Upanishadic Meditation

Swami Chetanananda
Most of you know about our Upanishadic tradition and our reli-gion called Santana Dharma which is
based on the Vedas. The Vedas have four partsthe Samhits, the Brhmanas, the ranyakas and the
Upanishads. The Upanishads are in the end portion of the Vedas. They are therefore called Vedanta.
Sometimes I visualize Vedanta standing on the tripod. We called it Prasthnatraya. The first leg of the
tripod is the Upanishads or revealed Truth. The second is the Git or the practical truth. And the third is
the Brahmasutras or the reasoned truth. The Upanishads are called apaurusheya, that is, not man-made.
The Brihadranyaka Upanishad says that this revealed knowledge came automatically from Brahm,
the Creator. It has no beginning and no end.
Secondly, I shall tell you that this Upanishadic knowledge is always new. It never becomes old. You see
a movie several times, you will be tired But you will never get tired if you read the Upanishads again
and again. One of my friends was telling me the other day about Swami Vishuddhananda, the eighth
President of the Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission. Revered Maharaj said one day to
someone: Today is a memorable day in my life. This is my 50th reading of The Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna. Every time I read it I find something new. So is the Upanishadalways new because
Truth never becomes old. Two thousand years ago Jesus said: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God. The saying is still true. It will never lose its validity. So is the Upanishad. I have read the
creative writings of Rabindranath, Sharatchandra and Bankimchandra, the doyens of Bengali literature,
so many times and I must say I enjoyed reading them. But the Upanishads belong to a different
category, they are matchless. The more I read the Upanishads, the more I am overwhelmed by their
beautiful thoughts and loftiest ideas. I always find something new in them.
Once I went to give a lecture in St. Louis University which is a Catholic university. There I found
students carrying big volumes of books. I asked one of them: Can you tell me what is in those books? I
would like to know in one sentence. Faith, answered one girl. Faith? Tell me where does it come
from? I asked. She could not answer. Then I said, Faith comes from experience. I can know whether
you are a good person or not only through experience.
Similarly, the Upanishadic mantras which we read came from the experiences of our rishis. Mantras
had been revealed to them, the rishis did not create the mantrasRishayo mantradrashtro na tu
vedasya kartrah.
I sometimes tell the devotees in the West that behind us there is a Vedantic tradition of five thousand
years. We are very very rich in this respect. We had a galaxy of great teachers of Vedanta amongst us
and that our spiritual heritage is really deep and universal as it is based on transcendental experience or
aparoksha anubhuti. Our rishis had attained the Truth by following three methods, namely shruti, yukti,
and anubhava. Shruti is scriptures and in Hinduism it means the Vedas. But different religions have
their different scripturesQuran, Bible and the Vedanta scriptures are all different. What is preached
by one scripture may be rejected by another. So our rishis, while accepting the authority of the Vedas,
had recourse to the second method also, that is, yukti, or reason. But then, lower reason can be
counteracted by higher reason. So they followed, along with the earlier two, a third method, ie
anubhava or experiencedirect, firsthand transcendental experience. They gave the highest value to
such experience because it cannot be refuted as in the case of reasoning. If I tell you sugar tastes sour
or bitter, will you accept my words? You would not because sugar tastes sweet. Therefore anubhuti

cannot be refuted. The Upanishads that contain the experiences of the sages are like that. They embody
the gems of infallible transcendental Truth which is verifiable. When you read The Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna, you will find that every word of him is true. Do you know why? Because, as Sri
Ramakrishna himself said, The Mother of the Universe would never let me utter a single word that is
untrue.
Hindu concept of truth
What is the Hindu concept of Truth? The Naiyikas define truth as trikla abdhitam nityam. Truth is
that which remains true all the timein the past, present and future. Show me one thing in this world
which does not change. You cannot because this world or jagat is continuously changing. Change is its
very nature. The word jagat comes from the root gam, ie to go. Nothing in this world remains static. We
are changing every momentour bodies, our mind, everything! But the Truth never changesIt is
unchanging. That is the characteristic of the Upanishadic truth. I remember once a Jewish lady told me:
Swami, your job must be the easiest in this world. I said, What do you mean? She said, Your job is
to give advice which is free and cheap. Then I asked, What is the most difficult job in the world? To
know the Self, she answered. That is what our Upanishads teach. They sayatmnam viddhiknow
thyself.
I remember a story. Once Brahm, the Creator, thought that He should give everything to His children
and He gave. But then instantaneously He thought that if He gave everything His children would never
come to Him. So He decided to keep one thing in His control. Do you know, what did He keep to
himself? Shnti (peace), nanda (bliss) and mukti (liberation). These are apparently three different
words but mean the same thing. If you have no freedom, you have no bliss and no peace. However,
Brahm faced a problem. Where to keep this vital thing, he wondered. Having found no solution, He
convened a meeting of the gods and sought their opinion. Someone suggested that it should be buried
under the ocean. Brahm said, You do not know my American children. They will go to the bottom of
the ocean with the help of a submarine and grab it. Someone then said, O Creator, put it in outer
space. Brahm smiled and said, Oh! They will go in their space shuttle and get it. A third one said,
Then, put it under ground. Oh! They will dynamite and unearth it, exclaimed Brahm. After a pause
He said, I have found a way out. I shall put peace or bliss or liberation inside the human heart.
We find this truth in the Upanishads. Swami Vivekananda therefore says again and again that vain is
your search for God in temples, churches and mosquesIt is all inside you. In a letter to Mary Hale he
writes to the effect that he searched, searched and searched but could not find Him. At last he found
Him within himself. In one of his
poems Tagore also depicts this human predicament with the help of the simile of a musk-deer that
frantically looks here and there for the source of the strong aroma that comes from his own musk.
Swamiji therefore said that: I searched and searched like a musk-deer here and there. But finally I
found it is all within me!
Do you know what struck me most when I first started studying Vedanta fifty years ago? It was a verse
that says that this world is like a cobra. It has spread its big hood and under the shadow of its hood we
are comfortably sleeping, as it were, without thinking that a single bite of the dangerous cobra can
finish our life any moment. So uncertain is our life! The goal of all religions therefore is the complete
annihilation of sorrows, miseries and sufferings. Being threatened by three kinds of miseries all the
time, the question arose in human mindIs there any way out from this misery? So we find in the
Chndogya Upanishad (7.1.3), sage Nrada goes to Sanat Kumar and prays: Soham bhagavo
mantravit eva asmi na tmavit shrutam hi eva me bhagavat drishebhyah tarati shokam tmavit iti

soham bhagavah shocmi tam m bhagavn shokasya parm trayatu iti. . . .

That is, Sir, I know only the word meaning; I do not know the Self. I have also heard from people like
you that one who knows the Self overcomes sorrow. Revered Sir, I am suffering from sorrow; please
take me across [the ocean] of sorrow.
So you see, the Upanishad is wonderful because it deals with truth that is scientific. Vedanta is
therefore an absolutely scientific religion. When we study science we do not accept statements just
because those statements have been made by Newton or Einstein. Truth must be examined, verified and
analysed. Likewise, the test of the Upanishadic truth is aparoksha anubhuti or transcendental
experience.
Universality
Next, we find that the Upanishadic or Vedantic truth is universal. If you want to form a new religion
you need three things. First, you need a Personal God; second, a prophet; third, a book. Without these
three there cannot be any religion. Without God, without Jesus, without Bible, there can be no
Christianity. Without Allah, Muhammad, and Koran, Islam is inconceivable. Without Buddha and the
Tripitaka, there is no
Buddhism. But Vedantic Upanishad does not depend upon any particular book or any prophet or any
kind of Personal God. Vedantic God is Sat-Chit-nandaExistence-Consciousness-Bliss Absolute, the
Supreme Reality.
Once a person came to our Vedanta Society at Santa Barbara and asked one of our nuns: Who is the
prophet of this organization? She replied that it is a non-prophet organization. The questioner
understood perhaps that ours is a non-profit organization, for In America, you know, a non-profit
organization gets tax-exemption!
Vedantic religion is universal because the Truth it professes is impersonal. Insulin was invented by a
Jewish gentleman, but it is used all over the world. In that sense, Vedanta is also universal. The Truth it
preaches can be tested and experienced by anyone belonging to any country.
Then the greatness of the Upanishads lies in the fact, Swami Vivekananda says, that they do not speak
about sin. The Chndogya Upanishad (8.1.5) says, esah tm apahatappm vijaro vimrityuh vishokah
vijighatsah satyakmah satyasankalpah and so on. That is to say, This tman is free from all sins and
old age; It is deathless, free from hunger, thirst and bereavement and always committed to Truth.
Christianity was shaken for the first time when Darwin propounded his theory of evolution. It received
the second shock when Swamiji declared at the Parliament of Religions that it is sin to call man
sinners; it is a standing libel on human nature. Therefore, in the style and voice of the Upanishadic
seers he addressed his audience as the children of immortal Bliss.
To attain this Bliss, according to the Upanishads, is the goal of human life. The Chndogya Upanishad
therefore proclaims Yah vai bhum tat sukham na alpe sukham asti bhumaiva sukham. (7.23.1) Bliss
is only in the Infinite, not in the finite.
Meditation
Now I shall talk to you about meditationmeditation on some of the invaluable thoughts contained in
the Upanishads. But before I do that, let me state briefly what Shankaracharya said about the meaning

of the word Upanishad in his commentary on the Katha Upanishad. Upa means near or smipya; ni
means definitely; and sad has three connotations. The first meaning is destruction. That is, it destroys
ignorance. The second meaning is gati or prpti. That is, it helps us to attain the highest Reality. And
lastly, it means visharanathat is, it loosens our bondage, the bondage of the cycle of birth and death.
That is all about the meaning of the term Upanishad.
Now about meditation. Thousands of years ago our rishis or sages had explored the whole spectrum of
human life and tried to find out the correct answer to such questions as Who am I? What is this world?
Where did I come from? What is the goal or purpose of human life? What is life and what is death?
What is tman? What is Brahman? What is My? What is freedom and what is bondage? These
questions are universal and all religions more or less answer these questions. Nevertheless, the
Upanishads are unique in many ways. The first characteristic that makes them so distinct from other
scriptures is the principle of unity in diversity. This you will not find elsewhere. In the Mundaka
Upanishad (1.1.3), Shaunaka, a very progressive householder asks sage Angir, Kasmin nu bhagavah
vijnte sarvam idam vijntam bhavati itiOh lord, what is that by knowing which everything can be
known?
You see, two pages of the book of our life are missing. We do not know where do we come from and
we do not know where shall we go after what we call death. The Upanishads give these answers. The
purpose of the scripture is to enlighten us about the unknown and the Upanishads exactly do that. Even
when we read the Garbhopanishad we come to know about our state before we are born and how an
embryo develops every month and also what happens after the so-called death. So we know so many
things from the Upanishads. They solve various problems of our life. They tell us how to practise
Vedanta. This practice requires the observance of four external disciplines or sdhanacatushtaya and
three internal disciplines. The external disciplines include nitynitya vastu viveka, iha amutra phalabhoga-virga, shatsampatti and mumukshatvam. In other words, the first discipline signifies an effort to
discriminate between the real and the unreal. Viveka means discrimination. Then the second discipline
stands for vairgya or renunciation. The third, shatsampatti or six treasures stand for such qualities as
calmness, self-control, self-settledness, forbearance, concentration and faith. The fourth implies an
intense longing for liberation. Lastly, the three internal disciplines are shravana, manana and
nididhysana.
Among all these disciplines the chore is renunciation. You must learn how to give up. But in America
the word renunciation is a taboo. They think it reflects a negative attitude. One day Christopher
Isherwood, the famous writer, said to me, Swami, dont try renunciation. Try some other words such
as dispassion, detachment, non-attachment. We can absorb these words. But renunciation is very
shocking to us. They think it is negative. I tell them renunciation is nothing to fear about. It is actually
giving up smaller things for achieving the greatest. If somebody gives you a beautiful house in a posh
locality of Washington, will you not be ready to give away a slum house in New York ghetto? You will,
and that is called renunciation. I then make some jokes and tell them: Look I renounced one mother
and a few brothers and sisters and now I have hundreds of mothers, brothers and sisters all over the
world. That is the net profit of renunciation!
So then, first is discrimination. Second is renunciation. And the third is shatsampatti or six treasures
such as shama, dama, uparati, titiksh, samdhna and shraddh or self-discipline. Fourth is a burning
desire for liberation or mumukshatvam. These are four external disciplines or sdhana catushtaya. Next
come shravana, manana and nididhysana. These are the internal disciplines. Shravana means hearing,
manana means reflecting and nididhysana means meditation. Till you go to sleep, till you die,
constantly hear about Vedanta and the truth embedded in it. If we go on doing this ceaselessly Truth

will reveal Itself.

We generally meditate according to the instructions given by our Gurus. Guru says, first meditate on
the Guru on the crown of the head and visualize him. Next, you are asked to meditate on the Ishta or
your Chosen Deity in the lotus of your heart cakra. Then you dissolve your Guru into your Ishta and
start meditation. Sri Ramakrishna talks about various kinds of meditation and says, Those who think
of Me, they get My qualities just as children inherit the wealth of their parents. They will verily inherit
My wealth. What is the wealth of Sri Ramakrishna? Jnna (knowledge), viveka (discrimination),
varigya (dispassion) ksham (forgiveness), bhakti (devotion) and prema (intense love). The more we
shall meditate on Sri Ramakrishna, the more we shall acquire this wealth.
Remember the hard days which Swamiji (then Narendranath) was passing through and his family was
starving. He could not get even an ordinary job and finally he came to Sri Ramakrishna who sent him
to goddess Kli to pray. You know the story. But what did Narendra pray for? He prayed for five things
knowledge, discrimination, renunciation, devotion, and uninterrupted God-vision. Indeed, these are
the things we should pray for. In America sometimes they pray to God for a parking place! Lord, may
I get a good parking space! Here in India, people go to the Shiva temple at Tarakeswar or temples in
other places to pray for all sorts of worldly things. These are prayers of course, but selfish prayers.
Now about non-dualistic meditation. Sri Ramakrishna taught his disciples how to meditate on the
formless God. One day he took Sri M. to the reservoir of Mati Seal and said, Look at the fish.
Meditating on the formless God is like swimming joyfully like these fish, in the Ocean of Bliss and
Consciousness.
I was in the San Diego zoo where I found a huge killer whale kept in a small tank for training. The tank
was so small that the whale could not move! I got tremendous pain when I saw the whale and thought:
what else is bondage? Our predicament is also the same. We are free but we think we are bound, as if
the cage of flesh and bone has bound the Infinite. Sri Ramakrishna used to saypanchabhuter phnde
brahma pare knde, The immutable Brahman cries, as it were, caught in the trap of the body made of
five elements! Swami Turiyananda used to walk in the Central Park in New York and chant a shloka
that says, nirgachhati jagatjlt pinjardiva keshari. That is, O Lion! break, break this cage of the
world and be free! In other words, he used to constantly remind himself that he was the Infinite tman,
and not merely a psychophysical organism. That is one kind of Upanishadic meditation.
In this connection, let me tell you about a few Upanishads that contain profound ideas on which also
we can meditate. First is the Isha Upanishad. The first verse of this Upanishad says,
Ishvsyamidam sarvam yatkincha jagatym jagat;
Tena tyaktena bhunjith m gridhah kasya sviddhanam.
You can meditate on this verse. What is the idea that it conveys? It says, cover everything with Godconsciousness. Nobody is your enemy, nobody is your friend. All are gods in different forms. This
mantra is so beautiful! It asks us to enjoy through renunciation. Do you know, what does renunciation
mean? It actually means that we must have a great outlook. If we have a great outlook our mind will
not dwell on petty things of life. The moment the focus of your attention is on Brahman, lower things
will drop off automatically.
The Skandopanishad says:

Deho devlayah prokta: sa jivah kevalah Shivah

That is, this very human body is the tabernacle of Shiva or God. But look, how practical Sri
Ramakrishna is in this respect! He says that tiger is god, lion is god; they are all gods, but do not hug
them. Just salute them from a distance. He urges us to have a strong common sense. Anyway, what is
the result of this meditation? Isha Upanishad says:
Yasminsarvni bhutni tmaivbhud vijnatah;
Tatra ko mohah kah shoka ekatvamanupashyatah. (7)
What a beautiful message and what a beautiful result we get from this meditation! The earlier verse (6)
says, sarvabhuteshu chtmnam tato na vijugupsate. That is, He who sees everything in himself and
himself in everything never hates anything or anybody. There is then no mohah or attachment and no
shokah or sorrow. The moment you experience this tman, this Self, you are free from all these binding
elements. This we learn from the Upanishads.
In 1977 I was in Benares. I was very fond of a Swami. He taught me how to practise Vedanta and many
other things. His name was Swami Dhireshananda, a real Vedantin. One day he asked, showing me a
necklace made of pearls, Who is holding the pearls? Then he himself said, Either there must be a
thread or a chain. If you watch minutely you will see that between the two pearls there is something
that keeps the two together. That thread or chain is tman. That is Brahman. That is Consciousness.
I tell you frankly, there are many things which are not in the books. You have to live with such people
to know such things and I learnt many things from them. When my mind is disturbed I take a walk. Do
you know what I do then? I repeat mentally the following verse of the Katha Upanishad: Parnci khni
vyatrinat svayambhu tasmt parm pashyati na antartman / kah cit dhirah pratyagtmnam aikshat
vrittacakshuh amritatvam icchan // (2.1.1). That is my meditation. The verse says that God created
these senses with outgoing tendencies. There are only a few who are vrittacakshuh, who close their
eyes and shut the senses in order to behold the Self or tman within. The tman is within youthat is
the message of this mantra. We find this word dhir in the Kumrasambhavam of Klidasa. What a
beautiful poetic word is this dhirh. All around there is turmoil and restlessness. But if you can keep
your mind unperturbed, then only you are a dhira, a person of steady wisdom. This idea we find also in
the last part of the second chapter of the Bhagavad-Git.
The way to perfection
All human beings are trying in one way or the other to get perfection, but they do not know how to
attain it. And here again the Katha Upanishad teaches us how to be perfect. It says, Na aviratah
dushcaritt na ashntah na asamhitah / na ashntamnasah v api prajnnena enam pnuyt //
(1.2.24). What a beautiful mantra! That is very important. He, who has not first turned away from
wickedness and subdued his senses and whose mind is not at peace or tranquil, cannot attain the tman.
It is realized only through the knowledge of the Reality.
Then we find another wonderful mantra in the Chndogya Upanishad called daharovidy that tells us
how to go inside the source of Bliss, the source of peace. The verse runs as follows: atha
yadidamasmin brahmapure daharam pundarikam veshma daharosminnantarkshastasminyadantastadanveshtavyam tadvva vijijnsitavyamiti. (8.1) Sometimes I repeat this verse when my
mind is restless during meditation and it helps. The verse says that there is in the city of Brahman an
abodea small lotus of the heart. Within it there is a small ksha or space. One must search within

this space and earnestly desire to know what is there. That is what one should try to understand. Then
Sri Ramakrishnas words come to my mind. He says, if there is any fibre in the thread, it will not pass
through the eye of a needle. You will have to squeeze it with a little moisture. Then it will go.
Next we find in the Mundaka Upanishad the following verse:
Pranavo dhanuh sharo hi tm brahma tallakshyam ucyate; apramattena veddhavyam sharavat
tanmayah bhavet. (2.2.4) It means Om is the bow and the individual soul is the arrow. Brahman is the
target of the soul. Hit it without any mistake.
I remember I gave this lecture in Hollywood temple and do you know what happened? Next Sunday a
man came with a bow in his hand and gave that to me saying, Swami, this is for you. I said, Yes,
thank you very much. Sometimes, you know, the Westerners take the words very literally! One day I
said that in Kaliyuga if one cries for one day and night one will get the vision of God. One actress
heard the lecture. She went back home and began to weep and weep and then fell asleep. Then one day
she appeared and said, Swami, you asked me to cry and I cried accordingly. But how is it that Sri
Ramakrishna didnt come? I asked, How many hours did you cry? She replied, Swami, five or
maybe six hours and then I fell asleep. I said, Thakur asked us to weep twenty-four hours. You will
have to weep more.
So you see, how literally these people sometimes take things there! So when I tell my students to cry
for God, they feel they should shed tears immediately. One day one student asked, Swami, shall I put
some chilli powder in my eyes? I said, Please dont; your eyes will be damaged and I would be sued!
Anyway, in ancient times there were no guns and no missiles. So the Upanishad gave the simile of the
bow and arrow. Next you may meditate on a verse that is found in the Brihadranyaka Upanishad. The
verse says: . . .yo anyatratmanah sarvam vededam brahmedam kshatramime lok ime dev imni
bhutnidam sarvam yadayam tm. (2.4.6) This verse says that the tman includes everything in the
universethe Brhmins, the Kshatriyas, the lokas, the Devas, in short, everything. The sense of
separateness blocks our Self-knowledge. This reminds me of an incident. One day, while Swami
Vivekananda was talking to Madame Calve, the famous opera singer, the latter said, O Swami, I love
my individuality. Swamiji said immediately, Individuality! You are not yet an individual! Then
illustrating his remark he said, One day some raindrops fell on the ocean and became bubbles. As
those bubbles kept floating on the surface of the ocean, the ocean said, Hey, be one with me. A bubble
said, Oh, no! I must maintain my bubble-individuality. The ocean smiled and said, Ah! millions of
bubbles have become one with me and you want to retain your bubble-individuality! Similarly, we too
want to protect our bubble-individuality by all means. The irony is that whether we know it or not, we
are all Brahman. God is within us. Then what is it that stands in the way of our experiencing God? Ego,
ego, egoahamkra. It is the one wall which is between the Infinite and finite. I remember one Jewish
student asked me: Swami, I have a little problem with my ego. I said, Do you really have an ego?
She said, Yes, I have a little ego. I asked, Are you the Miss Universe? No, Swami. Do you have a
PhD degree? No Swami. Then what do you have? You can become proud if you have learning, if
you have money, if you have beauty. But you say you dont have any of these things. Then she said,
You are right, Swami. You see, still we become so egoistic!
In the Mundaka Upanishad there is a mantra that inspires us very much. The
mantra runs as follows:
Dv suparn sayuj sakhy

samnam vriksham parishasvajte /

Tayoh anyah pippalam svdu atti
anashnan anyah abhickashiti // (3.1.1)
The purport of this verse is that in this tree-body of ours the paramtman and jivtman are the two birds
living on its branches. One bird, the paramtman, sits atop the tree and is at peace looking down
calmly. But the other bird, the jivtman, sits on the lower branches and is restless. Sometimes it eats
bitter fruit, sometimes sweet, and yet again a bitter one. Then it sees the bird on top and marvels at its
calmness. It tries to climb high and in this manner climbs higher and higher till it reaches the crest of
the tree where the paramtman is. On reaching there, it finds that the paramtman and jivtman are the
same. They are one. Swamiji said this verse is the quintessence of Vedanta.
Four mahvkyas
There are four mahvkyas or great mantras in the four Vedas. In the Rig-Veda, we find prajnnam
brahma; in the Yajurveda, there is aham brahmsmi; in the Sma-Veda, we find tatvamasi; and in the
Atharva-Veda, there is ayamtma brahma. So when you say aham brahmsmi, I am Brahmanthat
is fine. But when you open your eyes and see someone, you say tatvamasi, You are That, ie you are
Brahman too. Not only I am Brahman, you are also Brahman. This is something new. When you are
Brahman and I am also Brahman, there should not be any kind of friction between us. This is anubhuti
or realization. This realization of oneness can solve all problemsreligious problems, family
problems, all problems of human life.
Once I asked my teacher, Swami Bodhatmanandaji, Maharaj, is Shankaras experience and Buddhas
experience different? Buddha talks about nirvna and Shankara talks about mukti. Bodhatmanandaji
said, Not at all. How? Listen, young man. Imagine, here is a boat. It goes into the deep ocean. Suppose
Buddha and Shankara both are in the boat. Buddha looks upward and sayssarvam shunyam shunyam
all is void. Shankara looks down, sees the ocean, and sayssarvam purnam purnamall is full.
Buddha sees the negative side and Shankara sees the positive side. Both are in the same boat, at the
same place, and both of them have the same experience. Only one saw one side and the other saw the
other side.
Next comes Vedantic experience. There are two kinds of experience. One is svasamvedya or selfrevealed direct experience. And the other is parasamvedya, that depends on the experience of some
other person, maybe an illumined soul. In ancient times even the kings used to talk about Brahman or
God. In the court of king Janaka, sage Yjnavalkya went and said. O king, let me hear what you have
heard from other teachers about Brahman. Janaka replied that he had six teachers who told him that
Brahman is speech, eyes, ears, prna, mind and heart. Then Yjnavalkya asked the king to take up all
the six aspects and meditate on Brahman. This conversation you find in the Brihadranyaka Upanishad.
The words there are so poetic! prajn iti enat upsit, satyam iti enat upsit, sthitirityenadupsit
(4.1.2-7) etc. These verses have tremendous power, wisdom and bliss. You know, Sanskrit words are so
profound in meaning! Swamiji therefore said Sanskrit and prestige go together. Sanskrit language helps
to know our culture.
Another interesting thing we find in the Upanishads is that they speak about the Truth of all truths
satyasya satyam. What does it mean? Suppose I am hungry which is true. Suppose I have headache
which is also true. But these truths are not the Absolute Truth. They are relative truths that do not last
eternally. But that Truth which never changes is the Truth of all truths, the Truth that existed in the past,
exists at present, and will exist in future. That eternal Truth is Brahman. That is God.

Sometimes I meditate on this mantra found in the Taittiriya Upanishad that declares: nanda brahmeti
vyajnt /nanddhyeva khalvimni bhutni jyante / nandena jtni jivanti / nandam
prayantyabhisamvishantiti. (3.6.1) The verse says that all these beings originate from Bliss, sustained
by Bliss, and they move and merge in Bliss which is Brahman. So you see, we are born to enjoy Bliss,
but we feel miserable. We get married to enjoy bliss. We want husband, wife, children, money, car
everything for bliss. Bliss is the guiding force. But the tragedy is that you cannot buy this Bliss. I
remember a peace conference that took place in St. Louis. I was also invited there. Patricia Rice, a
newspaper columnist whom I knew, asked me: Swami, why are you going there? I said, Because we
need peace. You cant buy peace from the grocer. She said, Swami, wait, let me write down what you
said. And do you know what happened? I was on the front page of the newspaper next morning!
I tell you another mantra from the Brihadranyaka Upanishad (4.3.32) that says: Esh asya param
gatih, esh asya param sampat, asya eshah paramah lokah, asya eshah paramah nandah, etasya eva
nandasya anyni bhutni mtrm upajivanti. That is, in deep sleep (sushupti) state, the tman
becomes like transparent waterone without a second, a witness. This is the world of Brahman. This is
the supreme attainment. This is the supreme glory, the supreme Bliss. The worldly creatures, who think
they are different from Brahman, thrive on a particle of this Bliss. In another Vedanta scripture,
Pancadashi, you also come across the word nanda again and again, particularly in its last five chapters.
So when I
encounter suffering, I repeat the verses which sayIf a man knows the Self as Bliss, then for whose
sake will he suffer?
In 1952-53, Swami Shraddhanandaji Maharaj was the Editor of the Udbodhan, the Bengali journal of
the Ramakrishna Math and Mission. I used to go there and bow to him. Once he said, Why do you
come? You take the dust and run away! Come here, memorize this verse and then go. I memorized it.
What was the verse? It was from the Taittiriya Upanishad: Rasah vai sah. Rasam hi eva ayam labdhv
nandi bhavati. Kah hi eva anyt kah prnyt . . . .(2.7) The verse says, Brahman is self-created. It is
saturated with Bliss. Who could inhale and exhale if this Bliss did not exist in ksha, ie within the
heart? Brahman verily is the rasah, of the nature of Bliss.
Many years later Swami Shraddhananda and myself sometimes used to sit in the garden of Santa
Barbara. One day he said: Today is very hot. Let me bring some breeze from San Francisco. Then he
chanted a mantra that says this whole universe is saturated with the sweetness of honey. But we do not
feel it. We only encounter so much miseries, sufferings, disease and death! But look at Swami
Vivekananda. He wrote a letter from Almora in 1897 in which he said that he, whose body is saturated
with the fire of yoga, has no disease, old age and death. These are the ideas we get from
the Upanishads, ideas that give us tremendous strength.
The next mantra is from the Shvetshvatara Upanishad:
Svadeham aranim kritv pranavam ca uttarranim /
Dhyna-mirmathan-abhysat devam pashyet nigurabat // (1.14)
That is, by making the body the lower piece of wood and Om (pranava) as the upper piece, through
repeated practice of friction of meditation one experiences the luminous Self just like the fire in the
wood. You see sesame seeds. Oil is there. But we do not see it. Similarly there is butter in the milk but
we do not see it. You will have to churn the milk if you want to see butter. Likewise, sesame seeds have
to be crushed in order to get oil. This churning or repeated practice is sdhan. A devotional song
composed by Mira Bai says, sdhan karn chhiye manvyou need to do spiritual practices

ceaselessly. This is very important. I remember Swami Prabhavananda once went to Swami
Turiyananda and requested him to teach Bhagavad-Git. Swami Turiyananda said, My boy, come
tomorrow. Swami Prabhavananda went to Swami Turiyananda the next day with a copy of the Git.
Turiyanandaji said, My boy, take one verse of the Git, memorize it, understand it, and practise it until
you get perfection in that particular verse. Dont take the next verse until you achieve this. And this is
my first and the last class on the Git. You may go now. So, you see, how important is repeated
practice.
Finally I shall tell you an event that took place in the life of Tagore. In 1941 Tagore passed away in his
Jorasanko house. He had surgery and it was not successful. Nirmal Kumari Mahalanobis writes in her
book that Amita Tagore, the poets grand-daughter-in-law was dripping water in his mouth with the
help of a tube. At the same time she was reciting in his ears Shntam, Shivam, Advaitam. It is from
the Mndukya Upanishad: amtrah caturthah avyavahryah prapancopashamah shivah advaitah evam
omkrah tm eva. . .(12) That is to say, there is no manifestation of my in the tman. It is Pure
Consciousness. Shntam, It is calm; Shivam, all auspicious; Advaitam, non-dual. People thought
Tagore was already dead. But as he listened to the mantra, he raised his hands and put them on his
forehead and then he passed away.
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* This article is based on the edited and abridged version of the lecture the Swami delivered at the
Institute on 22 September 2007. Swami Chetanananda is the Minister-in-Charge, Vedanta Society, St.
Louis, U. S. A.