Isavasya 18 Translation Fantasia

agne naya supathā rāye asmān viśvāni deva vayunāni vidvān,

yuyodhyasmajjuhurāṇameno bhūyisthām te nama uktim vidhema.

अग्ने - O Agni; नय lead; सुपथा by a good path; राये - wealth; अस्मान् - us; विश्वानि all; देव- O God; वयुनानि ways; विद्वान् - knower; युयोधि – remove; अस्मत् - from us; जुहुराणम् - crookedly attracting; एनः - sin; भूयिष्ठाम् -best; ते - to you; नम उक्तिम् - prayer; विधेम – offer

O Agni! Lead us on to 'wealth' by a good path, as Thou knowest, O God, all the many ways. Remove the crooked attraction of sin from us. We offer Thee our best salutations.

Let bhaktas understand that true Vedānta is no enemy to them; let true Vedāntins come to feel ashamed of themselves when they cry down bhakti in the name of their sacred faith, the religion of Vedānta. At the time of the Vedas, Agni was the God; here the prayer is an invocation to Agni devatā - the fire God.

Here, in this stanza, Lord Agni has been invoked to lead us to wealth. The materialist need not understand that this wealth means the sterling or the dollar! It is not the wealth of the economist that is meant here, but it is the riches of the spiritual seeker that is in the mind of the rsis. Wealth is thus to be understood as standing for bliss or mukti or beatitude. The seeker's death bed request is only for the attainment of the supreme felicity. The rest of the expressions are amply self-evident.

~Chinmayananda

O god Agni, knowing all things that are manifested, lead us by the good path to the felicity; remove from us the devious attraction of sin. To thee completes speech of submission we address.

There is in and behind all our errors, sins and stumblings a secret Will, tending towards Love and Harmony, which knows where it is going and prepares and combines our crooked branchings towards the straight path which will be the final result of their toil and seeking. The emergence of this Will and that Light is the condition of immortality.

This Will is Agni. Agni is in the Rig-veda, from which the closing verse of the Upanishad is taken, the flame of the Divine Will or Force of Consciousness working in the worlds. He is described as the immortal in mortals, the leader of the journey, the divine Horse that bears us on the road, the "son of crookedness" who himself knows and is the straightness and the Truth. Concealed and hard to seize in the workings of this world because they are all falsified by desire and egoism, he uses them to transcend them and emerges as the universal in Man or universal Power, Agni Vaishwanara, who contains in himself all the gods and all the worlds, upholds all the universal workings and finally fulfils the godhead, the immortality. He is the worker of the divine Work. It is these symbols which govern the sense of the two final verses of the Upanishad.

~Aurobindo

O Fire, lead us by the good path for the enjoyment of the fruit of our action. You know, O god, all our deeds. Destroy our sin of deceit. We offer, by words, our salutations to you. 

FIRE: During Vedic times twice-born householders worshipped fire and offered their oblations in it. Fire was considered as the intermediary god through whom oblations to the other gods were made.

The following is adapted from Sankara's commentary: "Some take exception to our interpretation of these verses. We shall now try briefly to answer their objections. The objector asks why one should not, by knowledge, mean the Knowledge of the Supreme Self, and by immortality, the ultimate Liberation. The Upanishad here explicitly lays down, they say, the injunction to pursue together the Knowledge of the Supreme Self and ritualistic worship. The words of scripture are the final authority. Though Knowledge and ignorance (ritualistic worship) are said to produce contradictory results, yet this objection cannot stand in view of the clear statement of the Upanishad referred to above.

"To this objection we answer that Knowledge and ignorance cannot, by any means, be reconciled, because they are contradictory both as to their nature and as to their ultimate result. The cause of ignorance is false identification of Atman with the body and the rest, but true Knowledge is completely different. The result of ignorance is entanglement in the world, and that of Knowledge, liberation from the world. Therefore they cannot be harmonized. It cannot be contended that Knowledge and rituals may be pursued alternately, because no sooner does a man attain Self-Knowledge than his identification of the Self with the body disappears."

~Nikhilananda

A. Chinmayananda on Isa Structure

Chinmayananda on the structure of the Isa Upanishad:

The thought flow in the Īśāvāsyopaniṣad gallops on to its vivid goal in seven distinct waves. Because of the brevity of the expressions, which are made to convey an entire philosophy at once sublime in thought, divine in concept, and scientific in treatment, to a hasty reader the Īśāvāsyopaniṣad would be a confusing medley of rambling thoughts and, perhaps, would seem to contain only some wrecked, half expressed ideas.

This conclusion has become very familiar especially with alien commentators because each new adventurer, reaching the portals of this scripture, gets himself all the more confused because some of the expressions used in the Upaniṣad, though looking familiar, bear in themselves special significance and particular connotations in the context of the stanzas.

In the first wave (stanza-1), an entire chapter of ideas has been summarised by the great teachers to expose the theory of Truth and how it can be gained via the path of renunciation, and how the realised Truth can be maintained and consistently enjoyed through values of life founded upon a complete detachment from all the material glory, passing successes, and flimsy popularity!

In the second wave (stanza-2), the Master indicates the path of action which, according to the seers, must be sincerely pursued by all others who cannot follow the earlier advocated path of renunciation.

In the third stanza (stanza-3), which forms the third wave, it is even hinted that to refuse to walk either of these two paths, is to go astray into an abyss of pain and darkness!

In the fourth swing, comprising of five stanzas (4-8) of the seer’s poetic brush, his word pigments have gathered a transcendental shine to indicate vividly to his students what exactly is the goal of life as indicated in the first stanza, and how one who has gained that goal will thereafter live in his inner world of subjective ‘Truth-experience’.

Immediately following these immortal verses explaining the infinite qualities of the ‘Subject’, the ṛṣi, in the following six stanzas (9-14), is exhausting the fifth wave. Here he indicates to the students that knowledge and action (meditation and worship) are to be taken together, hand in hand, if they are to be coaxed to yield their maximum dividend. Neither of them is to be practised to the exclusion of the other, but they are to be faithfully followed one after the other as a harmonious and integrated programme. Then alone can one of them be reinforced by the other, and in its turn, vitalise the other. Thus, mutually strengthening each other, ultimately the pair takes the individual seeker to the state of Self-recognition, or Self-awareness.

The next three stanza (15-17) together constitute the sixth wave of thought in the scripture, which is a call of the mortal man to the glory of the immortal Self in himself to reveal Itself in the joy of Self-experience.

The last stanza (18) in itself represents the seventh wave of thought. After explaining the highest goal, both the teacher and the taught together pray to the Supreme for guidance and help on the path of Self-development.

B. Isa Selected Translation

1. That Supreme Being pervades everything here. That which moves and That which does not move. Therefore, let go and rejoice! Whose wealth is this anyway? (M)

2. If a man wishes to live a hundred years on this earth, he should live performing action. For you, who cherish such a desire and regard yourself as a man, there is no other way by which you can keep work from clinging to you. (N)

3. After leaving their bodies, they who have killed the Self go to the worlds of the Asuras, covered with blinding ignorance. (P)

4. That One, though motionless, is swifter than the mind. The senses can never overtake It, for It ever goes before. Though immovable, It travels faster than those who run. By It the all-pervading air sustains all living beings. (P)

5. The Ᾱtman moves and It moves not; It is far and It is near; It is within all this, and It is also outside all this. (C)

6. He who sees all beings in the Self itself, and the Self in all beings, feels no hatred by virtue of that realization. (G)

7. To the seer, all things have verily become the Self: what delusion, what sorrow, can there be for him who beholds that oneness? (N)

8. He, the Ᾱtman, is all-pervading, bright, bodiless, scatheless, without muscles, pure, unpierced by evils, wise, omniscient, transcendent and self-existing. He alone allotted respective functions and duties to the various eternal Creators.  (C)

9. Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone. (A)

10. One thing, they say, is verily obtained from vidyā, another thing they say from avidyā; thus we have heard from the wise who explained that to us. (C)

11. Knowledge and ignorance, he who knows the two together crosses death through ignorance and attains life eternal through knowledge. (R)

12. Into blinding darkness enter those who worship the unmanifest and into still greater darkness, as it were, enter those who delight in the manifest! (M)

13. One thing, they say, is verily obtained from the worship of the manifest. Another thing, they say, from the worship of the unmanifest; thus have we heard from the wise who have explained that to us. (C)

14. He who worships the impersonal God and the personal God together, overcomes death through the worship of the personal and obtains immortality through the worship of the impersonal. (C)

15. The door of the Truth is covered by a golden disc. Open it, O Nourisher! Remove it so that I who have been worshipping the Truth may behold It. (N)

"Īśāvāsyopaniṣad had two recensions: Kāņva and Madhyandina. The former recension has the entire eighteen mantras, but in the Mādhyandina, the fifteenth stanza here is the concluding mantra." ~C

16.  O Pushan! O Sun, sole traveller of the heavens, controller of all, son of Prajapati, withdraw Thy rays and gather up Thy burning effulgence. Now through Thy Grace I behold Thy blessed and glorious form. The Purusha (Effulgent Being) who dwells within Thee, I am He.  (P)

17. May my life-breath go to the all-pervading and immortal Prana, and let this body be burned to ashes. Om! O mind, remember thy deeds! O mind, remember, remember thy deeds! Remember! (P)

18. O Fire, lead us by the good path for the enjoyment of the fruit of our action. You know, O god, all our deeds. Destroy our sin of deceit. We offer, by words, our salutations to you. (N)

 

Translators
A: Aurobindo
C: Chinmayananda
G: Gambhirananda
M: Sri M
N: Nikhilananda
P: Paramananda
R: Radhakrishnan

C. Best Isa Upanishad Translations

LINKS:

TRANSLATORS

Chinmayananda

Gambhirananda

Gambhirananda

Nikhilananda

Paramananda

Aurobindo

Radhakrishnan

Sri M

D. An Isa Transcreation (wip)

1. Everthing in this ever-changing universe is pervaded by that Supreme Being. Surrender up your world. Be supported by that understanding. Don't seek after material wealth.

2. In this world, perform your rightful work as a means to no end but living out your allotted hundred years or so. No other way exists where actions do not tie a person down.

3. Those worlds blinded by the cover of deep ignorance are named sunless. These killers of the Self reach for such a place of death.

4. Unmoving, nondual, faster than the mind, unreachable by divine senses, surpassing those who chase after despite Its staying still, by That the life force of fire and air supports the activities of all beings.

5. That moves and That does not move. That is far and That is also near. That is within all this and That is also outside all this.

6. Whosoever perceives all beings in the Self alone and the Self in all beings never feels any opposition.

7. As all beings have become the Self alone for the seer who understands, what attachment and what sorrow is there for that one who sees unceasingly such oneness?

8. That is all-pervading and resplendent; formless, unscathed, and without muscle; pure, spotless, and omniscient; transcendent, self-existent, and perfectly allotting all things throughout an eternity of time. 

9. Those who follow avidya fall into its blinding ignorance but those who engage with vidya alone enter as though into a greater darkness.

10. Indeed what they say by knowledge is different and what they say by nescience is different. Thus we have heard from the wise who reveal that to us.

11. There is vidya and avidya and that who knows both together. By avidya, death is overcome and by vidya, immortality is attained.

12. Those who worship the unmanifest fall into a blinding darkness but those who devote themselves to the manifest alone enter as though into a greater darkness.

13. Indeed what they say by the manifest is different and what they say by the unmanifest is different. Thus we have heard from the wise who reveal that to us.

14. There is unmanifest and the manifest and that who knows both together. By the manifest, death is overcome and by the unmanifest, immortality is attained.

E. Transcreating Isa 1, 4-8

Everthing in this ever-changing universe is pervaded by that Supreme Being. Surrender up your world. Be supported by that understanding. Don't seek after material wealth.

Unmoving, nondual, faster than the mind, unreachable by divine senses, surpassing those who chase after despite Its staying still — by That the life force of fire and air supports the activities of all beings.

That moves and That does not move. That is far and That is also near. That is within all this and That is also without all this.

Whosoever perceives all beings in the Self alone and the Self in all beings never feels any opposition.

As all beings have become the Self alone for the seer who understands, what attachment and what sorrow is there for that one who sees unceasingly such oneness?

That is all-pervading and resplendent; formless, unscathed, and without muscle; pure, spotless, and omniscient; transcendent, self-existent, and perfectly allotting all things throughout an eternity of time. 

SR15: That's

1. Aum/Ohm

In Maya, Brahman is two-faced. In reality, Brahman is one without a second.

Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman are the two sides of That in nonduality.

The truth of Turiyam is beyond Brahman and Atman as quantum physics is to classical mechanics. 

2. On High and Lo

The lower cause is transformational.

The higher cause is apparitional.

Thinking is the lower cause.

Pure consciousness is the highest.

Dreaming is the lowest state. 

Self-awareness is the highest.

3. Ten Revelations

Seeing through a glass wall

isn't bad for the eyes.

There is no snake.

The rope is a vehicle.

That's Maya, Jack.

DNA is the stuff of karma.

Time is like a family tree.

Space is forgiveness.

The god of atheism is theism.

Atma of Brahma is Brahman.

4. What's Apparitional?

The last step

of any particular stage 

is caused by the first step

of the very next stage. 

That's apparitional.

~sr15

Ten Revelations

Seeing through a glass wall
isn't bad for the eyes.
There is no snake.
The rope is a vehicle.
That's Maya, Jack.
DNA is the stuff of karma.
Time is like a family tree.
Space is forgiveness.
The god of atheism is theism.
Atma of Brahma is Brahman.

~rj31

On High and Lo

The lower cause is transformational.

The higher cause is apparitional.

Thinking is the lower cause.

Pure consciousness is the highest.

Dreaming is the lowest state. 

Self-awareness is the highest.

~rj30

Aum/Ohm

In Maya, Brahman is two-faced. In reality, Brahman is one without a second.

Saguna Brahman and Nirguna Brahman are the two sides of That in nonduality.

The truth of Turiyam is beyond Brahman and Atman as quantum physics is to classical mechanics. 

~rj29

Surrender Awareness

1. My Valentine's Day Ananda

Consciousness is the absolute truth.

Consciousness is such a hard problem thinks science.

Even the highest wave of consciousness studies can never know that sea.

I love I know I am

2. Good News Om

Duality thinks. Nonduality knows.

Our personal default is sadness.

Hallelujah the good news isn't personal. Om.

3. Truly Yours

See through your point of view.

Awareness is pointless.

In spacetime but of nonduality.

4. Satcitananda

ananda cit sat

asi tvam tat

i am that

~sr14

My Valentine's Day Ananda

Consciousness is the absolute truth.

Consciousness is such a hard problem thinks science.

Even the highest wave of consciousness studies can never know that sea.

I love I know I am.

~rj28~

Dayananda on Bhagavad Gita 9:22 - the best form of worship

Dayananda:

ananyāścintayanto māṁ ye janāḥ paryupāsate teṣāṁ nityābhiyuktānāṁ yogakṣemaṁ vahāmyaham (22)

ye janāḥ – those people who; ananyāḥ – (see themselves as) non-separate from me; māṁ cintayantaḥ – recognising me; (mām) paryupāsate – gain me; teṣāṁ nitya-abhiyuktānām – for these who are always one with me; yoga-kṣemam – what they want to acquire and protect; ahaṁ vahāmi – I take care of those people

Those people who (see themselves as) non-separate from me, recognising me, gain me. For those who are always one with me, I take care of what they want to acquire and protect.

This is a very famous and often quoted verse. It has an important location. It is about the middle of the ninth chapter, which is in the middle of the eighteen chapters.

These are individuals, and how can they be non-separate from Īśvara, the Lord? Śaṅkara says that it is possible due to the fact that the Lord is the ātmā of all of them. When this is so, naturally those who recognise the ātmā as Parameśvara are non-separate from him.

The ātmā of Īśvara is the ātmā of jīva, and it is caitanya, eka, one, advitīya, non-dual, and which is satyam jñānam anantam brahma. Those who recognise themselves as such are called ananyas.

It is because of the word ananya that Śaṅkara has said in his introduction that these are people of clear vision, samyag-darśīs. The others are also non-separate from Īśvara but they do not recognise it. The only difference between samyag-darśīs and others is recognition and non-recognition, knowledge and ignorance. And that is a vast difference.

The mind cannot go away from Parameśvara because the mind itself is Parameśvara. It is like someone who wants to get away from space. Where will the person go? There is no such place. This is the way in which these people recognise Īśvara.

Look at this. Cintayantaḥ mām, enquiring into me, māṁ paryupāsate, they also seek Īśvara. Then what do they get? Let us consider a mumukṣu who wants liberation. He also prays to the Lord, but what is the object of his prayer? It is Īśvara. He wants nothing else but to know Īśvara. He says, ‘My object is only to find you and so I pray to know where you are, what you are.’

After finding Īśvara what does he want? He says, ‘Nothing; only to know that I am one with you.’ Such mumukṣus do not look upon Īśvara as really separate from themselves. There is a sense of separation for the time being because of ignorance. To resolve it, they are constantly enquiring into the svarūpa of Īśvara.

They also have doubts, ‘If he is non-dual, he is one with me. How can it be? I am such an insignificant being. How can I be Parameśvara, the Lord?’ These doubts are there because there is no knowledge, only śraddhā. So they seek, paryupāsate. How? By śravaṇa, manana, and nididhyāsana, with devotion and commitment.

Mokṣa is only through knowledge of ātmā being Brahman, which is the cause of the world. To know this you must enquire and to enquire you must have an appropriate pramāṇa, means of knowledge. How are you going to enquire into Īśvara?

Through the pramāṇa which is in the form of words. Therefore, enquiring into Bhagavān is enquiring into the words of the śāstra. Thus they seek me, they worship me by enquiring into who I am. That is the best form of worship.

From the standpoint of māyā-upādhi, there is Īśvara. But the ātmā of Īśvara is nothing but the truth of the jīva, the caitanya ātmā. And the jīva’s ātmā is nothing but Īśvara. There is only one aham, the limitless ātmā, which is the truth of both the Lord and the individual.

~edited from BG6 9:22

Electric Gita

In America, homelessness is the guru. It’s your metaparadigm, stupid.

The direct path is formed by ten thousand indirect paths.

Pay attention to the signs. The direct path is pure consciousness.

Reflected consciousness is ten thousand indirect paths.

Cause and effect is the stuff of dreams. Everything always is.

Electricity is the infinite contained in the finite.

In America, homelessness is the guru. It’s your metaparadigm, stupid. The direct path is formed by ten thousand indirect paths.

Pay attention to the signs. The direct path is pure consciousness. Reflected consciousness is ten thousand indirect paths.

Cause and effect is the stuff of dreams. Everything always is. Electricity is the infinite contained in the finite.

Universe without a Second

In the world, in samsara, the absolute nondual satcitananda

Parabrahman appears to be two-faced.

Saguna and Nirguna Brahman are like two faces of a nondual coin.

Breathe in like Nirguna, breathe out like Saguna, resting on Turiyam. Om.

Nikhilananda on Maya

Nikhilananda:

The following are some of the characteristics of māyā: 

It is something positive, though intangible; it cannot be described as either being or non-being. It is positive because it is the source of the manifold universe.

It is not of the nature of existence or being, because it does not exist when Truth is realized. Again, it is not non-existent or non-being (like the son of a barren woman), for it produces the illusion of the relative world.

Māyā is intangible: it cannot be grasped by reason, for reasoning itself is in māyā. To try to prove māyā by reasoning is like trying to see darkness by means of darkness.

Again, māyā cannot be proved by Knowledge, for when Knowledge is awakened there remains no trace of māyā. Hence it will remain for ever inscrutable to the human mind.

Māyā consists of the three gunas: sattva, rajas, and tamas. They constitute māyā and are present in everything that exists in Nature. 

Māyā is beginningless, for the very conception of time is due to māyā. But it has an end. The Knowledge of Brahman ends it.

Under the influence of māyā the Self, which is the same as the immortal Brahman, regards Itself as an embodied being and experiences the suffering and misery of the world.

With the help of māyā, but retaining control of it, Brahman appears as an Avatār, or Incarnation, in order to subdue the power of iniquity and establish righteousness.

The goal of spiritual discipline is to get rid of māyā and realize one’s divine nature.

~from Nikhilananda's translation of The Bhagavad Gita, note on 7:14

Dreaming Brahman

Isvara is the lucid dreamer.

The jiva is the sleeping dreamee.

Wake unto Turiya, om.

260124st2

Realization is a zen slap away.

Identifying with the principle of existence and disidentifying with the concept of death takes twenty years to life.

Whirlpool Number Nine

The mind identifying with itself is like the source of a great river believing it's the emptiness of one particular whirlpool yet we die there everyday.

Samsara is this reflection of consciousness bouncing around these dualities of mind. Space-time is appearing in that consciousness-existence which is enumerated as Turiyam. Om.

This world is created by divine imagination. One picture tells ten thousand stories. No island describes its surrounding seas either. Neither Robinson Crusoe nor Defoe may you be.

Whirlpool Number Nine: a three-act opera 

1. in the key of three

the mind identifying with itself is like

the source of a great river believing it's the emptiness of

one particular whirlpool yet we die there everyday

2. atman brahman duet

Samsara is

this reflection of consciousness

bouncing around

these dualities of mind.

Space-time is appearing

in that consciousness-existence 

which is enumerated as Turiyam.

Om.

3. that divine quartet

This world is created by divine imagination.

One picture tells ten thousand stories.

No island can describe its surrounding seas either.

Neither Robinson Crusoe nor Defoe may you be.

On Tattvamasi III

That thou art.
That you are.
I am that.

I minus avidya equals
that minus maya.

Atman is Brahman.

I plus nescience is 
the individual consciousness,
the jiva, the person.

That plus illusion is 
the universal consciousness, 
Isvara, God.

This person is 
attached to that God 
whether one knows it or not.

I love That.