Easwaran - Essence of the Upanishads : a key to Indian spirituality

A Key to Indian Spirituality

by EKNATH EASWARAN

NILGIRI PRESS

20130222

The Myth: A Dialogue with Death

The Teaching: The Journey of Self-Discovery

Some years ago I translated what I called the Classics of Indian Spirituality: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Dhammapada. These ancient texts, memorized and passed from generation to generation for hundreds of years before they were written down, represent early chapters in the long, unbroken story of Indias spiritual experience. The Upanishads, old before the dawn of history, come to us like snapshots of a timeless landscape. The Gita condenses and elaborates on these insights in a dialogue set on a battlefield, as apt a setting now as it was three thousand years ago. And the Dhammapada, a kind of spiritual handbook, distills the practical implications of the same truths presented afresh by the Compassionate Buddha around 500 BC.

These translations proved surprisingly popular, perhaps because they were intended not so much to be literal or literary as to bring out the meaning of these documents for us today. For it is here that these classics come to life. They are not dry texts; they speak to us. Each is the opening voice of a conversation which we are invited to join a voice that expects a reply. So in India we say that the meaning of the scriptures is only complete when this page8 call is answered in the lives of men and women like you and me. Only then do we see what the scriptures mean here and now. G. K. Chesterton once said that to understand the Gospels, we have only to look at Saint Francis of Assisi. Similarly, I would say, to grasp the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita, we need look no farther than Mahatma Gandhi, who made it a guide for every aspect of daily living. Wisdom may be perennial, but to see its relevance we must see it lived out.

In India, this process of assimilating the learning of the head into the wisdom of the heart is said to have three stages: shravanam, mananam, and nididhyasanam; roughly, hearing, reflection, and meditation. These steps can merge naturally into a single daily activity, but they can also be steps in a journey that unfolds over years. Often this journey is begun in response to a crisis. In my own case, though I must have heard the scriptures many times as a child, I dont remember them making any deep impression. When I discovered the Bhagavad Gita, I was attracted by the beauty of its poetry; I didnt understand its teachings at all. It was not until I reached a crisis of meaning in my mid-thirties, when outward success failed to fill the longing in my heart, that I turned to these classics for wisdom rather than literary beauty. Only then did I see that I had been, as the Buddha puts it, like a spoon that doesnt know the taste of the soup.

Since that time I have dedicated myself to translating these scriptures into daily living through the practice of meditation. The book in your hands is one fruit of this long endeavor. Such a presentation can only be intensely personal. In my translations I naturally let the texts speak for themselves; here I make no attempt to hide the passion that gave those translations their appeal. To capture page9 the essence of the Gita, the Upanishads, and the Dhammapada, I offer what I have learned personally from trying to live them out in a complex, hurried world. I write not as a scholar, but as an explorer back from a long, long voyage eager to tell what he has found.

Yet however personal the exploration, these discoveries are universal. So it is not surprising that at the heart of each of these classics lies a myth variations on the age-old story of a hero in quest of wisdom that will redeem the world. In the Upanishads, a teenager goes to the King of Death to find the secret of immortality. In the Gita, standing between opposing armies on the eve of Armageddon, the warrior-prince Arjuna seeks guidance from an immortal teacher, Sri Krishna. And behind the Dhammapada lies the story of the Buddha himself, a true story woven into legend: a prince who forsakes his throne to find a way for all the world to go beyond sorrow in this life. These old stories are our own, as relevant today as ever. Myth always involves the listener. We identify with its heroes; their crises mirror ours. Their stories remind us not only what these scriptures mean but why they matter. Like the texts themselves, they seek a response in our own lives.

So this book is both the fruit of a journey and an invitation. If you like, you may read it as a travelers tale rich in the experience of some distant place, enjoying the sights and adventures without the travail of actually making the trip yourself. But this place is really no more distant than the heart, so if you find that this description calls you to your own voyage of exploration, my highest purpose in writing will be fulfilled.

EDITORS NOTE

This is a revised edition of a book originally titled Dialogue with Death: The Spiritual Psychology of the Katha Upanishad. We have added a previously unpublished introduction and made some minor revisions including the removal of dated references suggested by the author before his death, in 1999. Other than that, the text stands as he left it. Though some of his examples are no longer current, the problems and principles they illustrate remain relevant: the Cold War, for example, may be behind us, yet the global threat of arms races and nuclear weapons is as urgent as ever.

This is a personal page11 exploration of the fundamental ideas of the Upanishads, among the earliest sources of Indian spirituality, and the light they throw on how to live today. My focus is practical: what I have found most meaningful in my own life, after decades of the practice and teaching of meditation.

The Upanishads are probably the oldest body of wisdom literature in the world. Though removed from us by thousands of years, the insights they give into the nature of the phenomenal world, the human mind, and the underlying reality called God are as dazzling today as ever. And the questions they pose never become dated. They are new for every human being, fresh for every generation, because they are questions that each of us has to answer for ourselves.

Out of hundreds of these documents, one in particular appeals to me as the essence of the Upanishads. Lyrical, dramatic, practical, inspiring, the Katha Upanishad embraces the key ideas of Indian mysticism and presents them in the context of a mythic adventure that everyone can relate to: the story of a young page12 hero who ventures into the land of death in search of immortality.

Following this cue, I have laid out this book too like a journey. In the Katha, insights are scattered without regard to order, like flares bursting at random to illumine a hidden landscape; and the central concepts are taken for granted, which can be baffling for readers in a different culture thousands of years later. Here those concepts and insights are presented systematically in the course of exploring deeper and deeper levels of personality. Taken this way, the Katha provides a comprehensive answer to the central question of all philosophy, Who am I? which, of course, is not just an end but a beginning.

The Upanishads

The Upanishads are the earliest instance in history of the perennial philosophy: the discovery that beneath the incessant change of the phenomenal world lies a changeless reality that can be discovered deep in consciousness by following disciplines that are essentially the same regardless of culture or religion. Spinoza might have been quoting the Upanishads when he summed up this discovery thousands of years later in one simple sentence: The finite rests upon the Infinite, and the Infinite is God.