep. You, therefore, are not the lifebreath.
So ignore the vital* sheath, the Pranamaya Kosha, for now, and let’s go deeper.
*Vital simply means ‘to do with life’ or ‘needed for life’. It comes from the Latin root ‘vita’, which means life. Since the breath is needed for life, the Pranamaya Kosha is also called the vital sheath.
***
One thing that we have established during this search for the ‘real you’ is that the real you is aware, conscious, capable of thought. We have discovered that the body, which you think of as you, is not you, because of two reasons – (1) it changes, and (2) it is the observed, not the observer; the object, not the subject. Now we can add a third parameter to the list, which will determine what is really you and what isn’t. The third parameter is this: can the ‘you’ that you think of as you, think for itself? Both the body and the lifebreath fail the test of ‘Is this really me?’ on the third count as well – neither the Annamaya Kosha nor the Pranamaya Kosha can ‘think’. There is something else that is doing the thinking, and that is the mind. Let’s take a closer look at this mind sheath, then, the Manomaya Kosha.
Once again, says the Taittiriya, imagine it as having the shape of a man, with the Yajur Veda as the head (naturally, since the Taittiriya is part of the Yajur Veda, it considers this Veda the highest!), the Rig Veda as its right side and the Sama Veda as its left. The body of this man-shaped mind sheath is made up of knowledge, and it stands on the foundation of the Atharva Veda.
From Manas, all words return –
Brahman, verily, is Manas,
And he who knows Him as Manas knows no fear.
The mind may be Brahman, but is the mind – the intellectual part of you, the tool you use to make sense of the world around you – you? The Taittiriya declares that words return from this layer – i.e., we are able to interact with the external world in an intelligent, articulate way from this layer, which makes it far more powerful than the body sheath and the breath sheath. In fact, the mind sheath permeates both the body and the breath – it is the mind that directs both of them to do what they do. But to decide conclusively if the mind sheath is you, let’s put it through our three-part test.
Can ‘you’ observe the workings of your mind? Of course you can. Therefore, the mind is an object, just like the body and the breath, not the subject. Does the mind change in its abilities? Of course it does. When you were younger, you did not understand physics as well as you do now, maybe, or maybe you’ve forgotten a language you spoke very well as a toddler. Therefore, it is not unchanging, while ‘you’ are. Can the mind think ‘for itself’? Not really. It is influenced very much by what ‘you’ read or watch or feel. What have we got then? Epic fail on all three counts! Therefore, you are not the mind.
So ignore the mental* sheath, the Manomaya Kosha for now, and let’s go deeper.
*Oh come on, you know what mental means!
***
The mind directs the body and the breath, but what is the mind directed and supported by? By Understanding, or Intellect, the part of you that takes in stimuli and information from the external world, processes it using the mind, analyzes how it feels about it, and decides, using its discernment, how to react to it. This is the sheath of perception, emotion, intuition, discretion, of right and wrong, ethics and morality – the Vijnanamaya Kosha.
It is Intellect that conducts the sacrifice
And performs the rites;
It is Intellect that is venerated by the gods
As Brahman himself;
He who understands Brahman as the Intellect
Leaves all his sins behind
And attains all his wishes.
Intellect, understanding, perception and discretion are undoubtedly Brahman. They are the highest, most superior and most sophisticated of all the faculties. They are what make us human. But is your intellect really ‘you’? Of course it’s me, most of us would retort. My feelings, my emotions, my opinions, my particular likes and dislikes, my sense of what is right and wrong, my unfounded phobias and my strongest beliefs, which together form my intellect, or are born of it – those are what make me me, right? Perhaps. But let’s put that conviction to our three-part test right away.
Can you observe your feelings? Can you control your emotions? Of course you can, which means they are still objects to the subject called ‘you’. Can you alter your understanding of something as new data comes in? Do you sometimes change your opinions based on what your group of friends believes? Yes and yes. That means understanding and perception are not constant or unchanging – unlike the Self called ‘you’, which is.
How? When you say ‘I’ve changed’, what are you really saying? You are saying, maybe, that your physical body has changed (maybe you’ve lost weight, or become more muscular) or that your ability to understand or learn something has changed (it’s easier to learn, say, a new language, as a child rather than as an adult), or that your opinions or feelings or tastes have changed (you hated tomatoes as a child, but not any more; you used to look down upon people from a country or religion in the past, but no longer). You aren’t really saying that ‘you’ have changed, are you? You are the same person you ever were! Fail again, on every count! You are most certainly not the Intellect.
But what else is there besides the body, the breath, the mind, and understanding, intelligence, emotion? What else could there be? Let’s find out, shall we?
So ignore the intellectual sheath, the Vijnanamaya Kosha, for now, and let’s go deeper, to find the Subject, the Self, Brahman himself, who illuminates all the other, outer sheaths.
{Pause here for a moment. Do you want to take a guess at what we may find when we go past the Sheath of Understanding? There’s a clue in the name of this section!)
***
Where does true understanding come from? And wise, unbiased judgment? And integrity? Or, to reverse that, what is it that surfaces when you are at your most content – when you’ve finished a tough project that you have slaved over
for days, say, or when you are immersed in learning a piece of music that you love deeply, or when your mindspace is speedily thinking up ideas for raising money for the kids of the construction workers who are building a new wing in your school? What is it that you experience, for a few fleeting moments or hours, when you are living so intently, intensely, in the moment that the world itself seems to fall away from around you, and you are not conscious of your body or breath or mind or intellect, when your thoughts are not jumping around like monkeys, and you feel a vast, all-embracing love for, or a complete detachment from, everything and everyone around you?
I feel joy, did you say? Delight, contentment, peace, love? If you are feeling any or all of these things at any point, says the Taittiriya, you have succeeded in shedding all the four sheaths we’ve talked about so far and entered the realm of Anandamaya Kosha, the spiritual Sheath of Bliss. When that happens, you see the world as it truly is, you understand that you are no different from anyone else, and that no one is any different from you, and you are able to see the way forward with crystal clarity, undistracted by your own emotions and feelings and prejudices.
The Sheath of Bliss also has the shape of a man, who has love as his head, joy as his right side and delight as his left side. His body is permeated with bliss, ananda – it is the heart of him, his very soul. And he stands, straight and tall and true, this man, on a foundation of ecstasy that is Brahman himself.
Know ye –
If a man denies Brahman, he denies himself,
If a man affirms Brahman, he affirms himself;
For he is Brahman, and Brahman is he.
The trouble is that it is extraordinarily difficult to ‘get’ to this state of bliss. For neither can your mind help you get there, nor your intellect. Even if you have arrived there by some fluke, the moment you put what you are feeling into words – ‘Ah! This is blissful!’ – you have analyzed your experience, which means you have moved away from the Anandamaya Kosha into the Vijnanamaya Kosha. You can’t even notice it, because that would mean it had been observed, and that the Manomaya Kosha had kicked in. Actually, it is beyond foolish even to seek it, because it isn’t the object, outside of yourself. It is the subject itself – you can’t seek bliss because you are bliss, you are love, you are joy – that, in fact, is your true nature, for that is the nature of Brahman himself. That is who you really are. Almost. (Why ‘almost’? Find out on page 323.)