The Brahma Sutra · Book 1: Convergence · Pada 2 · Refuting the idea of other principles

Chandogya 3.14, the Shandilya teaching: “All this is Brahman; from it all comes forth, into it all dissolves, in it all breathes; so let one meditate in calm. He who is made of mind, whose body is breath, whose form is light, whose resolve comes true, whose self is space, who does all works, has all desires, all odors, all tastes, who holds all this and says nothing and minds nothing, this my self within the heart, smaller than a grain of rice or barley or mustard, greater than the earth, greater than the sky, greater than heaven, greater than all these worlds; this is Brahman; into him I shall enter when I go from here.” Who is the one made of mind?

The opponent says the jiva: mind and breath are the jiva’s own, “made of mind, with breath for body” describes a being that thinks and breathes, and Brahman, “without breath, without mind” (Mundaka 2.1.2), does neither. 1.2.1 answers: Brahman, because the one taught here is the one well known everywhere (sarvatra prasiddha) in the Vedanta texts as the cause of the world; the passage opens with “all this is Brahman,” the calm meditation it enjoins is on that Brahman, and “made of mind” and the rest are the qualities under which it is to be held in the mind, as Brahman is called “made of mind” in other texts too.

1.2.2: the qualities the text means to state, a resolve that comes true, a self that is space, holding all this, fit Brahman. 1.2.3: they do not fit the embodied soul (sharira), whose wishes miscarry and who holds very little; and the text “says nothing and minds nothing” of a being that lives by speaking and minding. 1.2.4: “into him I shall enter when I go from here” names an object reached and an agent who reaches it, Brahman and the jiva, two and never one. 1.2.5: the words differ: the Vajasaneyins’ version has “the golden Person within the self” (Shatapatha 10.6.3.2), and what is within the self is other than it. 1.2.6: smriti says the same, “the Lord dwells in every being’s heart” (Gita 18.61). 1.2.7: if someone says a small abode and a size smaller than a grain cannot fit the all-pervading, no; it is set so for meditation, as one fixes the mind on Vishnu in a shalagrama stone, and it is “like space,” which is said to be small in the eye of a needle and is nothing of the kind. 1.2.8: if someone says Brahman in a body would then share the body’s pleasure and pain, no, because of the difference (vaisheshya): the jiva suffers because it takes the body for itself, and Brahman takes nothing for itself; space is in every burning house and is never burned.

Context: Chandogya 3.14.1 to 3.14.4, and Gita 18.61. The Shandilya vidya is the first of the meditations with qualities that this pada sorts out, and the first place where “smallness” is explained as a device for the mind.

Katha 1.2.25 holds a fearsome image: “He for whom the Brahmin and the Kshatriya are both the boiled rice, and death the sauce poured over it, who knows where he is?” Who is this eater?

The opponent says fire, which scripture calls the eater of food (Brihadaranyaka 1.4.6), or the jiva, which eats in the sense of enjoying the fruits of its deeds. 1.2.9 answers: the highest Self, because the eating here takes in everything that moves and everything that stands still. Brahmin and Kshatriya stand for all beings, and death as the sauce means that whatever dies is eaten along with its death; only the one who ends everything eats like that, and the jiva’s eating, the enjoying of fruits, is nothing of the sort. 1.2.10: and the context is the highest Self: Nachiketa’s question, “that which you see as other than right and wrong, other than cause and effect, other than past and future, tell me that” (1.2.14), and the answer that runs on, “the knower is not born and does not die” (1.2.18); “who knows where he is” fits the one who is hard to know. Shankara adds that the Mundaka’s bird that “eats the sweet fruit” is the jiva, and that eating is enjoyment; the eating here is the swallowing of all, and that is Brahman’s.

Context: Katha 1.2.25, in the middle of Yama’s teaching. The image is of a Brahman that swallows death itself along with the dying.

Katha 1.3.1: “The two who drink the fruit of right action (rita) in the world of good deeds have entered the cave, in the highest, the farther half; the knowers of Brahman call them shadow and light, and so do the householders of the five fires and those who have thrice laid the Nachiketa fire.” Who are the two in the cave?

The opponent says the intellect and the jiva, both lodged in the heart, both sharing the fruit, the intellect as the instrument; or else the jiva and the chief breath. 1.2.11 answers: the jiva and the highest Self, since the two are called selves (atmanau) and both must be conscious, and since this is what the passage shows (tad-darshanat): a few verses on comes the chariot, the jiva as the lord of the chariot, and the Person beyond everything as “the highest place of Vishnu” (1.3.9 to 1.3.11), the same two. That one of them does not drink is no bar; “the men with the umbrella” names a whole party for the one who holds it. “Shadow and light” fits a pair of which one is bound by ignorance and the other free of it. 1.2.12: and because of the distinguishing marks: in the chariot verses the jiva is the one who travels and the highest Self is the place he reaches, the knower and what is to be known, kept apart as the two in the cave are. Shankara records the Paingi Upanishad’s reading too, the intellect (sattva) and the knower of the field, and lets it stand, since there the knower of the field is in the end Brahman itself.

Context: Katha 1.3.1, and Mundaka 3.1.1, “two birds, close companions, clasp the same tree,” the same pairing, which the Upanishad collection carries, and which 1.3.7 will use again.

Chandogya 4.15.1, the end of the Upakosala story. The student Upakosala has tended his teacher’s fires for twelve years; the fires teach him first, and then Satyakama returns and says, “the person who is seen in the eye, that is the Self; that is the immortal, the fearless; that is Brahman.” A reflection in the pupil, the soul that looks out through the eye, or the sun-god who is said to have entered the eye (Brihadaranyaka 5.5.2)?

1.2.13 answers: Brahman, because only Brahman fits (upapatti). “Immortal, fearless, Brahman” is said of it, and the sentences that follow call it “the meeting place of all good things, for all good things go to him; the carrier of all goods; the shining one, who shines in all worlds” (4.15.2 to 4.15.4). A reflection is none of these, the soul is none of them in its own right, and the god of the eye is a limited deity who presides from outside. 1.2.14: the abode and the rest are no objection, since scripture gives the Lord abodes for meditation in many places, the earth, the eye, the heart, “he who dwells in the eye and is within the eye” (Brihadaranyaka 3.7.18); the eye is chosen as a pure seat, where even dripped butter does not cling. 1.2.15: and because it is described as marked by bliss: the fires had taught Upakosala “breath is Brahman, ka is Brahman, kha is Brahman,” ka being bliss and kha space (4.10.5), and the teacher carries on the same Brahman. 1.2.16: and because the path of the one who has heard the secret teaching is declared: the path of light, day, the bright fortnight, the northern course, the year, the sun, the moon, lightning, and then a person who is more than human leads him to Brahman (4.15.5), which is the knower’s road and no reflection’s. 1.2.17: none of the others: a reflection does not stay in the eye (anavasthiti) and is gone when the one who stood before it goes; and immortality, fearlessness and lordship over all good things are impossible (asambhava) for the soul as soul or for the eye’s deity.

Context: Chandogya 4.10 to 4.15, the Upakosala Kamalayana story, with the fires’ teaching and Satyakama Jabala’s.

Brihadaranyaka 3.7. At Janaka’s court Uddalaka Aruni challenges Yajnavalkya: do you know the thread on which this world and the other and all beings are strung, and the one who rules them from within? Yajnavalkya answers that air is the thread, and then, through earth, water, fire, sky, air, heaven, sun, the quarters, moon and stars, space, darkness and light, through all beings, and through breath, speech, eye, ear, mind, skin, understanding and seed, one refrain: “he who dwells in the earth and is within the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body the earth is, who rules the earth from within, he is your Self, the ruler within, the immortal.” He ends: “the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower; there is no other seer than he.” Who is the ruler within?

The opponent says: the word is new, so some unknown being; or, since “ruling within” needs organs of action, a god who presides over earth and the rest with a body of his own, or a yogin who has learned to enter things; the highest Self has no organs and cannot rule. 1.2.18 answers: the highest Self, because its qualities are declared. To rule every being from within, the gods included, belongs to the cause of all; “your Self” and “immortal” are said of it in their first sense; “whom the earth does not know” sets it apart from the earth’s own deity, who knows herself to be the earth; “unseen, unheard” denies it any shape. Organs it has through those it rules; and there is no regress of rulers behind rulers, since there is no other ruler. 1.2.19: the Samkhya tries: unseen and unheard fit our pradhana too, “undiscoverable, unknowable, as if asleep” (Manu 1.5), and it rules as the cause of all. No; the pradhana is unseen and cannot see, and the text says the unseen one sees and hears and knows, and calls it Self, which matter can never be. 1.2.20: then the embodied soul (sharira), which does see and hear, is within, and is immortal? No again. The soul, held in its adjuncts as space is held in a jar, cannot fill the earth and the rest and rule them; and both recensions list it among the things ruled, the Kanvas with “he who dwells in understanding,” the Madhyandinas with “he who dwells in the Self,” so the ruler is other than it. Two seers in one body? The difference is made by the adjunct, the organs that ignorance presents, and it is not final; “there is no other seer than he”; one Self is treated as two the way the space in a jar is treated apart from space.

Context: Brihadaranyaka 3.7, the Antaryami Brahmana, read on all three levels, the gods, the beings and the body. It is the longest single description of Brahman as ruler in the Upanishads.

Mundaka 1.1.5 to 1.1.6: “The higher knowledge is that by which the imperishable is grasped: that which cannot be seen or seized, without family, without color, without eyes and ears, without hands and feet, eternal, pervading, present everywhere, exceedingly subtle, undecaying, which the wise see as the source of beings.” The pradhana, the soul, or the Lord?

The opponent says the pradhana: the examples that follow are all unconscious, the spider and its thread, plants from the earth, hair from a living body (1.1.7); unlike the inner ruler’s passage, nothing here is said that matter could not bear; and “he who knows all, perceives all” (1.1.9) belongs to the one called “higher than the high imperishable” (2.1.2), so the all-knower stands above the source, and the source itself is the imperishable matter. Or, if “source” means the maker, the soul, whose merit and demerit bring the world about. 1.2.21 answers: the highest Lord, because the attributes are declared. “From him who knows all and perceives all, whose penance is knowledge, is born this Brahman, name, form and food” (1.1.9) is said of the source itself, under the same name; the Upanishad teaches two knowledges, a lower and a higher, and the higher grasps the imperishable, which would make three knowledges if the imperishable were less than the Lord; “what is that, knowing which all this is known?” (1.1.3) can be asked only of the Self of all; and unlike examples need not be alike in nature, since no one thinks the source is made of earth.

1.2.22: not the two others, because distinctive marks and a difference are stated: “that heavenly Person is bodiless, without and within, unborn, without breath, without mind, pure, higher than the high imperishable” (2.1.2); heavenly, bodiless and unborn shut out the soul, and “higher than the high imperishable” sets the source above the unmanifest seed of names and forms, which is the Lord’s own adjunct and is high because it is no effect; what stands above even that is the Lord. 1.2.23: and because its form is stated: “fire is his head, his eyes the sun and the moon, the quarters his ears, his speech the Vedas laid open, the wind his breath, his heart the universe; from his feet came the earth; he is the inner Self of all beings” (2.1.4), a form made of all created things, which fits neither the small-powered soul nor matter that can be no one’s self. It is said to show that the source is the Self of all, as “I am food, I am the eater of food” (Taittiriya 3.10.6) is said, with no body meant. Shankara notes that others take 2.1.4 as the body of Hiranyagarbha, the first-born, and find the sutra’s “form” at 2.1.10 instead, “the Person is all this, sacrifice, penance, Brahman, the highest immortal.”

Context: Mundaka 1.1.3 to 1.1.9 and 2.1.1 to 2.1.4. The negations here, no eyes, no ears, no hands, no feet, are of one family with the Brihadaranyaka’s “not this, not this” (2.3.6).

Chandogya 5.11 to 5.18, the Vaishvanara teaching. Five householders, great scholars, fall to asking “what is our Self, what is Brahman?” and go to Uddalaka Aruni, who takes them all to King Ashvapati Kaikeya, so that six are taught. Each of the five had been meditating on one thing as the Self, heaven, the sun, air, space, water, earth, and the king tells each that his object is only the head, or the eye, the breath, the trunk, the bladder, the feet of the Vaishvanara Self, and then: “he who meditates on the Vaishvanara Self as measured by a span, as abhivimana, eats food in all worlds, in all beings, in all selves; of that Vaishvanara Self the head is the bright one, the eye the many-formed, the breath the many-pathed, the trunk the full, the bladder wealth, the feet the earth, the chest the altar, the hairs the grass, the heart the Garhapatya fire, the mind the Anvaharya, the mouth the Ahavaniya.” Which Vaishvanara?

The opponent says the fire in the belly, since “Agni Vaishvanara is the fire within man by which the food that is eaten is cooked” (Brihadaranyaka 5.9); or fire in general; or the fire-god; or, since the word stands beside “Self,” the embodied soul that sits by that fire and is “measured by a span” through its adjunct. 1.2.24 answers: the highest Self, because the two common words are qualified. Vaishvanara names three things and Self names two, yet “of that Vaishvanara Self the head is the bright one,” heaven, and the feet the earth, describes a being whose body is the three worlds, and that is the Lord, the cause that holds every state of its effects, set out as the Self of all for meditation; the fruit, “he eats food in all worlds, all beings, all selves,” and “all his sins are burned” (5.24.3), belongs to Brahman alone; and the opening asked for the Self and for Brahman. 1.2.25: smriti’s picture of the Lord, “whose mouth is fire, whose head heaven, whose navel the sky, whose feet the earth, whose eye the sun, whose ears the quarters, reverence to him, the Self of the world,” lets one infer the shruti it rests on, and it rests on this. 1.2.26: if someone says the settled word (Shatapatha 10.6.1.11, “he is Agni Vaishvanara”), the three fires as heart, mind and mouth, the first mouthful as an offering (5.19.1) and “abiding within man” all point to the belly’s fire, no; the perception of the Lord is being taught in that fire, as “meditate on the mind as Brahman” teaches it in the mind, or the Lord with that fire for his adjunct; heaven cannot be the head of a digestive fire; and the Vajasaneyins read him as man, “this Agni Vaishvanara is man; he who knows him as man-like, abiding within man” (Shatapatha 10.6.1.11), which only the Self of all can be. 1.2.27: for the same reasons neither the fire-god nor the element: an effect cannot be the self of another effect, and the god’s power is lent by the Lord.

1.2.28: Jaimini says there is no need of a symbol or an adjunct at all; direct meditation on the Lord as Vaishvanara contradicts nothing, since “abiding within man” refers to the man-shape imagined from the crown of the head to the chin, and the name itself opens to him, vishva and nara, the all and the man, or he to whom all men belong, with Agni as agrani, the one who leads. Then how is he “measured by a span”? 1.2.29: Ashmarathya says by manifestation, the Lord showing himself in the heart and such places for his worshipers. 1.2.30: Badari says by remembrance, since he is remembered by the mind seated in the heart, which is a span, as grain measured by the prastha is called a prastha. 1.2.31: Jaimini says by imaginative identification (sampatti), for the Vajasaneyi Brahmana lays his limbs along the face, heaven at the crown, the sun at the eyes, air at the nostrils, space in the mouth, water as the saliva, earth at the chin, and so shows it. 1.2.32: and the Jabalas place him there outright, between the brows and the nose, “the unevolved infinite Self abides in the avimukta; where? in the Varana and the Nasi, where the eyebrows and the nose meet” (Jabala Upanishad 1).

Context: Chandogya 5.11 to 5.24, the Vaishvanara vidya with the breath-offering that follows it; the five-fire teaching that precedes it is 5.3 to 5.10. The two together are the long middle of the Chandogya’s fifth chapter.