Video 1

1. Katha Upanishad | Introduction | Swami Sarvapriyananda

just this evening before the class before arathi was walking in central park and i had two distinguished visitors very senior devotees from southern california john and his wife ann and john was telling me about houston smith how houston smith the great scholar of comparative religion and the author of that wonderful book the world's religions which was originally a little politically incorrectly named the religions of man then now better name is the world's religions so how did he come to vedanta he was introduced to these ideas as a scholar of religion by reading gerald hurd who was at the tribucal monastery the vedanta society of southern california and then from gerald hurd and also through gerald heard he met alda saxley who at that time already was at the vedanta society of southern california told him about this wonderful swami in saint louis which is where houston smith was there he was teaching swami satrakashananda so the story goes the first time houston smith went to meet swami satrakashananda at this place where swami sat percussion was teaching at that time there was a class going on on the upanishads and houston smith liked it very much and he wanted to pick up one of those upanishads so he got a copy of qatar panishad and he says houston smith says i went back and read it and he said all the truth so much truth in so few pages he was completely sold in the idea and he loved it and that's how he comes there's a wonderful story of how it comes to be so much influenced by vedanta so that is this uh the upanishad that we are going to take up a little background we have already studied the mandukyo upanishad which is a sort of the shortest the most powerful of the upanishads sort of the final word on the upanishad teachings so i don't know if it was a wise thing to do but i decided to start with damandu kyopanishad you know a few years back we started with the mando kyopa nation and you don't just study the mandukya upanishad by itself the short upanishad with just 12 mantras but you study it with um gowrap others versus commentaries um the karikas of gowdapada on the bantu kyopa nation and that's what we did it's in four chapters or four prakaranas and we went through that it's like going to the himalayas and the first thing that if if your guide takes you straight up to the top of the everest so that's foolishness immaturity and ambition on part of the guide and so that's what prompted me to go there first but not entirely the there is a tradition is in fact one of the minor upanishads muktik upanishad says that for those who are seeking enlightenment and liberation spiritual liberation spiritual freedom moksha manduk upanishad is enough [Music] for those who are seeking moksha spiritual freedom for their liberation mandukya itself is enough but then if it has not worked and for those who have not yet become enlightened not yet become spiritually free while living jivan muktab nowheres of brahman yet if you want to know what else can we do the opening show itself goes on to suggest read these 10 upanishads and if these 10 don't work it goes on ultimately to give a list of 108 upon issues so if you want to going to be spared the 108 upanishads the whole syllabus we can read the 10 upanishads and the muktik upanishad gives a list of what you can do what are these 10 upon issues includes the mandu kyoku so then the um the munda copanishad the manduku kyopanishad which we have already studied once and by the way none of them are supposed to be studied just once unless you are one of those geniuses who gets gets it and that's it you become enlightened you come back to it again and again so mandu kyo panishad then the italia upanishad tita upanishad chando gyo panishad and the biggest of them all the brihadnecker the manduka is the shortest with twelve mantras the nekker literally means the vast forest and it's vast uh and the chandoke also is pretty bulky now what are we going to do the manduka was it's like going on a jet plane um now we're going to take it more easy we're going to take the scenic route now take it slow and easy we're going to start with these upon issues um there is uh there are different ways of doing it i'll do it sort of my way you know i'm not going to follow the sequence suggested in this verse you know sometimes some traditional schools do that they start with the isha go on to the canada which are short upanishads then they do the qatar and the mundaka and the manduka and so on what we'll do is we'll start with the cut openishad then we will go on to the munduk upanishad then we will go on to um the keno panishad then the issue of punishment and then the criteria upanishad and uh then we will will do part of the type theory openation we'll do part selected portions of the championship and selected portions of the there are certain reasons why i'm doing this so i'm leaving out a couple of others like itaria and krishna for example so we're going to end up doing a supernations and them and at the end maybe we can repeat the mandukka once again so this is the grand plan by the grace of um suramar krishna the holy mother we will be able to undertake this journey by their grace we were able to finish the mandukka which is great why this way isha and kana they are very short so why not start with that and the sequences it starts with isha and kaina the reason is the issue open issue is problematic there are a set of four mantras in the middle of that upanishad which um are difficult to interpret and they are open to multiple interpretations i remember once i rushed in my immaturity as a young monk i was comparing i was reading shankara's commentaries on the upanishads isha upanishad i said look here shankara does this and swami vivekananda says something very different and they rush to a very senior swami of our order swami prabhan and who is now the vice president of the order very scholarly very sharp swami and i said swami this commentary disagrees with swami vivekananda shankara disagrees with vivekananda here in this issue condition and he chuckled and he said you're just talking about two commentaries i'll just show you eleven different commentaries on that sixth section and they all differ from each other so because of certain reasons we'll do the issue open a little later in fact it was one of my assignments two years back at harvard to compare multiple commentaries uh is the um video and audio all right yes maharaj the camera seemed to flicker back and forth a little bit um okay and the canine is is short but it's subtle so it's the beauty of the cane open shirt we can see later on that's why i want to start with the cutthroat nation the kathopanishad in these upanishads you will see a different scene the mandu kyo panishan manduka kalika are very intense whereas in these upanishads they you will have stories you will have humor you will have gods and demons you will have uh um you know there are birds and elephants and uh trees and whatnot so many wonderful things are there you'll see um so and dialogues of teachers and students none of which are present in uh in the mandukyo connection it's very intense and it's very dry that way it's it's it's very direct and very powerful so that's why i said this is the scenic route when we are going to uh go into this it was swami vivekananda's favorite upanishad the qatar panishad which we are talking about now so that's another reason why i would like to go with that uh and it's a beautiful story about the little boy nachiketa going in search of you know knowledge to the house of death no less um what else however the truth that we got the teaching that we got in the manduki upanishad manduka karika is virtually the same teaching that we will get here in all of these upanishads in fact why just the upanishads the introductory texts which we read and by the way we read them for in preparation of the journey that we are going to undertake now we read first of all the drigrishya viveka we read the apparation of then we studied vedanta finally and they are all in preparation especially vedantas are if you have not followed those classes don't worry at all the you can catch up later with those classes or you need not but if you have done those classes especially the last one vedanta sarah you'll find it very easy going and i mean this the going will be much easier and you will find linkages you'll begin to see where the story is the same across all of um [Music] what you'll see there all right so we know why are we are doing this this is ubernations are the foundation of vedanta upanishads and vedanta are the same for example how vedantist is useful vedanta itself is defined as vedantanama upanishad the source of knowledge called the upanishads is vedanta literally vedanta upanishads is the same thing this is from the vedanta sarah many of the things we'll talk about vedantist gives precise definitions what exactly those terms mean but fine even if you have not attended those classes or you have attended those classes but you've forgotten this is very natural what we did in all of that doesn't matter it's all there it's recorded thanks to modern technology it's up there um now today before we dive into the cut open issue and begin this long journey together let me give a little context about what all this is all about we all know this but still quickly all this is from the um vedic literature the vedas are the foundational the root texts of hinduism they are very ancient if you go to a traditional pandit the pandit will tell you they are timeless they have always been existing with god and god breathed them out the god like exhaling breathed out this vedas or revealed these vedas to special especially blessed rishis rishis are the sages the vedic sages they're defined rishi is defined as rishaya mantra the rishis are those who saw these vedic mantras literally saw them a traditional pandit would say take it literally they actually saw these mantras these texts in sanskrit in these words now if you think that's a little fart fetched um swami vivekananda gave a much more maybe reasonable interpretation that these upanishads or the vedas themselves are the spiritual realizations of the rishis so that what there are these spiritual truths ever existing just like scientists discover uh scientific truths about nature these rishis discovered these spiritual truths so they are veda means spiritual knowledge and the spiritual knowledge was revealed to the rishis or the rishis discovered them as a part of the i mean at the culmination of the spiritual practices so we have this vedas spiritual knowledge discovered by revealed to have it your way to the rishis they're obviously in sanskrit a very ancient form of sanskrit predating classical sanskrit um and at some time long long ago long before the buddha himself these this entire literature was classified into four vedas by veda vyasa literally means the one who classified the vedas the rigveda the sama veda the yajur veda yajirovid has two branches the krishna yajurveda and shukla your these are collections of vedic literature vedic texts all right and upanishads are part of these they're scattered across these vedas now what do these vedas contain what are they all about they have been given by god through the rishis down to us by a teaching lineage for the benefit of humanity what kind of benefit of humanity when the vedas themselves have a clear division all these vedas across the four vedas most of them the bulk of this literature across the four vedas are concerned with rituals karma kanda the section dealing with karma karma literally means action but here it means ritualistic action religious action so the kind of rituals you find in the vedic times again long before the buddha where not the pujas which you associate with hinduism today you know temples and deities and pujas but they wear the fire rituals on a small scale or on a massive scale and there will be altars fire would be lit offerings would be given to the vedic deities specially trained priests of different categories they would chant the mantras which are embodied in the vedas and the idea would be to get certain benefits these benefits could be worldly or otherworldly worldly means um the goals of the goals with dharma one might want you know wealth or children or might want rainfall to come and and protect the you know for nourishment of the crops um my livestocks be healthy my goodness let me get a wonderful harvest this this season uh let the king might want to win over his enemies in battle all of these the karma khandra said we have rituals which will employ these supernatural forces in your aid and it'll work you still have to do the thing you have to go and fight the enemy you have to go and tilt the soil you have to um you know take down the cows to pasture all of that has to go on the way the gods will not come and do that for you but you by their blessings success is ensured and so you get what you want in life by the performance of these rituals it may sound a little weird but it's not actually if you think about it it's it seems yeah i recognize that you look at what's going on in temples and churches and mars and religion all through the ages all across the world most of religion is basically this we want the blessings of god or whoever we are playing praying to so that what we want in life we get it and what we want in life is mostly very worldly so we may have specific desires or we just may want the blessings of god the things may go well with us our families may be healthy the children may grow up healthy and strong and of people of good character and so on my boss may be happy with me what not you can have uh all of those desires those are worldly desires and religion not just the vedas not just these ancient 5000 year old indian rishis but religion in general promises god will help you to lead a better life and give you a set of morals and ethics which you need for your good personal life and for building civilization the bulk of religion has always been this and there's nothing wrong in it but that's not the ultimate purpose of religion there is a higher religion there is a spirituality what is that now see these actions which will come to that that is the upanishads that is called the knowledge portion so this is the action portion or karma portion ritualistic portion and the knowledge portion karma kanda and gyanakanda now the action why is it called an action portion because you are supposed to perform certain actions to get something that you don't have yet so what were these actions their actions performed by the body reactions performed by speech reactions performed in the mind physical verbal mental actions physical actions were the rituals that the priests performed and the uh one called the yajamana the one for whose benefit this was being performed one who is sponsoring this usually expensive kind of uh ritual for so they performed some physical actions like offerings and all and then there were verbal actions so the mantras which you find in the vedic literature they were chanted by trained priests to get the desired results it's very important to chant it properly by having people who have been technically trained even now it's it goes on it's still there one beautiful thing an interesting thing for hinduism is nothing ever goes out of fashion layers and layers come so you can do an archaeology of religion if you dig into what is there in living in hinduism you will come across layers which date back 5000 years in every hindu ritual today modern hindu ritual you'll find a lamp is burning the first thing you do is light the lamp and that lamp is it actually represents the ancient vedic fires so and of course the fire rituals are still there in a smaller scale in large hindu pujas so that goes on there is physical action there is a verbal action the recitation of mantras and mental action which are called upasana upasana upasana means certain visualizations which are performed and all of this was supposed to generate a certain merit a potentiality technical name apoorva apoorva which will give rise to the results and obviously but you have to believe this is just a matter of faith yes it's a matter of faith they believed strongly believed in this and not only worldly more importantly there are other worldly results to be had so after death one would go to any number of heavens there's not just one heaven multiple heavens and they have different privileges and facilities for you some heavens are much better than others and you need a lot of that apoorva that potentiality so you have to have many of those rituals or the big expensive ones performed which would require money and the priests would you know you would have to pay them well and so they ensure that you after physical death you the sentient being you still they're they're very clear about this physical death is not the end physical birth is not the beginning the subtle body the sentient being the jiva transmigrates it goes on life after life that is already understood by the time of the vedas you will go to these heavens depending on your um your credit if you're in good standing your karma account is good you go to heavens but none of those heavens whether in none of those heavens and not none of the worldly results also nothing is eternal this was understood in karma canada whatever is produced will be limited it will come to an end so whatever you get in this world will be limited will come to an end and the heavens that you go to it may last for centuries or even millennia still come to an end the gita says once you are punya your merit is exhausted you have exalted your credit you'll be tossed out of heaven and they describe how bevailing their their fate these souls they tumble back to earth that means you're reborn again in this human birth to continue your journey so this was the idea of this cycle to ensure that you get a good deal in this life and after life religion is there to help you but very soon people saw the limitation of all of this you don't get anything permanent and it's just an extension of these worldly pleasures that you get in this these heavens may be much better but still this is nothing deep and then what about the big questions of life what is the ultimate reality what is the purpose of this life is this merry-go-round that's all you go on this ride again and again and again you get dizzy after some time what's the point of it and is there an ultimate goal and is there anything eternal is there any uh release from this cycle of births and deaths some good ones some bad ones i understand the vedic rituals will probably ensure me a good ride on the merry-go-round but still it's i'm still on the merry-go-round you know they say if you're in the rat race you're still a rat even if you win the rat race you've got a lot of vedic rituals backing you up and so you're top rat but still a rat so what lies beyond this if you are unhappy with this if you are not satisfied with this and who would really be a mature person would say i want the ultimate truth i want peace i want fulfillment i want to overcome suffering like the buddha said then the vedas say are good that's what we also want for you there is something beyond all this that is called moksha spiritual liberation or freedom and we have something in our store and they will take you to the side of the store and open up you know a little secret locker the vault and bring out the real goodies these goodies are the upanishads they will solve this problem once for all this round of births and that's freedom from that something eternal that which gives you ultimate fulfillment and takes you beyond this round of tears and smiles that is the knowledge portion the philosophical portion the spiritual portion the higher religion spirituality so vedanta vedanta upanishads make up not upanishads or vedas make a clear distinction between the karma khanda and the gyana content just by the way the karma kanda itself can be further divided into the karma portion and the upasana portion karma portion are the lit the the physical and the verbal actions and the upasana is the mental actions the meditations so one can say that the vedas have three divisions karma upasana the action the ritualistic action portion the meditation portion and the knowledge portion but the ritualistic action and the physical action they are all actions so they belong to that uh the earlier portion real spirituality what you call god realization self-realization brahmagyana the goal being moksha nirvana whatever you call it there are many names used in ancient india nirvana was is pre-buddhistic and it becomes famous with buddhism so moksha nirvana kaivalya these multiple names were used for this ultimate highest goal and the vedas actually want you to attain this if religion the vedas and all religion actually want you to attain god realization or brahman and that means liberation moksha whatever it is then why did they the question why did they speak about all these boys so much literature they were devoted to worldliness why if all those things are lower they just perpetuate the cycle of birth and death if the goal is to be free of the cycle of birth and death then why perpetuate that if the goal is to be infinite why lock a person into finite existence through these rituals and all because you want it you ordered it until we evolved to the point when we see that finite nature cannot satisfy us we are infinite only infinity can satisfy us we are made of god stuff only god can satisfy us only god can fill the god-shaped hole in our lives until we come to that point until we are grown up in spiritual life we'll continue to be babies in spiritual life and for babies in spiritual life either you can be very strict and say mandooky or nothing my way or the highway you do your worldly stuff i have nothing to do with you when you suffer enough get enough kicks and blows come to me i'll show you the way out of it that's a harsh rather harsh and the religions the vedas are compared to a mother a compassionate mother and the religions of the world also they are compassionate what we want in life they show us a wiser way of we want to be very happy we want to be we want to get all the goodies without doing the hard work and we want to be spared all the nastiness which we deserve because of the nasty things we did all of those things which we want religion says yes you can have it i'll show you a better way of getting it and the better way would be an ethical way depending on god pursuing the same the same worldly goals so that is the life of most ordinary religious people around the world if you see you just have to open your eyes and look what are the people who are going to the temples and churches what's going on there what are they praying for and this also develops the faith in the vedas this develops the faith in religion that when i am finally done with that when i really want to by by the time i already have a sense of god i have a sense of an ultimate reality brahman atman then i seek that alone so it's a gradual path so do i have to start with the karma counter do you have to start with rituals not at all not at all those who are here in the vedanta society or those who are listening to these talks already we have a sense that there is that we want the highest i have we have a sense of maturity about the world i have seen and i've seen through the things of this world one of the open issues mundo kopanishad says pariksha lokan karmachitan brahmana the spiritual seeker having examined what can be attained by karma worldly action and vedic action whatever can be attained by that having examined all of that has developed dispassion for all of that that i don't want it it's not something i'm interested in i've seen enough of it it might be a baby but it might be an ancient soul in a baby body so little children might be very spiritual sometimes and all the people with beards and the end of their lives might be very childish also it's the soul the jihad which soul i mean the sentient being individual beings us it evolves over time through knowledge and exp experience and knowledge culminates in experience in knowledge ultimate knowledge enlightenment but before that this much knowledge this is the experience i take away from this life you might ask but the problem is i don't remember my past life so all the knowledge is lost no it's not lost memories are lost our memories are not even that memories are inaccessible to us doesn't matter memory is a weak thing do we really learn from memory we don't how many times we know what is wrong we remember it very well end up repeating it we know what is right we don't do it so our conscious knowledge conscious memory is a very weak thing then what is powerful samskara character is powerful general tendency of the of a personality is powerful what is this character what is this general tendency it is the accumulated tendencies of many lives it's called samskaras the french existentialists said it right they say don't listen to what a person says watch what that person does we speak about many things that we may want we may have read about we may have understood but that may not represent the truth of what we are at this point luckily our samskaras are not our real nature even beyond our samskaras is the real nature atman which is already perfect because if samskaras are who we are then it seems to be an endless style very difficult very difficult to change and it's a long lifetime after lifetime no you already are that perfect reality that's what vedanta will teach us now when we come to the upanishads the vedas say come to these texts forget the ritualistic portion by the way when i say forget just something it might create a little doubt if we are spiritual seekers now so are we going to forget all the rituals when we don't do fire sacrifices but we do some rituals many of us are temple goers church goers we have devotion we like hymns we like do puja we put flowers and no they are not uh um useless for a spiritual seeker they are useful so this thing is very well understood in the vedas those who want worldly things and other worldly things you perform these rituals with desire sanskrit word is sakama and you will get those results those who do not want these things they want only god realization self knowledge enlightenment i'm using the term broadly you too can perform these rituals but selflessly without desire nishkama why would you perform them they will help you to get what you want it it has these spiritual these will become spiritual practices the same flowers and incense and the same deity no longer you want worldly things are going to happen after that what you want now is i want purity of mind i want uh dispassion for worldliness i want self-control i want concentration i want devotion i want enlightenment you can pray for those same those same things to the same god for whom you to whom you are praying for worldly things earlier now you can pray for these notice and whenever you have these questions um a very good way to find out the answer in a satisfying way is to look at the lives of great spiritual practitioners sudama krishna wanted only kali but notice he performed rituals thousands of others who were coming to the kali temple they were coming there for worldly games but he was not in the kali temple for worldly games he wanted god realization but he still performed the same ritual the same kali puja which somebody else would might perform for worldly things so the rituals the vedic rituals also can be performed without desire again vedantas are almost many of the just about everything of this is uh has been indicated in vedanta the answers are says all these rituals have two fold effects one for those with desire it will give them what they want those without desire if they perform it it will give them purification see from this comes the entire idea of karma yoga the same karma which you are performing for worldly success earlier now krishna says to arjuna same battle you fight because it is right and because it will help you in your ultimate goal of spiritual perfection so that's the point that yes those rituals are valid you can still go to the temple and you should you can still do a puja or attend a puja and you can worship god pray to god it will help you in this upanishadic quest for self-knowledge and moksha liberation in fact that's exactly what god wants from you god wants from us is this god wants us to find god all the other things sudam krishna puts it beautifully as long as the child is playing with the toys the mother is busy she has a lot of things to do she has to look after the universe so she's busy in her kitchen but when the baby throws the toys away and shiram krishna demonstrates physically and weeps and howls ma mother then the mother puts down whatever she's doing she puts all of that down and rushes to the baby and takes the baby on her lap this is what you know so the baby has moved from karma kanda too from worldly desires to the desire for god spirituality now how is this different we are all trained in the vedic karma khanda now imagine what kind of religion we are trained in in doing things physical verbal mental so now we are trained in that we come to the new thing that the gyana conduct knowledge portion immediately we want to know so what should i do yes i want to be enlightened i should want to be free what should i do and the upanishad the first shock we get is openature tells us nothing what nothing yes nothing you can't do anything to attain what this enlightenment you can't because what you are looking for is you yourself your own very self the real self that's what you're looking for and there's not there is no no need and nothing can be done in fact to attain yourself because you are always yourself then what is the problem the problem is you don't know it we don't know that ignorance is the problem notice in the karma kanda what was the problem non-attainment was the problem wealth rainfall defeating the enemy you know getting children going to heaven all of those are attainments i get this that and the other thing and i'll be happier and happier and happier it doesn't work but that's what we thought now it's it's reversed there's nothing to get it's already there and you are already that tattooamasi the whole of uh vedanta upanishads are summed up as daktomasi some terms we know all this i'm quickly rushing through it vedanta you're talking about veda but why are you saying vedanta because this is that portion of the vedas which tells you the highest teaching of the vedas veda antanta means end but end here in the sense of siddhanta n means not physically at the end of the vedas but at the the ultimate highest final conclusions the highest spirituality that you can get from the vedas is called vedanta what's the connection with the upanishads upanishads are those special texts which give you this the rest talk about rituals for meditations the upanishads talk about that knowledge and why is it knowledge because the problem in now is not of non-attainment it's already attained but we do not know this real nature so the problem is ignorance and like any kind of ignorance the solution is knowledge it won't happen automatically just as in the karma kanda portion what you wanted will not happen automatically you have to put in the hard work and you have to do these rituals to please god gods whatever it is and finally you'll get it similarly here also ignorance is natural natural in the sense you're born with it every kind of ignorance is natural so suppose i don't know spanish it's always been there the case that i don't know spanish but if i want to change the situation if i want to know spanish i have to put in the effort to get that knowledge so knowledge has to be now acquired not something to be done but something to be known and here the special object of this knowledge is not an object that's the thing the special object of the knowledge here is the subject is you yourself self knowledge is the name of the game here so um upanishad before we go into it let me define the term upanishad so the certain words i wanted to define here like vedanta so what is vedanta siddhanta ultimate conclusion of edda sometimes vidant is taken as the end of the vedas because in the vedic corpus sometimes you find the upanishads at the end of the vedic collections like the rig vedas the veda sanghitas um in one of the sanghitas isho upanishad is the 40th chapter last chapter in the sanghita but not always not always sometimes the open issues are in the middle somewhere um no punisher that we have done mandukya is from the atharva veda now these upanishads are called vedanta because they teach the ultimate the highest teaching but what does the term upanishad itself mean the upanishad the term upanishad is this is a good point to define it because shankaracharya in his commentary on the qatar panishad has the introduction is mostly explanation of the term upanishad so what does upanishad mean upanishad the word the sanskrit word upanishad can be split up analyzed into upper and me these are two prefixes prefix then there's a verb a verbal root called sat and there is a suffix which you don't see because it in the because rules of sanskrit grammar it disappears finally that suffix is called quip okay if you write want to write in english kvip quip upa upa upa plus me ni plus sud sad or sat and then plus quip k v i p it's a sanskrit grammar a suffix by the rules of sanskrit grammar upper stays knee stays such stays but quip disappears but quit disappears but quip uh the meaning of quip is retained the meaning is the agent that which does something all right so what do they mean upper means near near near something proximity so what does this mean in terms of upanishad the first meaning the surface meaning of upper would be to go near the teacher to go near the teacher or a deeper meaning would be to go near this knowledge that means to acquire this knowledge and the deepest meaning of upa is since its proximity proximity without limit what is the most proximate thing to you what is the closest thing to you the nearest thing to you you yourself there can't be anything nearer than that the self so upper means self okay that's the deepest meaning no don't immediately say self because um then anyone who knows sanskrit will say what nonsense has your teacher taught you upa means near but the deeper philosophical meaning of that would be in this context only would be the nearest of the near which is the self the knee means clarity nishaya conviction free from any doubt beyond doubt absolutely certain that is nishchaya sad the root the verbal roots uh the verb roots sat has um three meanings visharana gati avasadhan according to shankara let me explain the primary meaning is gatigati means the goal to take you to the goal so here gati is brahman the ultimate reality that which takes you to the goal related meaning is means knowledge therefore it sub means that knowledge which takes you to the goal brahman and takes you here does not mean a physical journey you're not going on a pilgrimage to brahman it's the knowledge which reveals that you are brahmana that's the meaning of gati where does this gotti come from it's one of the meanings of sat then shankaracharya says there's a second meaning of sat which is vishwara to split or destroy to split or destroy split cut destroy splits cuts destroys what my ignorance about myself if there was no ignorance there would be no need about open issues but there is ignorance about myself the upanishads say vedanta says you are seriously misinformed about yours you do not know who or what you are so that ignorance is cut split destroyed sanskrit visha rana all of this is from um shankara's introduction to the qatar upanishad visharana it destroys ignorance and finally our sadhana sadhana means loosens relaxes loosens it loosens the bondages of samsara even before full enlightenment it sets you free gives up gives you peace of mind sets you free from there's a technical meaning of that and let me tell you because family otherwise you'll be confused if you read shankara's introduction he says the upanishad also loosens the bonds of samsara how because apart from the ultimate realization of brahman you will see in the qatar panishin and on the other upanishads something that you have not seen in the mandukya the certain remnants of the karma kanda you will see here it says that if you perform those rituals this time without any desire even if you don't get enlightenment you will attain to the highest of those heavens which is brahmaloka and you will never come back again to this world of human birth so you'll never enter a cycle of suffering again but you'll still not be enlightened you'll remain in brahmaloka from there on you will get ultimately enlightenment this is called krama mukti brahma mukti means liberation sequentially in contrast to sadio mukti sandhya mukti means liberation here and now upanishad advaita vedanta wants you to attain wants us to attain enlightenment and liberation here and now here here in this life now itself but suppose it doesn't happen can the upanishads help me in some other way or have i lost everything as krishna says to arjuna it's not lost nothing is lost you will attain to the highest state possible below enlightenment and continue your spiritual journey okay um so put it all together quip means the agent or the karta which does all this now if you put it all together upa the atman the self me conviction clarity certainty sad the knowledge which takes you to that the destruction of ignorance and loosening the bonds of samsara that which quip that which makes you do all this or that that which gives you all this and it's like when you say i make a house i made a house you mean that you contracted out the job to other people you made other people make the house for you similarly upanishad is that which gives us the knowledge which about the self which sets us free put it in one word upanishad is the knowledge of the self atma in sanskrit atma vidya vidya is knowledge atma is the self the real self because in vedanta atman and brahman are the same thing so it can also call it brahmavidya the knowledge of brahman so one word upanishad is equal to atmavidya is equal to brahmavitya the knowledge of the self knowledge of brahman now shankaracharya in his commentary also says hey wait a minute i say i am reading the upanishad how can it be i'm reading this knowledge of brahman i have got all the open issues i purchased them how can you get knowledge of brahman from amazon so these might be little nitpicking but they're very careful say yes you're right when you normally speak about upanishads you mean the book so upanishad the word upanishad primarily refers to knowledge of the self knowledge of atman or brahman and second generally it refers to the book the texts the different texts which are called upanishads the secondary meaning of finisher is the book real meaning the knowledge that which gives you enlightenment and sets you free in fact enlightenment itself is the meaning of openshift um oh that reminds me good book people keep asking what book we have already said that any qatar panishad book if you get on the market from the vedanta society ramakrishna mission publications arch in my mission and others are also available the one which i am using is this set of two volumes uh a two pernicions translated by swami gram gambhira nanduji volume one and two it's available from vedanta press you can always get it but you can get any other version of that's fine as long as it has the text this is the advantage of the original dev nagari text of the open isha and the precise swami gaming was very precise his translations might not be very lucid but they are very very accurate so the translation of the upanishad and the translation of the um commentary of shankara so what you see here in english all of this this is the commentary introduction given by shankaracharya the sanskrit is not there but a precise english translation is there what i'll be teaching is the original upanishad and i use the gita press book with the original commentary of shankaracharya that mainly will be my basis of teaching so that is the meaning of the word upanishad how many upanishads we have already seen our syllabus is going to be eight of the ten major upanishads we already done mandooky once we're going to do seven others some completely some uh partially these eight openations will help you with um five of them uh the two chandog and radar neck they're very big they will that's years later down the road all right um now self knowledge so the upanishad will give us that knowledge how will it give us that knowledge you must know how to uh use an upanishad how to use the tupanishad mananananan needed we have done all this many times over you must study it systematically you must literally hear it but it must be taught by a competent teacher and you listen to it grasp the meaning of the text after which there will be doubts so you contemplate the meaning of the text reason it out and then once you have got clarity about it meditate upon it it becomes a living reality you see that it's a fact there is the opposite contrary tendencies of behaving as a body mind as a limited person are overcome and you realize your infinite nature becomes a living reality that is enlightenment that's the freedom promised by the upper nations what is the result of that the result of that is what we have been seeking all along even in the karma kanda and now before that also everybody every living being seeks that to overcome suffering and to attain fulfillment that will finally happen and that's the goal which has been promised um shavana manana needed dhyasana this process is called gyana yoga and upanishadic literature so now we come to the upanishad upanishadic literature these upanishads not just these 10 but there are many others also the muktikopanisha itself gives a list of 108 but primarily these 10. now there is a whole literature based on this krishna uses these upanishads and gives a condensed message of the upanishads to arjuna yeah in the book that's the bhagavad-gita so there are many people who say oh upanishads are the final highest teachings of vedanta but we have not read the open issue in many cases you have read the gita and people say yeah we have read the gita that's good enough so the gita is the condensed message of the upanishads sometimes krishna actually quotes from the actual uh from qatar openish for example in some place so what has been taught in the upanishads and they all carry the same message and krishna teaches that to arjuna and in a very practical way upanishads we'll see it sounds if you remember mandu kyopanishad manduka karika very abstract and very philosophical but how do you apply it in day-to-day life how do you talk how do you eat what do you how do you react to situations how do you keep calm how do you lead a virtuous life in the midst of travail all of that gita tells you it actualizes the open issues and then there's another text based on the upanishads called the brahma sutras one of our swamis translated it as god formulae the formulas of god brahma sutras sutra is a very compact formulae aphorisms what is this it was composed by badarai and of vyasa who takes up questions which arise from the upanishads when you read the upanishads they are mystical they are radical they are very deep and sometimes they are elusive so how do you reconcile each upanishad seems to give an independent view of reality although they are telling the same story but you said how do you know they they're telling the same story because they use different terminology for for the individual self they use different terminology for the ultimate reality so how do you know they're talking about the same thing all this reconciling is done in the brahmasutras then what about the non-upanishadic views um the there are many other schools you know sankhya says something niya says something though they give lip service to the open ships but they do a lot of free thinking so how do you manage all of that then there are those who don't even accept the upanishad they don't even accept the vedas there are the buddhists there are the materialists there are the um the jainas so how do you respond to those views so multiple points of view which are arranged against vedanta that is replied to in the brahmasutras plus some additional points about what is the result of all of this what are the practices to be done that's brahma sutras 555 now these three are called prasthanath upanishads taken together prasthanathraya means the triple foundation in english we have a term canonical foundational literature or canonical literature that's a close i mean literally you can say the triple foundation threefold foundation at the bottom is the openations they are the foundation of the whole thing you might say then why not include the whole vedas notice in certain respect open issues are the reputation of what went on earlier in the vedas they just say congratulations you have made it to the you know to what we really want you to come to this is the real thing that the vedas want to tell you you need not bother about all that has gone on earlier so the foundation is the upanishads themselves and then um they're called shruti prasthana shruti means veda so the the foundation which comes from the veda is called shruti prasthana literally what has been heard then the you have the smriti prasada you know the non-vedic literature which supports and based based on vedas are called smithies so for example the gita would be considered as pretty technically gita is part of mahabharata and ramayana and maharata ramayana are technically considered but anyway in the general sense gita is a smriti so gita will be smriti prasthana the foundation from smritis and because the brahmasutra is a logical argument or argument argumentative are based on philosophizing reason so they are called niai or logic the foundation from logic so triple plus triple foundations they are not equal important root upanishad practical um advice on using dopaminations in life gita and you know working out all the logical kinks and problems and questions brahma sutras now all of this is explained by commentators and each commentator gives his own spin to it shankaracharya the commentator the interpretation we shall follow gives his commentaries they're called bhashya he comments on 10 of the upanishads these 10 upanishads out of which we are studying eight so he he comments so his commentaries are my main source of interpretation if you say where are you getting all this swami i'm getting it all from him then so he writes commentaries on 10 upanishads he writes commentaries on the bhagavad gita one commentary and he writes a commentary on the brahmasutras and that's how we understand these three but he's not the only one his commentaries are the basis for advaita vedanta non-dual vedanta and we'll come to the term advaita but then there's ramanujacharya whose commentaries are the basis of the system of vishishtadvaitavedananda there is madhvacharya whose commentaries of this basis of the system called dwight avedanta same upanishads same gita same brahmasutra but multiple commentaries with different interpretations then we have wallabacharya whose commentaries specifically the differences are in the commentaries on brahmasutra because these are philosophical differences shankara's commentary on brahma sutra ramanuja's commentary on brahma sutra madhva's commentary on rama sutra wallabacharya's commentary on brahma-sutra so wallaby's commentary on brahma-sutra is the basis for the system called shuddha then there is nimbaka's commentary on the brahmasutras which is this basis of the system called dwayta dwight later there came the govindavasya the commentary on the brahmasutras by um by our baladeva baladeva bhaladevacharya so that became the basis of the vedanta system known as the the accent of heda veda school these are not as esoteric as they may sound oh weird names no intermediary school is the foundation basis of the gaudiya vaishnavas whom you see around in the in america in new york here do you know them as the hare krishna so the iscon monks so yes these are philosophical texts philosophical systems but they are well represented in modern hinduism all of modern hindus most of it at least can be traced back to one or more of these interpretations all right one more word interpretation couple of more words what is advaita and what is qatar just the words themselves advaita we know it means non-duality let me give you up now a precise philosophical meaning etymological philosophical meaning of the word advaita dweither duality advaita not duality so non-duality in english precise meaning i have to use a little bit of sanskrit here but i'll translate um in relation with two things if something is in relation with two things it's called dwita not dweta [Music] what is in relation with two things and the condition this nature of being in relation with two things something is in related to two other things is called dwayta is this relationship and dweta is the nature of being in this relationship now what does this mean sounds very abstract nothing very abstract if brahman is in contact with two other relate there are two other related realities jiva and jagat god sentient being universe you have got these three god is in contact with these three with these two in contact with two who is in contact brahman what are the two they're in contact with jiva and jagat jiva means sentient being us means universe so right now for example in us the physical body belongs to the universe but the sentient being inside conscious the spark of consciousness which i think i am that's the individual being the individual being jiva sentient being jiva universe jagat and brahman ultimate reality if you have these three brahman in contact with the other two realities their realities in relation to brahman but also distinct in themselves this is called dwayta this nature is called dwight so this whole situation is called that means if you deny that the ultimate reality is in contact with two things jio and jagat if you deny the ultimate reality is in some kind of real relationship with jivan jagat then you have advaita what does that mean because remember advaita says brahman is the only reality the world is an appearance in brahman the rope is in no contact with the snake the movie the cinema screen is no contact with the characters of a movie you say but they are there no they are not there that's the whole point of a movie you in a dream are never in contact with the places and the characters in the dream never bear it all appeared in your dream similarly brahman is not in contact in relationship with sentient beings or with the physical universe this is called advaita this is the precise technical meaning of advaita not being in relation with two other realities world jagat is an appearance and the jiva sentient being is none other than brahman it's not that you are in relationship with god you are identical with god therefore advaita nondual where where is this coming from this is this is the most precise uh etymological and philosophical meaning of the term advaita you can don't show off but you can if you want to it's usually translated as non-dual which is fine but i'll tell you the source this is from sureshwar acharya who was one of the greatest great post shankara advaita philosophers disciple of shankaracharya so he has written commentaries on shankaracharya's commentaries so this is from brihara upanishad now we will begin to understand what all this means is one of those open issues the biggest one bhashya shankaracharya's commentary on biryani sureshwaracharya's commentary on the commentary of shankaracharya's commentary on the predation so there advaitha vedanta was taught by shankara and sureshwara says what is advaita vedanta he says let me read out the verse [Music] very beautiful and simple very precise verse the condition of being in relation with two realities brahman is in relation to the two realities is called bhita and and that that the nature of this whole situation is called dwaytum being in relation with two things the relation itself is called dwitam being in relation with two things this whole thing is called dwaytum duality the negation of this situation advaitam is called advaitam non-duality not baitam what does it all mean he says simple it's your inner reality it's you all this means you the real you so that's suresh for acharya for you um i this book i found it in is one of those people from whom i learned a little bit a very great scholar of advaita vedanta yeah in calcutta he used to come and teach muhammad goswami so he was very elderly when i went i had heard about him so i went to attend one of his classes he just wanted to see it's difficult to come from our main monastery to calcutta so just as a sample i wanted to listen to some of his talks so i went and in the same day another of our swamis who was a very well-known speaker in bengali probably the best one right now in our whole order in bengali he was giving a talk on vedanta in the same institute and the institute has a huge hall which can hold 800 people and that was overflowing they had more than a thousand people to listen to the talk of this swami i was going to speak about vedanta he's going to speak about advaita vish and there were people standing in queues and all of that near the hall there was this little classroom where this pundit the scholar was teaching and there were hardly 15 people there so i went to listen to him and i quickly realized why so few people turn up the first half first 15 minutes of the class is a severe scolding it goes like this is pretty rough it starts like this staring at me at me don't understand anything i'm translating from bengali why do i do this why do i punish myself this way it's so awful just looking at your for your this is a dark face is dark with ignorance it's just awful i can't take it anymore anyway let's get on with it and then he and he treats everybody like they're a five-year-old you can't really treat five-year-olds here in usa like that so you ask this lady who is a retired school teacher in of sanskrit he says stand up tell me what was done in the last class define superimposition and she sort of giggles shyly and he says no i won't let you off you're going to i'm going to make you keep standing till you tell me so it's just it was but when he did start teaching amazing he saw the precision of this what he did just now with the word advaita we generally say non-duality non-duality means uh there is nothing else other than brahman that's it but duality here refers not to two things brahman and something else no it refers to jiva and jagat the sentient being and the world those are not too they are not there when we talk about brahman so uh so that's where i got it gosvami he would it is strict rule everybody after the class has to go and bow down to him they would touch his feet uh but monks were exempt he would scowl and one or two monks were present he would crawl at us and said not you swamis stop don't do that all right then qatar we're going to up the open isles we're going to start cut open the shirt so i'll just mention what is cut open and stop we know what upanishad means what vedanta means and the different schools of vedanta what advaita means and then qatar qatar is the name of the rishi who gave this upanishad i'm not saying composed but i'm saying because the whole idea that is being revealed and they are the ones who give it out so the name of the rishi is qatar my book says qatar's disciple of the rishi vaishampayana who was a disciple of the rishi vyasa i don't know where i got that factoid but anyway that's the lineage qatar rishi his teacher is payano his rich teacher is vyasa not that it matters but it's just interesting um throughout his commentary refers to the upanishad as kataka upanishad the upanishad the teaching given by qatar so technically that might be the correct name so is it wrong to call it qatar panishad no the popular usage is cut open issued everybody calls it the kato ganesha the upanishads themselves did you notice when i recited the name of the 10 upanishads from the mukti ko panishan isha ke nakata prasna even the upanishad itself calls it qata so qatar is not a wrong name to use katha upanishad or if you want to be a stickler kartaka okay that's it um there must be lots of comments i'm sorry i took so much time to cover but next time we'll start we'll start with the meaning of the peace chant and then the upanishad itself sravani says when did worship puja became more prevalent than yagyan hindu society it's his matter of historical thing time of shankaracharya no even before that we hear of huge temples and uh images and pujas but in shankaracharya's time for a long time both were there large vedic sacrifices as well as the worship of the puranic deities but it's an interesting historical question shandy says if we are part of an omnipotent god if you're part of an omnipotent god that is immediately when you use such language it is vishishtadvaitan not advaita notice how these words are very precise in relationship with us and the universe so if the omnipotent god is we are part of that then we have a part whole relationship with that omnipotent god that is vishishta if you negate that no relationship with the individual beings of the universe only that ultimate reality exists then what am i i am that ultimate reality anyway still to go on with your question is our mind different from god can you please explain how in this different from the rest of the religious creeds in this world how can you differentiate hinduism from others and why should i be proud of being a hindu these are general and big questions and they have been answered many times over so is my mind different from the mind of god immediately bring in vedanta you see every one of these questions can be answered by vedanta what is god according to vedanta ultimate reality is pure consciousness plus maya which is ishwara put the layer of the cosmic mind it is called hiranyakarpa put the layer of the entire universe it is called virat yeah then what is our mind our mind is part of hiranyakarapa yeah okay so you might even ask that didn't you just say that we are not parts of god yes you the real you you are not the mind the real you which is not the mind is identical with the reality of god or as the german mystic meister record said the the ground of my soul and the ground of god are one and the same that is advaita can you distinguish hinduism from others yes and no hinduism is so encompassing that everything that you find more or less in every other religion most of it you will find in hinduism i always call hinduism a full spectrum religion full spectrum religion from a to z everything is there but here we are focusing specifically on advaita vedanta one of the many paths or sort of a predominant philosophical flavor of hinduism so we are going to take advaita vedanta and advaith of course is very unique there are very few teachings traditions close to advaita vedanta the conclusions have been arrived at by the mystics of great world religions but a clear logical path chalked out for us and you know directions for enlightenment these are unmatched what you get in advaita vedanta samskaras and vastness are used interchangeably yes and vasanas intend of in the sense of more of desire samskaras in the more sense of uh tendencies but they are same desires also will be tendencies reika she asks rituals and puja could even be performed simply for the love of god not for any special benefits exactly if you perform it for the love of god not for a special benefit you're already on the path of higher spirituality you're on the path of bhakti yoga pranam swamiji please advise us regarding a good way to perform we will go on don't worry yes um okay rodrigo says i'm trying to remember where in the vedas the shloka which where the offering is the fire is offered so that i bought gets as a result many year brahmacaris has a secondary blessing yes so one of the chances many brahmacharis many many students come come to us so many people many many people join the zoom classes and we offer we have to be careful while offering that in today because the fire alarm will go off if you start offering and here in manhattan upper west the fire service is very very quick to respond within a minute or two you will find fire services around here but yes there is a chant let many brahmacharis come to us many students come to us at upanishad is very cheap in kindle version yes i'm old-fashioned i like the book but that's also even the actual physical book is also pretty inexpensive yes it's a general name and these distinctions difficult to draw in tradition they're considered to be the same okay uh is brahma sutra and upanishad no brahma sutras are based on the upanishads they are aphorisms 555 aphorisms written by composed by so upanishads are not composed they're supposed to be revealed and you see them in spiritual experience but brahma sutras are an entirely philosophical work a logical working out of the various questions which arise from the open issues so three things and three of the foundational texts are three whole all upanishads taken together called shruti prasthana like cut openshift for example all of them put together is shruti prastana the foundation from the shrutis brahma sutras are nyaya prasthana the foundation from the logical philosophical foundation and then the last one is the gita smriti prasthana the application to you know day to day life gita is an independent text brahmasutra is an independent text and upanishads are a collection of independent texts good um right somebody's pointed out there's one distinction vasanas are always pejorative that means they are taken as negative desires some scars can be good samskaras samskaras can be some which trouble us which can obstruct us from enlightenment bad samskaras there can be good vasanas vasanas for spiritual study and all of that but generally vasanas are used in the sense of uh you know worldly desires generally again you can have shubhavasana also pranav says can you clarify where the shaiva and shakta schools fit in prasthanath foundation do only non-dualists and largely vaishnavas trace their roots to the vedanta not shy whites and shark chakras no not necessarily but there's a huge shiva agama and shakta the huge corpus of texts which deal with shaivism and shaktism but remember there are shakta open ships also so the shaivas and shaktis can very well benefit from the advaitic knowledge they're part of one great tradition but shaivas and shaktas have a huge independent corpus of texts but again independent in hinduism everything is so interconnected you will find what is taught in the shaiva agamas and shakka agamas the texts of the shiva and shakta branches you will have the core ideas of the upanishads already there supernaturals again are the source of all spirituality in india even when they are we go to the buddhism the rebellion of buddhism against hinduism is mostly a rebellion against the karma khan and ritualistic portion but not on the anakhanda i know these are controversial statements but swami vivekananda was very firm on this he says buddha also was a teacher of vedanta but only in the in the most general sense not in the system of advaita now the system of advaita vedanta seems to be in clash and like in contradiction to buddhism anyway good so next time we will plunge into the kata panishata om [Music] to [Music] you