Tuesday 31 March 2009

The Upanishads - Songs of Truth


When I bought “The Upanishads” by Eknath Easwaran in one of the newly emerged upmarket bookshops in increasingly posh, urbanite shopping centres of Ahmedabad, I did not know it would be six years before I would actually read that book.

Every time I thought about picking it up, other more “fun” books beckoned me to them. I knew very little about The Upanishads except that they were scriptures of Hinduism and supposedly contained great wisdom. In other words, it sounded like it might be quite a dull reading. It was far more tempting to go for piles of fantasy books waiting for me after a long day at work. For six years, there were always other things to read, other things that got priority.

Then suddenly one day, the time was right. There is an old proverb: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The Upanishads stopped looking intimidating religious volume when I was ready to ready to receive the wisdom they had to offer. Understanding the essence of The Upanishads is easy enough, but to accept them in one’s life is a whole different ball game.

Easwaran’s translation and his introduction and notes accompanying The Upanishads are real gem. Being an English professor, he uses a language that flows like poetry yet is powerful in its simplicity. In other words, it captures the true essence of Upanishads.

Believed to be dating from around 1500 B.C., Upanishads are more spiritual/philosophical in nature than religious. They are part of Vedas and Hinduism, yet I believe a person from any religious or even non-religion background would be able to relate to them as long as they were able to believe that there must exist something more than what we see.

In Easwaran’s words, “They tell us that there is a Reality underlying life which rituals cannot reach, next to which the things we see and touch in everyday life are shadows. They teach that this Reality is the essence of every created thing, and the same Reality is our real Self, so that each of us is one with the power that created and sustains the universe. And, finally, they testify that this oneness can be realised directly, without the meditation of priests or rituals or any of the structures of organised religion, not after death but in this life, and that this is the purpose for which each of us has been born and the goal towards which evolution moves.”

I do not believe that all of us could be capable of or even should devote our lives to follow all the principles of Upanishads. Everyone cannot devote their lives to meditation, to inward contemplation, and renounce the material world. And we do not have to.

The Upanishads are a guide, a philosophy that even accepted partially in our daily life, could bring us little closer to our inner self. Reaching towards inner self, is reaching towards the soul of the universe. I believe they can teach us as much or as little as we are capable of learning.

As Brihadaranyaka says:
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.

No comments:

Post a Comment