The Samhita of the Shukla Yajurveda reaches its fortieth, meaning its final, chapter. The pages up to here held the ordinances of yajna and homa, the offering, the detailed accounting of ritual action. The moment you step into this last chapter, the key changes. There is no command of ritual here. There is a direct declaration, and the very first word of that declaration is ishavasyam (enveloped by the Lord). Mahatma Gandhi is said to have remarked about this first mantra that if every scripture in the world were lost and only this single shloka survived, it would be enough to carry us through. Eighteen mantras, no more, and in these eighteen sits that reconciliation of action and knowledge, of enjoyment and renunciation, which the rishis wandered the forests to find.
From this first word the Upanishad takes its name, the Isha Upanishad. Swami Krishnananda explains that this is no ordinary Upanishad. It is a mantropanishad (an Upanishad that gives its initiation through the mantras themselves), and because it sits inside the Samhita, at its very end, it is also called a Samhita-Upanishad. The opening line itself, ईशावास्यमिदं सर्वम् (all this is enveloped by the Lord), unlocks three things at once, which the Swami calls the essence of metaphysics: the being of the Lord (his existence), the nature of the world, and the duty of the individual soul. That is, who the Lord is, what this world is, and what a person is to do in this world. And standing behind this one line is the single question that drives the whole Upanishad, तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथाः, enjoy only through renunciation, because in the end what is asked is just this, मा गृधः कस्यस्विद्धनम्, do not covet, whose wealth is it after all?
“ईशावास्यम् इदं सर्वम्”: Enjoyment through renunciation
This Upanishad takes its name from its very first word. Just as the Kenopanishad carries that name because it opens with the word “kena,” this one is called the Ishavasyopanishad because it begins with “ishavasyam.” The first verse reads like a sutra, small, and yet holding within it a complete vision of life. It was of this very verse that Mahatma Gandhi said, if all the sacred texts vanished from the world and only this one shloka survived, it alone could take the place of them all.
The first line of the shloka says, all this, whatever stirs and moves in this shifting world, is enveloped by the Lord, filled by him. Swami Krishnananda (a master of Vedanta and General Secretary of the Sivananda Ashram) explains that “idam” (this) means this entire world, all of creation as it stands manifest before us. What is seen and what is unseen, the gross and the subtle, cause and effect, the conscious and the inert, all of it is covered over by the Lord. He gives several readings of “ishavasyam”: isha + vasyam (that which is fit for the Lord to dwell in, his temple), or isha + avasyam (that which is fit to be enveloped by the Lord), or ishena + avasyam (in which the Lord is pervasive the way salt stays dissolved in salt water).
According to Swami Krishnananda there are also several visions of how the Lord is present in the world. The Naiyayikas (followers of the Nyaya school) hold him to be an instrumental cause like a potter, who stands apart from the pot. Vishishtadvaita calls him salt dissolved in salt water, pervasive yet also distinct. And Advaita says the Lord is not separate from the world at all. To make this clear the Swami tells the famous answer of Hanuman ji (the supreme devotee of Shri Rama). When Shri Rama asked, “Who are you?”, Hanuman ji said, “As the body, I am your servant; as the individual soul, I am your part, a single cell of you; and as the Self, I am you alone, this is my certainty.” The Swami says, there is no place where the Lord is not; in inert matter there is only his “sat” (his being, his is-ness), in conscious beings there is sat together with awareness; and as rajas and tamas thin out, sat comes forward, and just then bliss breaks open, because sat itself is bliss.
Now comes the second line, “तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथाः”, enjoy it through renunciation. Swami Krishnananda opens two meanings of this. The first is the worldly meaning. Once the first line has said that everything belongs to the Lord, then what is yours? What did you bring with you, and what will you carry away when you go? Be content with what the Lord has given, enjoy that alone. The Gita says the same thing, “यदृच्छालाभसन्तुष्टः” (content with whatever comes of its own accord). But there is a delicate point in it, you have only the right to enjoy, not the right of ownership. You are merely a trustee (a custodian, a keeper of what is held in trust) of the Lord’s wealth.
The second meaning goes deeper, and the Swami calls it the doctrine of Shankaracharya. Since everything is the Lord himself, renounce it all and enjoy the bliss the Lord gives. Here “renunciation” does not mean throwing things away; its real meaning is to stop running toward them, that is, vairagya (the mind’s turning away from objects). His subtle argument runs like this: pleasure is not the nature of an object at all, pleasure is the nature of the Lord. The little bit of joy that seems to come from an object, we mistakenly project onto the object. But the Lord has no contact with objects at all, because he is infinite. Where the supreme being is, there the supreme bliss is, not in the object. This is why the more you stop running toward objects and turn toward the Lord, the more bliss grows; and the more you throw yourself into acquiring things, the more worry and grief grow. This reverse test proves the very same secret.
Swami Krishnananda says this is sattvic bliss, the very bliss the saints and great souls enjoy, the very bliss the gopis of Vrindavan received. They received it not because some object came into their hands; they received it because they turned their faces away from objects and ran toward the Lord. And the final question, “कस्यस्विद् धनम्” (whose wealth is this). In the worldly sense, what you earned by your own sweat is yours; do not even look toward the earnings of another’s sweat, “मा गृधः” (do not be greedy). And in the supreme sense, when everything belongs to the Lord, you have no right whatever to cast a covetous eye on anything. Turn the mind toward the Lord. The Swami gives it a sweet turn here: running after the world never brings the world into your hands, but the one who wins the Lord inherits, along with the Lord, the whole world he created, the way a father’s property passes to the child.
The gist: when every single thing belongs to that one, the very claim of “mine” and “not mine” is false. Renunciation does not mean leaving things; it means leaving the illusion that you own them. You are not the owner, you are the trustee; and pleasure was never in the object, it is only a glimpse of the one who fills everything. Enjoy without being bound, with this understanding, and that is the real enjoyment.
A hundred years of action: work does not bind
The person who was told in the first verse that everything wears the veil of the Lord now feels a plain question flash in the mind. Fine, we have accepted that everything belongs to the Lord and that nothing is our own; but we are creatures of flesh and bone, we breathe, we earn, we sulk, we fear. In such a state, what are we to do? Sit down, or keep working? This Upanishad answers that very hesitation in its second verse, and Swami Krishnananda (an expositor of modern Vedanta, a saint in the lineage of Swami Sivananda) holds it to be the seed-mantra of karma yoga.
The prose of the verse runs something like this: one should wish to live a hundred years right here in this world while performing action; for you (while you dwell in this body) there is no other road at all, and action done in this way does not cling to a person (na lipyate, that is, it does not stick on like a smear). Swami Krishnananda first probes this “wish to live.” He says, so long as the feeling holds that we are separate individuals, that there are objects outside, that there is society, the jijivisha (the will to live) will remain, and where there is the will to live, action stands up on its own. The very nature of the living being is activity, whether of the mind, of speech, or of the body’s limbs.
Then he opens a deeper point. This will to live is in truth the Lord’s own being (the power of being, the essence of existence), which he calls the Lord-feeling. In the Lord there is only pure “is-ness.” But the individual soul attaches a tail of its own to it, which Maharshi Patanjali calls abhinivesha (the clinging attachment to the body, the love of living and the fear of dying). Then the individual begins to say, “We do not merely exist, we must go on living too, in this very body, forever.” According to Swami Krishnananda, this is where action becomes a duty that cannot be dodged, because to protect and run the body one will have to act.
Now the real knot comes undone. Swami Krishnananda says action is a double-edged sword, the very thing that can cut can also save. The action a person does bound to his separate personality, with craving for the fruit and the sense of being the doer, is what binds him. But the action done anchored in the Lord, taking oneself to be a small instrument of his, dropping the desire for the fruit, done like worship, does not cling at all. According to him this whole matter is packed into that little phrase “न लिप्यते”: the problem is not action, the problem is that grip of “I am doing it” and “I must have its fruit.” This is why he says, the thing the Gita explained at length is sealed like a seed in this one verse.
To explain it he gives a beautiful picture. The Lord is the Virat form (the Person whose body is the entire cosmos), and we are one tiny cell of that vast body. Just as every cell of our body works ceaselessly day and night at its own task, and does not interfere in the work of the other cells, so a person should carry out his own dharma. Swami Krishnananda says plainly that work we will have to do, whether we wish to or not, because the qualities of Prakriti compel a person and yoke him to action; in Lord Krishna’s words, the Virat catches us by the ear, as it were, and seats us at our work. So since it must be done, do it as worship of the Lord, dropping the hope of any fruit.
In the end he shows the will to live and action to be two faces of one coin. Since living and duty cannot be pulled apart, a person should wish for a long and healthy life, a hundred years of it. He reminds us that the mantras of the sandhya-vandana (the prayer of the twilight hours) ask for just this: may we see for a hundred years, hear for a hundred years, may fire stay with us for a hundred years. But the one who wishes to live a hundred years should live those hundred years as karma yoga, taking himself to be one among the countless creatures of the Lord’s creation, in a spirit free of desire. Action done with this understanding, Swami Krishnananda assures us, does not bind a person, it saves him.
The gist: giving up work does not grant liberation, because while you live, work never leaves you. Bondage does not come from action, it comes from the grip of “I am the doer” and “let the fruit be mine.” Do that very work as worship of the Lord, knowing yourself to be one cell of his vast body, dropping the desire for fruit; then even a hundred years of action will not cling to you like a smear.
Vidya and avidya: only the one who holds both together crosses over
The Isha Upanishad now stands at a turn where in one stroke it pours water on our easy thinking. We all settle it in our minds that either the work of the world is true, or the meditation on God. The Upanishad says, do not read these three mantras (nine, ten, and eleven) as separate, they are strung on a single thread. Swami Krishnananda (the expositor of these mantras) warns at the very start that catching their real meaning is a hard nut to crack, every acharya (expositor) has opened them in the light of his own philosophy, and the words are so open that all the meanings fit inside them.
What the mantra says sounds simple. Those who worship only avidya (here the meaning is action, worldly work, our duty toward the world) fall into darkness. And those who stay stuck in only vidya (here the meaning is knowledge of the Lord, sheer contemplation) sink into a still deeper darkness. In the tenth mantra the rishi says, from the wise (the calm, grave men of knowledge) we have heard this, the fruit that comes from vidya is one thing, and the fruit that comes from avidya is another. And in the eleventh the essence arrives, the one who knows both of these together crosses over death through avidya and gains immortality through vidya.
According to Swami Krishnananda the final verdict of the acharyas is that the awareness of the Lord comes neither from action alone nor from knowledge alone. Avidya alone, meaning action, gives fruits that have a beginning and an end, and to enjoy the fruits one must take birth upon birth, and this is the fall into deep darkness, this is samsara (the round of birth and death). On the other side, the scripture-learned pandits treat action as avidya and turn their faces from it, they set work aside, and so their knowledge too does not carry them to liberation. The Swami says, the real thing is to set the scale exactly between these two, in even balance; dropping one and clinging to the other is a failure on both sides.
Then he opens a deeper point. This world is in truth not a thing separate from the Lord at all, it appears separate only because of our unknowing sight. Swami Krishnananda says, the world is the face of the Lord, his symbol, his reflection, which is why we say God dwells in every single thing. As long as there is a body, we will have to accept the world, because the body itself is a part of the world. So the road that opens is this, carry out your duty toward the world, but in the light of the knowledge of the Lord. This is karma yoga (the practice of staying joined to the Lord while performing action). He recalls a striking line from the Tantra shastra, the very thing you fall by, you can also rise by. This world can trap us and it can free us.
To explain this the Swami paints a vivid picture. Action is like the lion of the forest. If you cut it off from the ground of the Lord’s being (the being of God) and leave it alone, it will devour you. But the circus master keeps that same lion under control, because he knows the secret of the lion’s nature. In the same way, when you learn the secret of action, that every action rests on the Lord’s being alone, then the poison of action that binds drains away. He gives another picture, action is a double-edged sword; in the soldier’s hand it defeats the enemy, in a child’s hand it becomes a danger to himself and to everyone. The only difference is whether the skill of wielding it is there or not.
In the end Swami Krishnananda adds two words, satya and rita (in Vedic language: satya is the eternal law the Lord runs while staying beyond it, and rita is that same law seen at work within creation). To accept both together, to see one within the other, this is to join vidya and avidya in a single worship, and this, in his own words, is the work of a true hero. He says, nishkama karma (work done without desire for its fruit) purifies the mind, and only a pure mind becomes fit for meditation. Crossing death and gaining immortality are not two separate destinations; just as being freed of a disease and being healthy are one and the same thing, so these two meet at one and the same place.
The gist: fleeing the world is incomplete, and drowning in the world is incomplete too. The secret is in the middle cord, carry out your duty fully, but with the knowledge that this duty stands on the Lord’s own ground. Then the lion of action walks tamed, death is crossed through avidya and immortality gained through vidya, and both open at one and the same door.
The one who, though still, is ahead of all
The Isha Upanishad now carries us to where everything said so far comes to rest on a single point. The first three mantras said that every action is to be offered to that one; now it unfolds who that “one” is. This “one” is the Lord (the supreme being, the inner ruler of all). Swami Krishnananda, who was a learned acharya of the Sivananda Ashram and who in these short discourses opened this Upanishad for the ordinary reader, reads these fourth and fifth mantras in a single breath, because both are two sides of the very same paradox.
The Upanishad says, that one is single, it does not move, there is no trembling in it, and yet it is swifter than the mind. Swami Krishnananda explains it like this. It is pure being (existence, is-ness), one without a second (with no equal beside it), indivisible, beyond measure, and with no relation to space and time (place and time). There is nothing beyond it or apart from it. To explain this he gives an old comparison, it is the “unmoving mover,” it sets everything moving yet never itself stirs.
Then he gives a beautiful illustration. The mind moves so fast that in the blink of an eye it reaches Brahmaloka (the highest world of creation). But the atman (our real nature, the awareness seated within) moves faster still, because when the mind arrives there, the atman is already found seated there ahead of it. The Swami says, this is the meaning of “does not move yet is ahead of all.” Just as the stars race through the sky at great speed and yet seem to hang fixed in place, so the deepest motion appears still from outside. This is not the dead stillness of stone, this is supreme velocity. Whether it be Garuda, or the flying Hanuman, or the swift-winged gods, none can outrun it. Here the word “deva” also hints at the senses, and the Upanishad says the senses can never reach it, because it is there ahead of them already. It is the very ground behind thought on which thought rises.
Swami Krishnananda links this motion to Matarishva (the wind, which moves through the sky, taken by some to be Hiranyagarbha or the great life-breath). This same all-pervading law distributes and holds together every action. His most living example is his own body. The heart’s circulation of blood, the system of breath, digestion, the nerves, the bones, the muscles, and the thousands of cells, all of it runs from birth to death without stopping, in such perfect coordination. Who runs this astonishing arrangement? He says, it is the indivisible awareness (the whole, unbroken consciousness). If it were divided, this system could never run in such harmony. The same thing that works in the vast cosmos works in this little bundle of a body. His piercing line is this, in a human being, being and doing are two separate things, but in the Lord, being and action are one and the same.
Now the fifth mantra strings these very opposites into a single garland. It moves and it does not move, it is far and it is very near, it is inside everything and outside everything. Swami Krishnananda says, all these opposites are reconciled in the Lord. Like space, it is wherever it wishes to be. And he sets down a deep point this way, if you are already where you wish to reach, where is the need to move? So it does not move. These sayings of “it moves, it does not move, it is far, it is near” are spoken from the standpoint of practical experience. From the supreme standpoint, no verb of action, inside, outside, near, or far, applies to it at all. It is farther than the farthest from the senses, the objects, and the thinking of the mind, and at the same time nearer than the nearest, because it is the very atman of every creature, the true friend of all.
To explain this distance he also tells a story from the Yoga Vasishtha. Agnideva set out to measure the length and breadth of creation and flew up, and further up, but could get no farther than the orb of the sun, and returned defeated. It is said that Brahma’s mind-born sons Sanaka and his brothers are even today moving through the cosmos to measure it. The meaning is that it is farther than the farthest and yet nearer than the nearest. The Purusha Sukta says the same, that even after enveloping the whole cosmos it still stretches out beyond it. This is why in it none of the three kinds of difference hold, sajatiya (difference within like things, as between two humans), vijatiya (difference between unlike things, as between a tree and a human), and svagata (difference among one’s own parts). Neither inner difference, nor outer variety. Counting out all these many opposites has a single purpose, to teach the mind the truth of the atman, that apart from it there is nothing at all.
The gist: in that which is supreme, “being” and “doing” become one, and so it is ahead of all without moving, supremely swift without running, and present everywhere without traveling. These paradoxes hold because it is beyond space and time. There is no need to go anywhere far to seek it, because the one you are searching for is your own atman seated within you, nearer than the nearest.
Behind the golden lid, the face of truth
This Upanishad has now reached its final four mantras, and the scene has changed. The contemplation that was running until now has turned into prayer. The speaker is the worshiper, the seeker who held to the path of truth all his life and now stands before the last hour. His gaze is on that sun in the sky which is called Pushan (the nourishing deity, the sun). Facing east, he looks at that shining round disc and makes a request.
His request is this, “O Pushan, the face of truth is covered by a hiranmaya vessel (a golden lid). Remove that lid, so that I, being satyadharmi (one who takes truth itself to be his dharma), may behold that truth.” Swami Krishnananda says that here the “golden vessel” is not some external object, it is that very radiance which bursts from the sun. Our eyes are caught in the dazzle of that light, we see only a point of brilliance (a shining drop of light), and the real form hidden within is covered over. The seeker says, O Lord, this brilliance itself is your veil, remove it.
The Swami carries this prayer deeper still. According to him this “golden vessel” is also all the objects that shine before us like gold. But as the saying goes, all that glitters is not gold. In objects we are in fact seeing the projection of our own mind (a ray thrown out by the mind), and we take that to be the world. So he says this prayer is in truth a prayer made to one’s own mind, “O mind, gather up these scattered rays of yours, withdraw this sight fastened to objects. The world I had set up as standing outside myself is an illusion. Let this veil lift and truth will be seen.”
The seeker’s strength rests on this, that he has a right to this vision. Swami Krishnananda explains that here satya (that which is) and dharma (its law) are held to be one and the same. The truth seated within the sun and the truth seated within every creature are not different, the very same Purusha (the conscious principle) is in both. This is why the seeker exclaims, “The Purusha who is there, that I am.” He says, my life stands on dharma, and dharma issues from that very truth which is your original form. Since the foundation of us both is one and the same truth, I have the right to behold you, and, having beheld, to become that very truth myself.
Then, turning toward the mind, he asks for the final reckoning. The prayer at the time of dying is, “This body is bhasmanta (destined to be ash at the end), let its life-breath return to the air, let its portion return to Hiranyagarbha (the primal seed of creation), let the fruits of my actions reach their several places. But O mind, in this hour, keep the memory of ॐ. Remember, remember all that you did in this life.” The Swami says this line, “क्रतो स्मर, कृतं स्मर” (O will, remember, remember what has been done), is deliberately repeated twice, like the word of Jesus Christ, repent now, for the end is at hand. According to him true repentance is itself a great austerity, a mahavrata (a vow kept for life), which, according to Patanjali, never slackens. What will go with you is only the fruit of your actions, and no other thing out of this whole spread-out world.
In the end the prayer turns toward Agni. The seeker says, “O Agni, lead me by the straight and auspicious path (that road of the uttarayana which leads toward liberation). You are the knower of all, O god. The sins I have done unknowingly, in my folly, do not merely forgive them, burn them away. Again and again I bow to you.” Swami Krishnananda says that through these prayers the individual soul begs to reach the Lord by way of the sun. When the individual soul merges into that very being of the Lord, it is for this reason that this Upanishad is named Ishavasya. And it comes to rest on the very peace-mantra (ॐ पूर्णमदः) with which it began.
The gist: the thing that holds us back is not darkness, it is a very great brilliance. The golden shimmer of the world is itself the veil laid over the face of truth, and that veil is not somewhere outside, it is in the scattered rays of our own mind. Gather them in and the one seated within the sun is the one you will find within yourself. And when the final hour comes, only your actions and a single conscious remembrance go with you, so learn today to keep ॐ in mind, so that in that hour the body may turn to ash while awareness holds to the straight path.
And in the end, toward yourself
So this Upanishad says the whole thing in its very first breath, “ईशावास्यमिदं सर्वम्” (all this is covered by the Lord, filled by him alone). Swami Krishnananda says that just as salt stays dissolved in salt water, so this entire world, seen and unseen, conscious and inert, is filled with that one being; there is no place where it is not. And when everything belongs to it, what is your own? According to the Swami you are not the owner here, only a trustee (a keeper of what is held in trust); you have the right to enjoy, not the right to close your fist and call it yours. This is why the second line comes, “तेन त्यक्तेन भुञ्जीथा, मा गृधः” (renounce and enjoy, do not covet). The Swami opens a hidden point in it, that pleasure is not in the object at all, pleasure is the nature of that one alone; so the more you loosen your grip, the more the inner bliss grows. The race to grasp increases worry, and opening the hand makes you light.
Further on, this Upanishad sharpens the same point, “यस्तु सर्वाणि भूतान्यात्मन्येवानुपश्यति” (the one who sees all creatures within his own self, and himself within all creatures). Swami Krishnananda says that attraction and aversion, this is mine, that is another’s, all of it is born from the wall we raise between outside and inside; the day that wall falls, there is no ground left for hatred of anyone, for rivalry with anyone. Then the Upanishad asks, “तत्र को मोहः कः शोकः” (there, what delusion, what grief), because for the one who has seen the oneness no second remains at all. The wave is in the ocean and the ocean is in the wave, this is the invitation of the Ishavasya, recognize that one alone in every form and live without closing your fist. Then the work will keep getting done and the mind will stay light too. Pause for a moment and look within yourself, the “I” from which you grasp all this, is it not also a glimpse of that very one?
The gist: when everything begins to look filled with that one, there is neither the rush to grasp nor the burden of letting go. According to Swami Krishnananda you are not the owner here, you are the keeper of a trust; and pleasure is not in the object, it is in the touch of that one, so the more the hand opens, the more bliss grows. For the one who sees that one in every form, no delusion remains, and no grief. This is the invitation of the Ishavasya, to see that one in every single thing and to live without closing your fist.
The commentary is based mainly on Swami Krishnananda’s (Divine Life Society) exposition of the Ishavasyopanishad.