In2-MeC

IBSA (ISKCON Bhaktivedanta Sadhana Asrama), Govardhana, India
13 January 2004

What the Upanisads Teach
Part Fifteen

Sadhana in the Upanisads

The tyagis--a class that includes the jnanis, the yogis, and the sannyasis and the more renounced and introspective smarta-brahmanas of Sankaracarya's advaita-vedanta tradition--think that the goal of life is to be obtained by the utter extirpation of desire (kama). And indeed, Brhadaranyaka Upanisad VI. 4. 7 does state that immortality in Brahman can be achieved only when all material desire is overcome--sarve pramucyante kamah. At the same time, the upanisads warn that mental speculation and word-jugglery is not the means to that goal.

nayamatma pravacanena labhyo
na medhaya na bahuna srutena
yamevaisa vrnute tena labhyas
tasyaisa atma vivrnute tanum svam

Meditation is one of the methods of sadhana mentioned in the upanisads. Katha Upanisad calls Brahman realization adhyatma-yoga. Does meditation and yoga only mean inner contemplation and self-restrained quietude?

This verse, from Katha Upanisad II. 23 and Mundakopanisad III. 2. 3, makes clear that the Supreme Lord is not attainable through pravacan, philosophical erudition; nor through medha, intellectualism; nor through bahu-sruti, the study of many scriptures. It is He alone who decides to whom He will reveal His transcendental form.

Does this mean that the upanisads leave perfection in spiritual life up to the mercy of the Lord? The answer is a qualified yes. Acaryadd-haiva vidya vidita saddhistam prapti, states Chandogya Upanisad; and again the same upanisad instructs, acaryavan puruso veda. This means that transcendental knowledge is to be gotten from the acarya, the bona fide spiritual master. Tad-vijnanartham sa gurum evabhigacchet, according to Mundaka I. 2. 12: one must approach the guru in order to realize the Absolute Truth. Yes, the mercy of the Lord is needed to achieve perfection, but that mercy is availed to the aspirant in the form of the spiritual master. Taking shelter at his lotus feet entails dedicated effort. Vidvan punya-pape vidhuya niranjanah paramam samyam upaiti, Mundakopanisad III. 1. 3 explains: one must become vidvan, learned; one must be punya-pape vidhuya, washed clean of the duality of piety and sinfulness; one must achieve the pristine purity of the Lord Himself.

The means by which the disciple accomplishes this is summed up by Yajnavalkya Muni in Brhadaranyaka Upanisad II. 4. 5: atma va are drastavyah srotavyo mantavyo nididhyasitavyah--"The Supreme Self is 1) to be seen (drastavyah), 2) to be heard (srotavyah), 3) to be thoughtfully considered (mantavyah), and 4) to be meditated upon (nididhyasitavyah). Hence, the senses, mind and intelligence are to be engaged in the Supreme Self under the direction of the spiritual master.

It turns out that meditation entails upasana, worship. In the section of Chandogya Upanisad known as Sandilya Vidya (adhyaya III), we find this important statement: tajjalan iti santa upasita (Ch. U. III. 14. 1). The word tajjalan is considered by Vedantists to be key to the proper understanding of brahma-vidya. It indicates that Brahman (tat) is the origin of creation (ja), the maintainer of creation (la), and the destroyer of creation (an). The word upasita is an injunction that this Brahman is to be worshiped. In his commentary on Vedanta-sutra 2. 3. 31, Srila Baladeva Vidyabhusana cites a statement from the Vedas, atmanam eva lokam upasita, "one should worship the Supreme Lord," to prove that worship is actually an activity of the soul, not the body. Hence upasana is a process of meditation or vidya, transcendental knowledge.

This is another point of contention between Vaisnavas and Mayavadis. Looking at pages 390 and 391 of An Introduction to Indian Philosophy by Satischandra Chatterjee and Dhirendramohan Datta, we find this description of the Mayavadi understanding of worship, and of the scriptural statements that Brahman is worshipable.

God as the object of worship is based essentially on a belief in the distinction between the worshipping self and the God worshipped. The reality of the limited self like that of a worldly object is based on ignorance--on the failure to realize that God is the only reality. Besides, God is worshipped because God is thought of as the creator and controller of the world. So worship and the God worshipped are bound up with our lower standpoint (vyavaharika-drsti) from which the world appears as real and God appears as endowed with the many qualities in relation to the world. It is the Saguna Brahman or Isvara who can be regarded as an object of worship.

Brahman from the higher or transcendental point of view (paramarthika-drsti) cannot be described by qualities which relate to the world or the ego. Brahman in this aspect is devoid of all distinctions, external as well as internal (sajatiya, vijatiya, and svagata bhedas). Here, therefore, Sankara differs from Ramanuja who, we shall see, believes that God is possessed with at least internal distinctions (svagata bheda), because within Him there are the really distinct conscious and unconscious realities. Brahman, in this absolutely transcendent aspect, says Sankara, cannot be described at all and it is, therefore, called indeterminate or characterless or nirguna. The description of Brahman even as infinite, real, consciousness, though more accurate than accidental descriptions of Brahman, cannot directly convey the idea of Brahman. It only serves to direct the mind towards Brahman by denying it of is finiteness, unreality and unconsciousness.

Buddhism is imbedded here. Buddhism does not accept the Vedic sound to be the bridge between the world of phenomena and the world of noumena. Noumena, in Buddhist terminology, belongs to avyakrta vastuni, subject matter that cannot be expressed in words. Avyakrta vastuni appears in Mayavadi Vedanta under the name anirvacaniya. Sankara thus denies that Brahman as Ding-an-Sich (the thing in itself) is obtainable from the Vedic sabda.

Harking back to points I made in In2-Mec on December 11, 14, and 20, Mayavadi philosophy relegates sabda to alpha consciousness, i. e. the plane of merely thinking about, not the beta plane of thinking with. We may consider this in the light of two terms from Western philosophy: mediate knowledge and immediate knowledge. Mediate knowledge is filtered to you through a medium. It is, again, information about a thing, as when a friend calls you on the phone to tell you about something wonderful he just experienced. No doubt you do learn something about his experience, but what you learn through the medium of a phone call is not quite the same as the immediate experience. The phone call gives you enough information to make you wish you were with your friend while he was having his experience. Look again at the previous quotation: "It only serves to direct the mind towards Brahman. . . "

The duality of the mediate and immediate has relevance to experience that is laukika (ordinary; wholly within the realm of limited, imperfect sense perception). But as was noted in yesterday's installment, the Vedanta philosophy taught by Srila Vyasadeva in his brahma-sutras asserts that in transcendental or alaukika experience, sabda is the "transparent via medium" (to use a favorite phrase of Srila Prabhupada's) by which one enters into immediate contact with the Lord: srutes tu sabda-mulatvat--"Brahman is not conceivable to an ordinary man; He can be understood only by the Vedic sound. " (V-s 2. 1. 27)

Thus Mayavadi philosophy is non-Vedic at its root. Sankaracarya conceived it as a preaching strategy for capturing the attention of people under the sway of Buddhism, a doctrine that lacks faith in Vedic sabda. This is the secret of Mayavadi philosophy's broad appeal even today. On page 375 of their book, Datta and Chatterjee note:

Those who do not believe in any revealed scriptures or in any mystic intuition, but try to understand the real nature of the world in the light of common experience and reasoning based thereon, will also value these arguments [of Sankaracarya], if only for their great logical and philosophical merit.

The operative words here are "in the light of common experience and reasoning based thereon. " This is the light that Mayavadi philosophy throws on the brahma-vidya, the transcendental knowledge of the upanisads. In common experience, words do not immediately present their objects. Speaking the word "water", for example, will not fill our mouths with that liquid and thus quench our thirst. Such is the prejudice of Mayavadi philosophy toward the Vedic sound vibration.

On the other hand, Vaisnavas like Sripad Ramanujacarya teach that Brahman, the Absolute Truth, is of the nature of internal distinctions of spiritual qualities. These distinctions are expressed externally as the qualities of this material creation. For example, the sodasa-kala--five jnanendriyas, five karmendriays, five tanmatras, and the mind--are originally aspects of Sri Krsna's own personal nature. His nature is antaranga, internal, consisting of the transcendental qualities of sat-cid-ananda eternity, knowledge and bliss).

Vedic sound has two levels of transmission, we learned yesterday in a quotation from the Mundakopanisad. These are apara and para. By the first, a material representation of the sodasa-kala is conveyed. That "re-presentation" is our material experience of the world. The apara-vidya of the Vedas teaches human beings how to correctly interact with that experience so that we do not fall down into complete avidya, the ignorant condition of animal life. The para-vidya reveals the original transcendental nature of the 16 principles of ear, skin, eye, tongue, nose, hand, leg, stomach, genital, anus, sound, touch, visible form, taste, smell, and the mind with its attendent intelligence and ego. Mayavadis do not understand the difference between apara and para-vidya. They consign any Vedic statement of name, form, quality, activity and relationship to the category of apara. Then what is left? Of Vedic statements, even those of the upanisads, nothing. Thus Mayavadi philosophy enshrouds the Vedic bridge from the world of apara-prakrti to the paravyoma, the spiritual sky, in a fog of mystery.

The original Vedanta philosophy teaches that the apara-prakrti is the result of parinama, a transformation of the internal potency: atmakrteh parinamat (V-s 1. 4. 26). The upanisads teach that Brahman is ubhaya-lingatva, both savisesa (with spiritual qualities) and nirvisesa (without mundane qualities). Ubhaya means "both"; Vyasa deals with this in Vedanta-sutras 3. 2. 11-21, the section known as ubhaya-lingadhikarana. The word bheda (difference) appears in four different sutras to stress that the living entity is not identical to the Supreme Lord: bheda-vyapadesat ca (V-s 1. 1. 7), bheda vyapadesat anyah (V-s 1. 1. 21), bheda vyapadesa (V-s 1. 3. 5), and bheda-sruteh (V-s 2. 4. 18). Yet the Lord and the living entities share the transcendental nature of eternality (nityo nityanam) and sentient awareness (cetanas cetanam). The jiva is karta, a doer of activities with his knowing and acting senses, and his mind: esa hi drasta sprasta srota ghrata rasayita manta boddha karta vijnanatma purusah sa pare aksara atmani sampratisthate--"The jivatma is verily the seer, toucher, smeller, taster, thinker, knower, doer, the individual purusa who is of the nature of pure knowledge; he becomes established in the transcendental undecaying nature of the Supreme Self. " (Prasnopanisad IV. 9) Vedanta-sutra 1. 3. 12 states that the Lord is the object of these faculties of the jiva that begin with seeing power: iksatikarma vyapadesat sah--"He (Brahman) is the object of vision. "

The above paragraph presents ingredients with which one can build the unshakable conviction that upasana or worship is essential to brahma-vidya. Although the soul has fallen into the apara-prakrti, his original nature is like that of the Lord's. Yet at the same time the Lord and the soul are not identical. Hence even in transcendence there remains a relationship between the soul and the Lord. In his transcendental identity the soul has a mind, senses and sense objects, as does the Lord. Hence the soul engages in relationship with Him through these 16 features of their shared eternal personal nature. That engagement is upasana.

Chandogya Upanisad (III. 18,1 and 3) conveys these statements: mano brahmeti upasita and ya evam veda. The meaning is that Brahman is to be worshiped as the Total Mind, and thus He is to be known. This amounts to an equation of upasana (worship) and vedana (Vedic knowledge). The same equation is found in Ch. U. IV. 1. 4 and VI. 2. 2, with the statements yastadveda yat sa veda and tvam upasate. The Vedantic equation of worship and knowledge is confirmed by both Ramanajacarya and Sankaracarya! Ramanuja: vidyupasyayoh vyatirekena upakrama upasamhara darsanat (Sri-bhasya on V-s 1. 1. 1). Sankaracarya: vidyupastyosca vedantesu avyatirekena prayogo drsyate (Sariraka-bhasya on V-s 4. 1. 1).

The activities of worship of the Lord are to include all human karmas. This is the clear call of Isopanisad 2:

kurvann eveha karmani
jijivisec chatam samah
evam tvayi nanyatheto 'sti
na karma lipyate nare

One may aspire to live for hundreds of years if he continuously goes on working in that way, for that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. There is no alternative to this way for man.

"Working in that way" refers to the first verse of the upanisad, which instructs the human being to take what the Lord has given him as his lawful quota, and to leave aside grasping at more than necessary. Living in this way, always conscious of the isavasya principle that everything is controlled and owned by the Lord, a person earns no karmic reactions to his work in this world. He may live hundreds of years in the body; still he will not be touched by matter.

Srila Prabhupada used to tell a story of a saintly person who offered blessings to different people he met on his way. He blessed a brahmacari, ma jiva muni-putraka, "May you die immediately"; and he blessed a prince, raja-putra ciram jiva, "May you live forever. " The idea is that a brahmacari takes trouble to restrain his senses from their objects in order to attain a higher goal after this life. So the saintly man's blessing was, "Then die immediately and rise to your desired goal. " A prince, on the other hand, is eager to enjoy his senses to the fullest this life. Doing so, he accumulates many sinful reactions. Thus his next life is not promising. So the saintly man's blessing was, "Then live forever. Enjoy without fear of hell. " But when he met a devotee of the Lord, the saintly person said, jivo va maro va sadhoh--"My dear devotee, you may live or die, it doesn't matter. " Though it makes the same point as this story, Isopanisad offers no blessings to tyagis or bhogis: "There is no alternative to this way for man. " In all that one does, one should be a worshiper of the Lord and thus sacrifice (sacer facere) everything for His sake. One should shun artificial renunciation--which means accepting less than the Lord offers in this life with a view to increasing one's quota in the next life. One should shun unrestricted sense gratification--which means taking more than the Lord allows. One's aim should not be personal satisfaction in this life or the next, but the satisfaction of the Lord.

The great Vaisnava Vedantist Sripad Madhvacarya shows what the upanisads mean when they say a Vedantist must practice the sadhana of seeing the Lord

The sadhana that engenders brahma-vidya (knowledge of Brahman) is, according to the upanisads, a method of seeing the Lord, hearing the Lord, thoughtfully considering Him, meditating upon Him, worshiping Him, and performing all activities for Him. It is given the name adhyatma-yoga in Katha Upanisad (I. 2. 12): adhyatma-yogadhigamena devam matva dhiro harsa-sokau jahati--"the wise man leaves behind both joy and sorrow by realizing God through adhyatma-yoga. " Adhyatma means "transcendental. " In Bhagavad-gita 10. 32 Sri Krsna tells Arjuna that He is adhyatma-vidya, the culmination of all Vedic knowledge in realization of the transcendental nature of the individual self and the Supreme Self. In explaining this adhyatma-yoga, Katha Upanisad offers an example upon which Srila Prabhupada expounds in his purport to Srimad-Bhagavatam 7. 15. 41:

For a bewildered person in the materialistic way of life, the body, the mind and the senses, which are engaged in sense gratification, are the cause of bondage to repeated birth, death, old age and disease. But for one who is advanced in spiritual knowledge, the same body, senses and mind are the cause of liberation. This is confirmed in the Katha Upanisad (1. 3. 3-4,9) as follows:

atmanam rathinam viddhi
sariram ratham eva ca
buddhim tu sarathim viddhi
manah pragraham eva ca
indriyani hayan ahur
visayams tesu gocaran
so 'dhvanah param apnoti
tad visnoh paramam padam

Katha Upanisad states that adhyatma-yoga involves the body, which is like a chariot; the senses, like the horses; the mind, like the reins; the driver, like the intelligence; and the soul, like the passenger.

The soul is the occupant of the chariot of the body, of which the driver is the intelligence. The mind is the determination to reach the destination, the senses are the horses, and the sense objects are also included in that activity. Thus one can reach the destination, Visnu, who is paramam padam, the supreme goal of life. In conditioned life the consciousness in the body is the cause of bondage, but the same consciousness, when transformed into Krsna consciousness, becomes the cause for one's returning home, back to Godhead.

The human body, therefore, may be used in two ways--for going to the darkest regions of ignorance or for going forward, back home, back to Godhead.

It seems unnecessary to make a wordy argument that this adhyatma-yoga of the Katha Upanisad is bhakti-yoga and not some other type of yoga. What other yoga could adhyatma-yoga be? This is a yoga that involves senses, mind and intelligence as well as the soul. The example of riding in a chariot demands of us an understanding that adhyatma-yoga involves activity, going from one place to another, not self-restrained quietude and staying in the same place. The unequivocal conclusion is that if the soul can properly engage the body, senses, mind and intelligence, these very instruments will conduct the soul not to another birth in this material world, nor even to the impersonal Self that Sankaracarya aims his followers at, but to tad visnoh paramam padam--the transcendental abode of the Personality of Godhead Sri Visnu.

The simplest method of sadhana, the one that most blissfully fulfills all the upanisadic requirements for Brahman realization, is the chanting of Lord Krsna's holy names in nama-sankirtana

To be continued, starting with the Supreme Goal of Life (Parama Purusartha)

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