JEREMY P. TARCHER/PENGUIN An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2015 by Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. Transcendental Meditation® and Maharishi University of Management are registered or common law trademarks used under sublicense or with permission. Most Tarcher/Penguin books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. Special books or book excerpts also can be created to fit specific needs.
For details, write: Special.Markets@penguinrandomhouse.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Upanishads. English. The Upanishads / a new translation by Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes. p. cm.
-(Tarcher cornerstone editions) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-698-19197-6 I. Katz, Vernon, translator. II. Egenes, Thomas, translator. III. Title. BL1124.
54.E5 2015 2015002867 294.5''9218-dc23 Title Page Copyright Preface Introduction ISHA UPANISHAD KENA UPANISHAD KATHA UPANISHAD PRASHNA UPANISHAD MUNDAKA UPANISHAD MANDUKYA UPANISHAD TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD AITAREYA UPANISHAD SHVETASHVATARA UPANISHAD Acknowledgments Endnotes About the Translators Preface I first met the Upanishads in an upstairs room in All Souls College, Oxford. There were about eight of us seated around Dr. Radhakrishnan, who was then Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford University. Here was this great man speaking to just a few people in his sitting room. His audience was equally divided between a few students and a few elderly ladies, mostly from North Oxford. This was the late nineteen forties, and widespread interest in Eastern religions and philosophy had to wait till the sixties.
Dr. Radhakrishnan had founded the Group for the Study of Religions. I was its secretary, and we invited speakers from different religions. We were always on the point of folding. We were lucky to be so few because we had more of Dr. Radhakrishnan''s attention. We started with Robert Ernest Hume''s translation of the short Upanishad. The Upanishad is the usual starting point for the study of the Upanishads-rather unfortunately, because to my mind it is one of the most difficult.
However, though I could not fully understand it, I was hooked. As we read through more Upanishads, the conviction grew that here was the truth. It was self-evident. No proof was needed, even across the span of centuries. I had stumbled on it, and I have never wavered from this conviction. These fellows knew what they were talking about. They had seen through the veil. It was quite clear: This was not about belief, it was about experience.
The sages were speaking about states of consciousness in this life that could be experienced by anyone. The fundamental insight was that the deepest layer of one''s own experience, one''s Self, was identical with the basis of the world outside. There was a unity of all things. Dr. Radhakrishnan saw it as his mission to bring the knowledge of Indian philosophy to the outside world and to protect it from misinterpretation. His particular bête noire was Albert Schweitzer, who accused Indian thought of world and life negation. Dr. Radhakrishnan made it his business to refute him with numerous quotations about engaged action.
Dr. Radhakrishnan did not set out to be a guru. He was a philosopher who, with a wonderful command of the English language, pointed the way to the truth that his students had then to find in their own lives. Later, I was fortunate to find a teacher in Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who could lead me to the actual experience that Dr. Radhakrishnan spoke about. Even in the early days, the Upanishads were not completely theoretical for me. I found the sages'' matter-of-fact utterances moving, much more so than devotional texts. They gave me a glow, but that is not the same as actually experiencing the state or states of consciousness of which the Upanishads speak.
Maharishi opened the way through his simple teaching which, just because of its simplicity, posed no obstacles to inner experience. I was very fortunate to come into contact with these great teachers who opened up the wisdom of the Upanishads to me. -VERNON KATZ Introduction The word upanishad means "sit down near": upa (near), ni (down) and shad (sit). Traditionally, the student sat down near the teacher to receive secret instruction, and in this way knowledge was passed down from teacher to student, linking each new generation back to the ancient tradition of the Upanishads. Many of the Upanishads consist of a dialogue between teacher and student in the deep quietude of a forest hermitage () or in the home of the teacher (where the students lived as part of a system called guru-kula ). The great teacher Shankara explained the word upanishad as "the knowledge of Brahman by which ignorance is destroyed."1 In other accounts, "sit down near" ( upanishad ) refers to the hidden connection between everything, whether it is the connection between the teacher and student, or more broadly, the infinite correlation among all things, the oneness of reality. In this way the word upanishad might be thought of as a state of consciousness in which everything is connected to one''s own Self.
According to India''s ancient tradition of knowledge, the Upanishads were cognized by , or seers. The profound truths dawned spontaneously in the silent depths of their consciousness and were recorded by them and passed down through generations, first orally and later in written form. According to the Upanishad2 there are 108 Upanishads, although scholars later recorded more than two hundred. The first ten are considered to be the principal Upanishads: , Kena, Katha, Prashna, , , , Aitareya, and . Sometimes the is also added, bringing the list to eleven. Shankara commented on these eleven. Because he also referred to four other Upanishads (, , and Paingala) in his commentary on the Brahma , these Upanishads are sometimes also included as principal Upanishads, bringing the list to fifteen (or fourteen, if the Upanishad is not included). Each of the Upanishads is associated with one of the four Vedas: ,3 , Yajus4 and Atharva.
For the nine Upanishads in this volume, the Aitareya belongs to the Veda; the Kena belongs to the Veda; the Katha, and belong to the Yajur Veda (the Yajur Veda has two branches); the belongs to the Shukla Yajur Veda; and the Prashna, and belong to the Atharva Veda. Upanishads of the same Veda often have the same introductory and concluding verse (). Some of the Upanishads are in verse, others are in prose and a few are a mixture of both.5 While several Upanishads are short, such as the (twelve verses) and the (eighteen verses), other Upanishads are considerably longer, such as the and Upanishads.6 Slight variations in wording are found, as they have been passed down in an oral tradition for thousands of years.7 The Upanishads are the last part or culmination of the Veda and so are called . They are known as the , the section of the Veda that deals with knowledge-knowledge of the ultimate reality. Since the Upanishads are part of the Veda, they are regarded as shruti , or "that which is heard.
" Traditionally, they are considered to be apaurusheya , which means they are not the creation of individuals, not made up like poetry; rather they were revealed to enlightened seers who saw and heard these truths in the depths of their awakened consciousness. The Upanishads are also thought to be nitya -true for all time, all places and all people. INFLUENCE OF THE UPANISHADS The Upanishads have enjoyed a growing global influence over the centuries. The first known translation of the Upanishads, from the original Sanskrit into Persian, was commissioned in 1656 by Muhammad Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal. In 1802, the French scholar Abraham Anquetil-Duperron translated the Persian volume into French and Latin. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer read Anquetil-Duperron''s Latin translation and famously said of the Upanishads: The Upanishads are the production of the highest human wisdom and I consider them almost superhuman in conception. The study of the Upanishads has been a source of great inspiration and means of comfort to my soul. From every sentence of the Upanishads deep, original and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit.
In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. The Upanishads have been the solace of my life and will be the solace of my death.8 Influenced by Schopenhauer, the German scholar Paul Deussen translated the Upanishads and said, "On the tree of wisdom there is no fairer flower than the Upanishads and no finer fruit than the philosophy."9 In America, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman were among the first to read the literature of India. Thoreau described the universal nature of the Vedas and eloquently gave an account of reading them: What extracts f.