Chandogya Upanishad

• 1. Introduction

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  The Chandogya Upanishad opens with a single instruction: let a man meditate on Om. That syllable, the text declares, is the udgitha, the supreme song, the distillation of everything that exists. It is the essence of the Rig Veda, which is itself the essence of speech, which is the essence of man, who is the essence of plants, which are the essence of water, which is the essence of earth. Everything collapses into that one sound.

  This is one of the oldest Upanishads in the Hindu tradition, composed somewhere in the first millennium BCE, embedded in the Chandogya Brahmana of the Sama Veda. It is listed as the ninth in the Muktika canon of 108 Upanishads. According to Deutsch and Dalvi, its sixth chapter is "no doubt the most influential of the entire corpus of the Upanishads."

  What makes a text composed perhaps three thousand years ago still generate debate among scholars today? Why did the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer return to it again and again, scrawling its phrases in German? Why did the medieval commentator Adi Shankaracharya cite it more than any other ancient text, some 810 times, in his Vedanta Sutra Bhasya? And what does the phrase Tat Tvam Asi, repeated nine times across its closing chapters, actually mean?

  Those are the questions this documentary will pursue, moving through eight chapters of a text that ranges from cosmic fire rituals to a pack of hungry dogs demanding food, from the nature of salt dissolved in water to the geography of the self at the moment of death.

• 2. A Text Assembled Over Time

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  Patrick Olivelle, one of the leading scholars of early Indian texts, has written that any dating of these documents that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is "as stable as a house of cards." The Chandogya Upanishad illustrates exactly why.

  Scholars have offered estimates ranging from 800 BCE to 600 BCE for its composition, all placing it before the rise of Buddhism. A 1998 review by Olivelle places its composition in the 7th or 6th century BCE, give or take a century. Stephen Phillips has argued it was completed after the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, both probably in the early part of the 8th century BCE.

  The difficulty is structural as well as chronological. Like the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the Chandogya is an anthology, a gathering of texts that must have pre-existed as independent works before one or more ancient Indian scholars assembled them into a single compilation. Every chapter shows signs of later insertions: inconsistencies in meter, grammar, style and content mark passages that do not fit smoothly with what comes before or after.

  The name itself signals the text's nature. Chandogya derives from the word chanda or chandas, meaning poetic meter and prosody. The Chandogya belongs to the Tandya school of the Samaveda, the Veda of chants. Its governing theme, running through all eight Prapathakas (the Sanskrit term for its chapters), is the importance of speech, song and chant to the human quest for knowledge and salvation.

  Klaus Witz, who has studied its structure closely, divides the text into three natural groups. Chapters one and two deal primarily with language, rhythm and the syllable Om. Chapters three through five turn to more than twenty Upasanas and Vidyas, teachings about the universe, life and the mind. The final three chapters address metaphysical questions about the nature of reality and the Self. That structure matters, because the text's most famous passage, the Tat Tvam Asi dictum, emerges only in that third group.

• 3. Songs, Dogs and the Sacred Syllable

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  The first chapter of the Chandogya opens with Om and holds to it relentlessly, tracing the syllable through smell, speech, sight, hearing and mind. In section 1.2, the text describes a cosmic struggle between Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons), both descended from one Prajapati. Max Muller, who translated and commented on the text extensively, notes that ancient scholars read this struggle as an allegory: good and evil inclinations within a single person, not rival supernatural armies.

  The gods attempt to claim the Udgitha, the song of Om, through each of the senses in turn. Each time, the demons afflict it: one smells both good and bad, speaks both truth and untruth, sees both the harmonious and the chaotic. When the gods revere the Udgitha as Prana, vital breath, the demons strike it but shatter. Life-principle, the text declares, is inherently good. It is the lord and essence of all the organs and senses.

  By the tenth through twelfth volumes of that first chapter, the tone shifts sharply. The text offers a satire on priests who recite Vedic verses without understanding what they mean or what divine principle they signify. The twelfth volume is sometimes called "the Udgitha of the dogs." Verses 1.12.1 through 1.12.5 describe a convoy of dogs who approach Vaka Dalbhya, a sage absorbed in quiet Vedic repetition. The dogs ask him to sing and get them food because they are hungry. The sage watches in silence. The head dog tells the others to return tomorrow. The next day the dogs arrive, each holding the tail of the dog ahead, exactly as priests walk in procession holding the gown of the priest before them. They settle, then begin together: Om, let us eat. Om, let us drink. Lord of food, bring it hither. Om.

  John Oman, reflecting on that section, states that the Chandogya makes clear more than once that ritual doings provide merit in the other world only for a time, while the right knowledge rids a person of all questions of merit and secures enduring bliss. The satire is not unusual in Indian literature; similar insistence on understanding over superficial recitation appears in chapter 7.103 of the Rig Veda. What the Chandogya adds is the absurdist precision: the dogs, forming their procession, become an image that stays with the reader long after the verse ends.

• 4. Ethics, Stages of Life and a Name

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  Volume 23 of the second chapter offers what the source describes as one of the earliest expositions of the Vedic concept of dharma. The Chandogya lays out three branches: yajna (sacrifice), svādhyāya (self-study, education) and dāna (charity) as the first; tapas (austerity and meditation) as the second; dwelling as a brahmacharya in the house of a teacher as the third. All three, the text says, achieve blessed worlds. But the Brahmasamstha, the one firmly grounded in Brahman, alone achieves immortality.

  This passage became a major source of debate among scholars of the Vedanta sub-schools. Advaita Vedanta scholars argue that the mention of Brahmasamstha implicitly describes the fourth stage of Sannyasa, renunciation. Olivelle disagrees, stating that even the explicit use of the term asrama in this section does not necessarily indicate that the formal four-stage asrama system was yet established. Paul Deussen notes that the Chandogya presents these stages as parallel and equal, not sequential, and that only three are explicitly described: Grihastha (householder) first, Vanaprastha (the forest-dweller) second, Brahmacharya (student) third.

  The third chapter returns to ethical questions in section 3.17, which describes life as a celebration of a Soma-festival. The dakshina, the gifts or payment one brings to this festival, are moral precepts: non-violence, truthfulness, non-hypocrisy and charity. The text names ahimsa here as an ethical code of life, one of its earliest formulations in Indian literature.

  That same section contains a detail that has generated centuries of scholarly argument. Verse 3.17.6 names Krishna Devakiputra, Sanskrit for Krishna son of Devaki, as a student of the sage Ghora Angirasa. The coincidence of both names, Krishna and Devaki, in a single verse this ancient has led some scholars to propose a connection to the deity Krishna of the Mahabharata. Others argue it is an interpolation, or simply a different person. The later Sandilya Bhakti Sutras, a treatise on Krishna, cites later texts but never cites this verse of the Chandogya, which deepens the puzzle rather than resolving it.

• 5. Teaching By Story

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  The fourth chapter of the Chandogya teaches through characters, and its characters are unexpected. King Janasruti is described as pious, extremely charitable, a builder of rest houses for people throughout his kingdom, a feeder of many destitutes. And yet he lacks the knowledge of Brahman-Atman. Raikva, whom the text calls "the man with the cart," lives in miserable poverty, covered in sores. He possesses the knowledge the king lacks. The text refers to the wealthy generous king as Shudra and to the poor working man with the cart as Brahmana, the one who knows Brahman. Paul Deussen notes that this story in the Upanishad is strange and out of place with its riddles, but its moral is direct: knowledge is superior to wealth and power.

  The story of Satyakama in volumes 4.4 through 4.9 introduces a different kind of honesty. Satyakama, the son of Jabala, approaches the sage Haridrumata Gautama seeking admission to his school. The teacher asks what family the boy comes from. Satyakama replies that his mother does not know who his father is, because she went about in many places in her youth. The sage declares that this honesty is the mark of a Brahmana, a true seeker of Brahman-knowledge, and accepts him as a student.

  The sage sends Satyakama to tend four hundred cows and return only when they have multiplied to a thousand. Satyakama then receives teachings from a bull, a fire, a swan and a diver bird, creatures that represent Vayu, Agni, Aditya and Prana respectively. Through them he learns that forms of Brahman are present in all cardinal directions, all world-bodies, all sources of light and within man himself. He returns with a thousand cows.

  A third story, in volumes 4.10 through 4.15, follows a student named Upakosala who studies for twelve years under the grown Satyakama Jabala. In volume 4.15, Satyakama explains that the person one sees in the eye is the Atman: the immortal, free from fear, the Brahman. The Upanishad then asserts in verses 4.15.2 and 4.15.3 that the Atman is the stronghold of love, the leader of love, and that it assembles all that inspires love.

• 6. Tat Tvam Asi

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  The sixth chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad begins with a father sending his son away to study. Uddalaka Aruni tells Svetaketu: there is no one in our family who has not studied and is the kind of Brahmin who is so only because of birth. Svetaketu returns after twelve years of Vedic study, and his father describes him as "swell-headed and arrogant." Uddalaka asks whether Svetaketu has sought to understand that by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, we know what cannot be known. Svetaketu has not.

  What follows across sixteen volumes of the sixth chapter is one of the most discussed passages in the entire Upanishadic tradition. Uddalaka begins with clay, gold, copper and iron: the various objects formed from each material do not change the essence, only the form. To understand many things, study the essence of one. He then rejects the idea that the world arose from non-existence, asserting instead that in the beginning there was only what is existent, one only, without a second. From that existent arose heat, from heat arose water, from water arose food.

  The dictum Tat Tvam Asi is stated nine times, at the close of sections 6.8 through 6.16. Traditionally translated as "That thou art" or "That you are," it addresses Svetaketu directly, equating the finest essence, the existent, the Sat, with Svetaketu's own Self. According to Brereton, followed by Olivelle and Doniger, the correct translation is instead "That's how you are" or "In that way are you, Svetaketu." In Brereton's reading, the dictum does not establish simple identity between the individual and ultimate being but shows that Svetaketu lives in the same manner as all other creatures, by means of an invisible subtle essence that is also the cause of his existence.

  The chapter illustrates the teaching through sustained metaphor. Salt dissolves in water, is everywhere in the water, cannot be seen, yet is there and exists forever no matter what one does to the water. The Sat is forever; this Sat is the Self, the essence. A man is led blindfolded from his home in Gandharas into a dangerous forest. He lives in confusion until he removes the blindfold, finds his way to knowledgeable guides and eventually arrives home. The forest is empirical existence; the blindfold is impulsive desire; the guides are spiritual teachers; the home is Sat itself.

  The phrase Tat Tvam Asi is classed as a Mahavakya, a statement that leads directly to knowledge of Brahman. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer returned to it repeatedly, rendering it in German as "Dies bist du," which he equated in English to "This art thou." He read it as the foundation for a doctrine of compassion: the recognition that every individual is a manifestation of one underlying reality, making each living creature identical at its root to every other.

• 7. The Ladder of Meditation

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  The seventh chapter of the Chandogya opens as Narada approaches the sage Sanatkumara with an extraordinary catalog of existing knowledge. Narada lists the Rig Veda, the Sama Veda, the Yajur Veda, the Atharva Veda, the epics, the myths and ancient stories, all rituals, grammar, etymology, astronomy, timekeeping, mathematics, politics, ethics, warfare, principles of reasoning, divine lore, prayer lore, snake charming, ghosts lore and fine arts. None of these, Narada admits, have led him to Self-knowledge.

  Sanatkumara responds by constructing a hierarchy of progressive meditation spanning volumes 2 through 26 of the chapter. The hierarchy moves from outer worldly knowledge (name) to speech, from speech to mind, from mind to will (Sankalpa), from will to thought (Chitta), from thought to meditation (Dhyanam), from meditation to understanding (Vijnana). Each stage subsumes the one before it.

  The hierarchy then takes a turn that Paul Deussen describes as unusual and different from the broader teachings of the Upanishads. The text states that higher than Understanding is Bala, strength, because a strong man physically prevails over the man of understanding. "By strength does the world stand," states verse 7.8.1. From strength the hierarchy descends into the material: food (Anna), water (Apah), heat (Tejas) and space (Akasa), because without water there is no food, without heat and wind there is no rain, and in space reside the Sun, Moon, stars and all heat.

  Then the Upanishad pivots back to the inner world. Deeper than Space is Memory (Smara), because without Memory the Universe would be as if it did not exist for man. Deeper than Memory is Hope (Asha), because kindled by Hope, Memory learns and man acts. Deeper still is Prana, vital breath, the life-principle that is the hub of all that defines a man, not his body. The person who knows life-principle becomes Ativadin, speaker with inner confidence.

  The section concludes, in 7.26, with Sanatkumara telling Narada that to one who sees and understands the Self as Truth, the life-principle springs from the Self, hope springs from the Self, memory springs from the Self, as does mind, thought, understanding, conviction, speech and all outer worldly knowledges. John Arapura has described this as the Chandogya setting forth a profound philosophy of language as chant, in a way that expresses the centrality of the Self and its non-duality.

• 8. Influence and Afterlife

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  The Chandogya Upanishad has generated more commentary from medieval Sanskrit scholars than almost any other ancient Indian text. Bhasyas, the Sanskrit term for reviews and commentaries, were composed by Adi Shankaracharya, Madhvacharya, Dramidacharya, Brahmanandi Tankacharya and Ramanujacharya. Adi Shankaracharya cited the Chandogya 810 times in his Vedanta Sutra Bhasya, more than any other ancient text he consulted.

  Max Muller, who translated and compared the text with traditions outside India, noted that its early chapters contain etymological fancy similar in character to literary stages found in scriptures associated with Moses and the Exodus, as well as in Christian literature related to Saint Augustine of the 5th century CE. Muller also observed that the Chandogya's reasoning in volume 3.13, which proves the highest reality is inside man by pointing to the warmth of the body as evidence of a hidden underlying principle, may appear weak by later philosophical standards. Yet he argues it shows that the Vedic-era mind had transitioned from relying on revealed testimony to constructing evidence-driven and reasoned knowledge.

  The Sandilya doctrine of volume 3.14, which Paul Deussen notes is perhaps the oldest passage in which the basic premises of Vedanta philosophy are fully expressed, found a parallel many centuries later. The teachings in that section re-appear in the 3rd century CE in the words of the Neoplatonic Roman philosopher Plotinus in Enneads 5.1.2.

  Klaus Witz has written that the opulence of the Chandogya's chapters is difficult to communicate, and that chapters six and seven consist of Vidyas of great depth and profundity. What keeps the text alive is not only its metaphysics but its range: a riddle-telling king and a cart-driving pauper, a boy of unknown parentage learning truth from a swan, a blindfolded traveler finding his way home through a dangerous forest. The Chandogya's closing instruction is plain: the one who knows his Self, who is harmless towards all living beings, who lives all his life by this knowledge, reaches the Brahma-world and does not return.