The Upaniṣads (Sanskrit: “sessions,” lit. “sitting near” (i.e. “at the feet of a guru)”) are the ancient sacred treatises of Hinduism. Written in Sanskrit c.800–200 BCE, the Upaniṣads expand on the Vedas in mostly mystical and monistic terms. The Upaniṣads were passed down through an oral tradition within the priestly social groups and were not written down until the sixth century CE.
The Upaniṣads comprise the concluding portions of the Vedas; hence, they are called Vedānta (“the culmination of the Vedas.”) The major Upaniṣads are the repositories of many of the theological and philosophical ideas that have come to tower over later Vedāntic thought.
The Upaniṣads transcend the chants performed during sacrifices and pose philosophical questions about human existence and man’s place in the cosmos. The conceptions of Brahman (the universal cosmic power) and Ātman (the innate soul of the individual) are fundamental to the understanding of the Upaniṣads.
More than one hundred Upaniṣads were created—the later lesser-known Upaniṣads continued to be composed right down to the sixteenth century. Thirteen of the Upaniṣads are considered the canonical scriptures of Hinduism. The first five of these—Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, and Kauṣītaki—were composed in prose and interposed with verse. The middle five—Kena, Kaṭha, Ῑśā, Śvetāśvatara, and Muṇḍaka—were composed chiefly in verse. The last three—Praśna, Māṇḍūkya, and Maitrāyaṇī—were composed in prose.
The French Indologist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron first translated fifty Upaniṣads into Latin in 1801–02. The Upaniṣads had a considerable effect on such nineteenth-century philosophers as Arthur Schopenhauer, who asserted that the Upaniṣads were “the fruit of the most sublime human knowledge and wisdom.” The Upaniṣads also came to the attention of American philosophers and writers in the nineteenth century, mainly by way of many threads of the Idealist, Romantic, and Transcendentalist movements of Germany and England.
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The Spirit is beyond sound and form, without touch and taste and perfume. It is eternal, unchangeable, and without beginning or end; indeed above reasoning. When consciousness of the Spirit manifests itself, man becomes free from the jaws of death.
—The Upanishads
The world is the wheel of God, turning round And round with all living creatures upon its rim. The world is the river of God, Flowing from him and flowing back to him.
—The Upanishads
Know the Self as Lord of the chariot, the body as the chariot itself, the discriminating intellect as the charioteer, and the mind as the reins. The senses, say the wise, are the horses; selfish desires are the roads they travel.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Selfishness, Self-love
This is the truth: As from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.
—The Upanishads
Like a ball bated back and forth, a human being is batted by two forces within.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Conflict
In dreams the mind beholds its own immensity. What has been seen is seen again, and what has been heard is heard again. What has been felt in different places or faraway regions returns to the mind again. Seen and unseen, heard and unheard, felt and not felt, the mind sees all, since the mind is all.
—The Upanishads
When the mind is silent, beyond weakness or non- concentration, then it can enter into a world which is far beyond the mind: the highest End.
—The Upanishads
Wherefrom do all these worlds come? They come from space. All beings arise from space, and into space they return: space is indeed their beginning, and space is their final end.
—The Upanishads
Even as water becomes one with water, fire with fire, and air with air, so the mind becomes one with the Infinite Mind and thus attains final freedom.
—The Upanishads
The Unseen One, featureless, unthinkable, undefinable by name. Whose Substance is the certitude of One Self, in Whom world-existence is stilled, Who is all peace and bliss – that is the Self, that is what be known.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Think, World, Now, Peace
There is something beyond our mind which abides in silence within our mind. It is the supreme mystery beyond thought. Let one’s mind and one’s subtle body rest upon that and not rest on anything else.
—The Upanishads
The means of attaining the other world does not become revealed to the non-discriminating one who, deluded by wealth, has become negligent. He who thinks, ‘this world alone is and none else’ comes to death again and again.
—The Upanishads
The Lord of Love is before and behind. He extends to the right and to the left. He extends above; he extends below. There is no one here but the Lord of Love. He alone is; in truth, he alone is.
—The Upanishads
He who knows that as both in one, the knowledge and the ignorance, by the ignorance crosses beyond death and by the knowledge enjoys immortality.
—The Upanishads
The wise devote themselves to the welfare of all, for they see themselves in all.
—The Upanishads
As one acts and conducts himself, so does he become. The doer of good becomes good. The doer of evil becomes evil. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Action
A person may desire to live for hundreds of years if he works according to this truth because that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. And there is no alternative to this way for man.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Karma
The Spirit filled all with his radiance.
He is incorporeal and invulnerable, pure and untouched by evil.
He is the supreme seer and thinker, immanent and transcendent.
He placed all things in the path of the Eternal.
—The Upanishads
When a person is dying, his voice goes into his mind; his mind into
his breath; his breath into heat; the heat into the highest
divinity. that which is the finest essence – the whole world has
that as its soul. That is Reality. That is Atman. That art thou.
—The Upanishads
Even as the sun shines and fills all space With light, above, below, across, so shines The Lord of Love and fills the hearts of all created beings.
—The Upanishads
The cosmos comes forth from The Eternal, and moves In Him. With His power it reverberates, Like thunder crashing in the sky. Those who Realize Him pass beyond the sway of death.
—The Upanishads
Meditation is in truth higher than thought. The earth seems to rest in silent meditation; and the waters and the mountains and the sky and the heavens seem all to be in meditation. Whenever a man attains greatness on this earth, he has his reward according to his meditation.
—The Upanishads
As pure water poured into pure water becomes the very same, so does the Self of the illumined man or woman verily become one with the Godhead.
—The Upanishads
Awake, arise! Strive for the Highest, and be in the Light! Sages say the path is narrow and difficult to tread, narrow as the edge of a razor.
—The Upanishads
Life comes from the Spirit. Even as a man casts a shadow, so the Spirit casts the shadow of life, and, as a shadow of former lives, a new life comes to this body.
—The Upanishads
Health, a light body, freedom from cravings, a glowing skin, sonorous voice, fragrance of body: these signs indicate progress in the practice of meditation.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Meditation
You are what your deep driving desire is.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Desire, Desires
Tat Tvam Asi: “That art thou”: Whatever we see or think about, we are That. We are the ultimate Thou and I in all.
—The Upanishads
As the sun that beholds the world is untouched by earthly impurities, so the Spirit that is in all things is untouched by external sufferings.
—The Upanishads
Even as a great fish swims along the two banks of a river, first along the eastern bank and then the western bank, in the same way the Spirit of man moves along beside his two dwellings: this waking world and the land of sleep and dreams.
—The Upanishads
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