PRACTICE OF HUMAN VALUES
AS TAUGHT IN UPANISHADS
(BASED ON ISA UPANISHAD)
Presented By Swami Bhupalananda to
Final Year Management Students at an Institute in Rajkot
It was Swami Vivekananda, who succeeded in throwing open the study of the Upanisads to all people, not only of this country but of all countries. Swami Vivekananda said that anyone, who wanted rationally to understand life and build the structure of a broad and deep charecter on enduring spiritual foundations, could study the Upanisad and derive immense benefit out of them. The greatest work that Swami Vivekananda did was to expound the teachings of the Upanisads in the simplest language possible, broadcast them to people in East and West, show their practical bearing in every department of life, and demonstrate their capacity to solve the problems of modern man in East and West.
Today, we will discuss two important verses of Isa Upanishad.
The Technique of Enjoyment
The Isa Upanisad, in its first verse, takes us at once to these secret depths of Truth:
Ishavasyamidam sarvam yatkinca jagatydm jagat;
Tena tyaktena bhunjlthdh, ma grdhah kasya svid dhanam—
'Whatever there is changeful in this ephemeral world, all that must be enveloped by the Lord. By this renunciation, support yourself. Do not covet the wealth of anyone.'
This is a very profound utterance, unequivocal, and yet extremely simple. The whole universe, it tells us, is filled with the spirit of God. And our experience of the manifold, of the sense world, must be seen in the light of this abiding truth. A bubble rises on a sheet of water, plays for an instant on the surface, and disappears. Whence did it come, what was it, and where did it go? From water it came; having come, it is water still; and unto water it returns at the end. The real nature of that momentary existence, the bubble, is water.
Similarly, Brahman is the real nature of this world. Realize that; do not lose sight of that, caught up in the trivial waves of passing sense experience, says the verse. Change is here, death is here, in every phase of life; there is no steady base here on which we can safely erect the structure of our life; but look deeper, says the Upanisad, and you will see the deathless in the midst of death, the changeless in the midst of the changing, the one in the midst of the many. This is the one great message of the Upanisads, the message of the immortal and imperishable Self behind the mortal and the perishable. Says the Katha Upanisad
“He is the eternal in the midst of the non-eternals, the principle of intelligence in all that are intelligent. He is One, yet fulfils the desires of the many. Those wise men who perceive Him as existing within their own self, to them belongs eternal peace, and to none else”.
If, then, we can see 'the eternal in the midst of the non-eternals', if we can envelop everything with the Lord, we shall understand the real nature of the universe. After that, the next step is, as this first verse of the Isa Upanishad tells us, renunciation of whatever is not real. In the language of Vedanta, there must be both a negation and an affirmation, if we are to enjoy this world. Tena tyaktena bhunjitha, by this renunciation, support yourself, says this verse.
What supports us is not what we renounce, but what we possess and enjoy; and this verse tells us to enjoy the world through possessing God. This world is worth enjoying, and we should enjoy it with zest. Zest in life is expounded throughout the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanisads. The great teachers who discovered these truths were not kill-joys; they were sweet and lovable men. Sri Ramakrishna was full of joy and Sri Krishna was full of joy.
Before we can enjoy this world, however, we have to learn the technique of enjoyment. This technique is described in detail in the Bhagavad-Gita, but here, in this first verse of the Isa Upanisad, the technique is summed up in that one word ‘renunciation’. When Swami Vivekananda was in America, he met Professor Ingersoll, a man who was the terror of the theologians of the time; he was an agnostic and a great scholar and orator. In his ‘Inspired Talks’, Swami Vivekananda describes a conversation he had with Ingersoll.
"I believe in making the most out of this world, in squeezing the orange dry, because this world is all we are sure of." I replied: "I know a better way to squeeze the orange of this world than you do, and I get more out of it. I know I cannot die, so I am not in a hurry; I know there is no fear, so I enjoy the squeezing. I have no duty, no bondage of wife and children and property; I can love all men and women. Everyone is God to me. Think of the joy of loving man as God! Squeeze your orange this way and get ten thousandfold more out of it. Get every single drop." (Complete Works, Vol. VII, p. 77)
This, then, is the technique of enjoying life which this Upanisad proposed, leaving it to the Bhagavad-Gita to develop all its practical implications. Says the Bhagavad-Gita (II. 49):
Durena hyavaram karma buddhiyogaddhananjaya;
Buddhau saranam anviccha krpandh phalahetavah—
'Work (done with selfish desire) is far inferior, O Arjuna, to that done with a detached reason. Take refuge in this detached reason. Small-minded are they who are motivated by selfish results.
Renunciation is an eternal maxim in ethics as well as in spirituality. There is no true enjoyment except what is purified by renunciation. In our daily lives, in inter-personal relationships, we observe that we achieve the greatest joy not when we affirm ourselves, but when we deny ourselves. And in this teaching of the Upanisads, we have the explanation of this great truth. Through renunciation and detachment, we become identified with the immortal and divine Brahman which is the Self of all. We see, with our eyes and mind purified, this universe as that Brahman and renounce what our small separatist ego had conjured up. Thus, this renunciation is not a mere negation; it is a negation leading to a larger affirmation. The dialectics of the higher life, like the dialectics of evolution itself, proceeds through a series of negations and affirmations. It is the affirmative elements in this dialectic movement that constitute the positive content of joy in ethical and spiritual life.
Finally, this first verse of the the Upanisad says: ma grdhah kasya svid dhanam—'Do not covet the wealth of another. That is a very plain statement, but it involves a number of ethical and spiritual values. Whatever you have gained by your honest labour, say all moral and spiritual teachers, that alone belongs to you; enjoy life with that, and do not covet what belongs to others. Sankaracarya, in one of his beautiful hymns, addressing man, says:
Mudha jahihi dhandgama trsnam kuru sadbuddhim manasivitrusnam;
Yallabhase nijakarmopattam vittam tena vinodaya cittam—
‘O fool, give up this excessive desire for wealth; yoke your mind to the good and the true, and cultivate detachment. Whatever wealth you obtain by your own honest labour, with that learn to delight your mind and heart’
Our hearts will ask: Is wealth evil? Are we to become mendicants? No, replies Sankaracarya, and adds: But yoke your mind to righteousness and cultivate dispassion. Take the mind away from what does not belong to you, what you have not earned yourself. Enjoy life with zest, with the fruits of your own honest labour; avoid covetousness, for it will lead to exploitation, which will destroy the moral life of both the exploiter and the exploited. Exploitation in any and every form must be avoided if you want to develop your spiritual nature, your ethical nature, which is the true aim of life. Remembering that it is by the dialectics of negation and affirmation that true joy in life is achieved, we approach wealth in a spirit of dedication, by negating the ego and its evaluations and affirming the universal value of Brahman. It is only when we become free from all spirit of selfish exploitation that we can truly enjoy life. The world is nothing but the blissful Brahman; and we are here to enjoy it. It is only when our eyes are purified by renunciation that the world will appear to us in its true form, as consisting of waves and waves of the bliss of Brahman. This is the true joy of life; it is growth, it is development, it is realization for man. It is fulfilment, purnata, the goal of evolution itself.
A Warning
The Isa Upanisad next proceeds to describe, the nature of the Atman and the fruits of its realization. But before doing so, it deems it necessary to utter a note of warning in its third verse, which reads:
Asurya namate lokah andhena tamasavritah;
Tamste pretyabhigacchanti ye ke chatmahano janah—
'Into the worlds of the asuras, enveloped in blinding darkness, verily do they go after death who are slayers of the Atman.'
In this verse we are warned as to what happens to us if we forget and neglect the Atman, if we ignore It, and live merely insignificant lives. A deep philosophical truth is couched in mythical, symbolic language. Life lived without the consciousness of our divine nature is insignificant; it is a life of darkness and sorrow. The word 'darkness' used in this verse is not physical darkness, but the darkness of ignorance; it is spiritual blindness. The verse compares this darkness to hell. In myths, hell is the abode of the asuras, the demons. An alternative reading is asurya, literally 'without sunlight', absolute darkness. Imagine a cavern which has been dark from the beginning of time, a place where the rays of the sun have never penetrated. What would be the condition of a man if he had to spend his whole life in such a cavern? Such is the condition of one who passes through life without the least awareness of his divine nature. It is this awareness that evolves the moral man, the spiritual man, out of the given individual. To ignore this ever-present reality of the Self is to keep away from light and clutch at shadows.
The verse further tells us that those who prefer to live in such spiritual blindness are really killing themselves. Atmahana means 'people who kill themselves'. In ordinary suicide we kill only the body, which is something external to us, but here we kill ourselves, our real Self. The death of the body is not so serious as the death of the soul. By neglecting our true nature, by ignoring it, by clutching at the shadows of the non-Self all the time, we commit suicide of the most serious kind.
Sankaracarya, in his commentary on this verse, explains the nature of this extraordinary kind of suicide which the world practises on the widest scale. Says he:
Avidyadosena vidyamanasya Atmanah tiraskaranat atmahanana iti uchyate
'Because a man neglects his ever-present Self through the evil of ignorance (spiritual blindness), he is called "one who commits suicide"
Clutching at the shadows of sensate experience, taking them to be the whole of reality, man ignores the infinite, immortal dimension of his own personality. This is the meaning of samsara, worldliness, where man gets submerged in the objects of his experience, and the subject, his real Self, is enveloped in the darkness of unawareness; this is spiritual suicide. To live in the world is not the same thing as being worldly. To live in samsara is not the same thing as being a samsarin. As Sri Ramakrishna so beautifully expresses it in his parable, we all live in samsdra, which means the world. The saint and the sinner, even an incarnation of God, lives in samsara. There is no harm in that, assures Sri Ramakrishna, but, he adds, samsara, the world, worldliness, should not live in us. A boat should be on water, but water should not be in the boat; for that is dangerous for the boat.
Worldliness is the negation of spiritual awareness. The animal bodies are meant for mere sense-experience; they have no experience of the subject. The world of objects comprises their sphere of awareness and of pleasure and pain. It is only in the human body that subjective awareness emerges, the awareness of self as different from the non-self. But in the early stages, this self is the little self, the ego which is mostly conditioned and constituted by the external world, the non-self. Man at this stage still functions at the animal level; he has, however, the requisite equipment and means to deepen his self-awareness and realize himself as the Atman, the eternal, pure, luminous, ever-free Self, by controlling and disciplining his psycho-physical personality. But if, in spite of this capacity and opportunity, he fails to do so, and is to die in a few minutes. His children and relatives are gathered around him, anxious and waiting. The old man looks around; he finds a lamp in the corner of the room with two wicks burning within it. Finding that more oil is being spent, he tells his son in a feeble voice to put out one of the wicks and save unnecessary expenditure of oil. Throughout his life he has been deeply attach-ed to his wealth and never learned the art of spending it; never liked to part with it. Now death knocks at his door; he has to go, leaving all his wealth behind; but he does not realize it. His worldly infatuation does not allow him to think of God or the higher values of life even at that moment of crisis; he only thinks of saving his hard-earned wealth; wisdom does not dawn on him even as a fleeting experience.
What can be more pitiable than this? When we contemplate this scene our mind asks: Is this the picture of human glory? Is this the limit which human intelligence and capacity can reach? The heart sinks at the very idea. If this is the highest that man can achieve, woe unto humanity. But our hearts assure us that such is not the case, and that that life is a failure in spite of its wealth and power. Such a man is a failure because he has not discovered the art of living, has not experienced the joy of living.
Pleasure comes from the contact of the senses with the sense objects; but bliss proceeds from the inner depths of the Selt. The eternal spring of bliss lies within the heart of man; its realization is life fulfilment, perfection, which is also wisdom, the fruition of knowledge and experience. The art of living is, therefore, to make this wisdom, and the peace and joy accompanying it, manifest in our lives.
Sri Ramakrishna spoke of 'churning' wisdom out of life as butter is churned out of milk. 'If you mix milk and water', he said, 'you can separate them again only after much effort. But if you first convert the milk into butter, and keep the butter in water, it will not mix.' This aptly describes the technique of living.
Wisdom must be churned out of life, and, armed with that wisdom, we can mix with the world, engage in any activity, and live in any situation, without getting 'diluted' or lost This is spiritual freedom, it is perfection. 'Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect", exhorts Jesus (Matthew, v. 48). This perfection is the birthright of every man, woman, and child, says Vedanta.
Om Shanti Shanti Shantih !
Reference: The Message of Upanishads By Swami Ranganathananda
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