The Chandogya Upanishad

Picture a morning in northern India, some twenty-five hundred to three thousand years ago. A young man has come home after twelve years in a gurukula. His name is Shvetaketu. He has committed all four Vedas and every shastra to memory, and the pride of that learning has climbed to his head and taken over. He is so stiff with it that he barely speaks properly to his own father. His father, Uddalaka Aruni, a formidable teacher, watches all of this, and one day he seats his son beside him and asks a single question: “Son, did you ask your guru for that one thing which, once known, lets everything be known? That by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought becomes thought, and even what will not fit into understanding comes to be understood?” And here the young man’s whole pride dissolves, because for all his study he had never once heard of such a thing. This question is the very life-breath of the entire text.

Its name is the Chandogya Upanishad, and the name itself opens up its temper. This Upanishad comes out of the Sama Veda, the Veda whose verses are meant to be sung (chandoga means, exactly, a singer of the Sama). That is why it opens with the worship of OM, called here the Udgitha (the high, supreme song to which the very thread of creation is tied). Scene after scene opens on its pages: sometimes a forest-hut gurukula, sometimes a king’s court, sometimes a dialogue between father and son, and every story carries guru and disciple toward the same one truth. Uddalaka tells Shvetaketu that in the beginning there was only Sat (pure existence, sheer being), one and without a second, with no cause and no other beside it; and from this bursts the great utterance, “tat tvam asi” (that essence is you). Further on, the rishi Sanatkumara teaches that happiness holds neither in the mind nor in any object; happiness lies only in Bhuma (the infinite in which nothing more is left to want).

The main characters of this Upanishad

Uddalaka Aruni: A formidable teacher, Shvetaketu’s father, who used salt and a banyan seed to teach what lies beyond words.

Shvetaketu: Uddalaka’s son, a proud young man home after twelve years of study in the gurukula, whose conceit his father broke with a single question.

Sanatkumara and Narada: Sanatkumara, the divine-sage teacher; Narada, the disciple who knew every branch of learning and was still unquiet within.

Satyakama Jabala: A boy who spoke the plain truth about his own lineage, and that truth is what marked him a Brahmin.

Prajapati and Indra: Prajapati, the maker of creation, and Indra, king of the gods, who came back again and again in search of the real Self.

King Ashvapati Kaikeya: The king who explained to six great pandits the full form of Vaishvanara (the all-pervading Self).

Worship, and the far side of death

Read it chapter by chapter

Each chapter has its own full page: the story, the dialogue, a summary, and pointers into the source. If this is your first reading, begin with chapter 6 (Uddalaka and Shvetaketu).

1. Chapter 1: Om, the Essence of Essences, and the Worship of the UdgithaThe syllable called the essence of every essence, the one breath the asuras could not pierce, the sacrifice of a starving Ushasti Chakrayana, and the udgitha of the dogs, which raises a laugh and then a chill.
2. Chapter 2: The Five Pieces and the Seven Pieces of the SongAcross twenty four khandas this chapter lays the five pieces and the seven pieces of the song over the earth, the rain, the seasons, the animals, the breaths and the sun.
3. Chapter 3: The Honey of the Sun and the Space Within the HeartThis chapter looks at the sun and sees a hive hanging there, turns the four Vedas into bees, and then travels down through the Gayatri into the room inside the heart.
4. Chapter 4: Raikva, Satyakama and the Fires That SpokeA conversation between two swans one night, a knower seated under a cart, a boy who did not know his lineage, and the fires that finally spoke after twelve years.
5. Chapter 5: Five Fires and a Hand Span of VastnessFrom the rivalry of the breaths to a vastness the width of a hand span, this chapter turns birth, death and food alike into offerings poured into one single fire.
6. Chapter 6: Uddalaka, Shvetaketu, and Tat Tvam AsiA father puts one question to the son who has come home after twelve years of study, and then says the same thing to him nine times over, with clay, honey, a river, a seed and a pinch of salt.
7. Chapter 7: Narada, Sanatkumara and the VastNarada, who has already studied every science there is, brings his grief to Sanatkumara, and from there a ladder begins that rises from name all the way to bhuma, the vast.
8. Chapter 8: The Space Inside the Heart, and Indra's ReturnBeginning in the small space inside the heart, this chapter walks all the way to Prajapati's door, where Indra comes back three times and Virochana never comes back at all.

And in the end, toward yourself

Narada, who had studied all four Vedas and every branch of learning, stood before Sanatkumara (a supremely accomplished teacher) with folded hands and said, “I know it all, and still I cannot free myself from sorrow.” Then the teacher, raising him rung by rung, brought him up to Bhuma (the infinite in which nothing more is left to want), and said that where no other is seen, nothing else is heard, nothing else is grasped, that is the infinite, and what is alpa, small, is mortal. There too Uddalaka Aruni (a formidable teacher) repeats nine times to his son Shvetaketu, “tat tvam asi” (that is you). And in the eighth chapter this Upanishad speaks of that small space within the heart (the dahara-akasha), which holds the very one that fills sky and earth, fire and wind, all the worlds.

Swamiji says the root of sorrow and fear is just this, that we took ourselves to be alpa, shut ourselves into a small body, into a small “I,” and then wandered outside, now in learning, now in wealth, now in relationships, searching for that fullness which sat within, looking back toward us. The invitation of this Upanishad is only this much, that for one moment that whole search comes to rest, and you turn toward the very one who is searching, within whom that small space of the heart is beating. However far outside you go on searching, that infinite is not one step away from you, because it is you yourself, and once you recognize it, no sorrow remains, and no other wanting.

The gist: The infinite (Bhuma) we search for outside all our lives dwells as our own Self in the small space within the heart. “Tat tvam asi”, that is you, and to turn the search back from outside toward yourself is the whole call of this Upanishad.