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.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
There is a Spirit who is awake in our sleep and creates the wonder of dreams. He is the Spirit of Light, who in truth is called the Immortal. All the worlds rest on that Spirit and beyond him no one can go.
—The Upanishads
You are what your deep driving desire is.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Desire, Desires
Life in the world and life in the spirit are not incompatible. Work or action is not contrary to knowledge of God, but indeed, if performed without attachment, is a means to it.
—The Upanishads
Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity.
—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
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
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
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
Out of abundance and still abundance remained.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Abundance, Dance
The little space within the heart is as great as this vast universe. The heavens and the earth are there, and the sun, and the moon, and the stars; fire and lightning and winds are there; and all that now is and all that is not: for the whole universe is in Him and He dwells within our heart.
—The Upanishads
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
What is here is also there; what is there, is also here. Who sees multiplicity but not the one indivisible Self must wander on and on from death to death.
—The Upanishads
He who knows Self as the enjoyer of
The honey from the flowers of the senses,
Ever present within, ruler of time,
Goes beyond fear. For this Self is Supreme!
—The Upanishads
The wise devote themselves to the welfare of all, for they see themselves in all.
—The Upanishads
When a man dies, what does not leave him? The voice of a dead man goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eyes into the sun, his mind into the moon, his hearing into the quarters of heaven, his body into the land cheerfully. earth, his spirit into space
—The Upanishads
Topics: Action
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 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: World, Think, Peace, Now
Who sees all beings in his own Self, and his own Self in all beings, loses all fear.
—The Upanishads
As the same fire assumes different shapes
When it consumes objects differing in shape,
So does the one Self take the shape
Of every creature in whom he is present.
—The Upanishads
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
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
Know one, know all.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Identity, Self-Knowledge
As when rivers flowing towards the ocean find there final peace, their name and form disappear, and people speak only of the ocean, even so the different forms of the seer of all flows towards the Spirit and find there final peace, their name and form disappear and people speak only of Spirit.
—The Upanishads
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
Whatever is outside this universe is a complete system.This universe itself is also a complete system. Only a complete system can emerge out of a complete system. If a complete system is taken out of a complete system, whatever remains is also a complete system.
—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
As an eagle, weary after soaring in the sky, folds its wings and flies down to rest in its nest, so does the shining Self enter the state of dreamless sleep, where one is freed from all desires.
—The Upanishads
Topics: Desires, Desire
Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.
—The Upanishads
Let a man strive to purify his thoughts. What a man thinketh, that is he; this is the eternal mystery. Dwelling within himself with thoughts serene, he will obtain imperishable happiness. Man becomes that of which he thinks.
—The Upanishads
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