Customer Reviews

The Upanishads (Classic of Indian Spirituality)

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is amazing that with all the technology modern man has invented, he is unable to answer some deep questions every human being comes across - what is life, why should there be death, etc. He has to go back about four-five thousand years to find out the answers. The answers are in the Upanishads - ancient religion-independent literature, that are recordings of experiential knowledge those wise sages knew. Unlike the Vedas, which are about religious rites and practices, the Upanishads discuss only fundamental questions. Questions such as - 'What is that if one knows, that he/she knows everything'. Amazingly, man found out the answer and had the vision and genorosity to share such findings in the Upanishads. Upanishads are such a fundamental required reading that in ancient India, children would dedicate a significant amount of their early life - 10-12 years - before they set up to establish themselves in the world. In essence, without knowing one's Self, you would be wading dark waters all the time as the Upanishads themselves say.

Eknath Eswaran's transalation makes the Upanishads simple to read. That alone is a great achievement given the voluminous nature of the texts and the language of expression - Sanskrit. We should remember that the text is thousands of years old and has a strong inclination towards flowery, verbose and at times redundant expresssions. But if repetition gets the message across, so does reading such texts! Throughout the translation, Eknath Eswaran's experience with spiritualism, his dedication to such a life, his knowledge and wisdom about English literature and world religions come across making the reading valuable.

As he states of professor William James, the great American psychologist, 'The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of judgement, character and will. An education which should include this faculty would be education par excellence'. I wouldn't agree more with the author - reading the Upanishads is such education, essential for every one.

Simply the best read of the Upanishads in bookstores today. Easwaran uses his background as teacher/communicator to build a highly accessible bridge from our Western way of thinking to some of the deepest insights from the East. I highly recommend this book - and its companions (The Bhagavad Gita and The Dhammapada) to any serious seeker of life's deeper meaning.

I discovered this book quite by accident and it has changed my life. I have it by my bedside and read it every night, and hope to someday read every book by Easwaran and incorporate the teachings from this one into my life. I no longer jump off the wall every time things go wrong and can smile at things that made me NUTS before this! Now, I know better. I recommend this to anybody who has made it this far in their search. If there is one book on Hinduism you read, make this the one. I have grown up reading the Bhagwad Gita and I think this by far supercedes that in giving direction and answers in a way that we can still manage in year 2000.

After reading the Dhammapada translation from the same author, it was not a surprise to find a similar high-quality translation of the Upanishads - the philosophical part in the Vedas of Hinduist religion. Some points to highlight in Easwaran's work: Poetic but precise wording, great introduction and commentaries, easy-to-read without creating a scholar-only work, impeccable introduction to the Historical context of the work and it's importance in Hinduism.

Mr Easwaran's work convinced me to buy all Three books that form a Trilogy: The Dhammapada, The Upanishads and The Bhagavad Gita. Without a doubt, especially considering the price, this Trilogy is a steal.

Words fail me in my attempt to describe the book, perhaps it is best I describe the emotions I experienced, as I read this book.

The book captured my breath and concentration and I was unable to think of anything else till I finished the book. I took quite some time over a few days to finish it, simply because each page makes you think. There are books that hit you hard with the force of their ideas, and then there is this book... which gently caresses your mind as a wave would caress the shore, as our eyelashes caress our cheek when we blink. The book and its delivery is so gentle and calm, that my mind was immediately transported into the vivid imagery that EE creates, of a guru in a remote hut and his simple lifestyle and his disciples. EE strikes a chord when he points out the massive gamble that these disciples take, in deciding to pursue nothing but the Truth and sacrifice all else in its path. His writing gentle and kind, and one feels like a young boy in front of an affectionate father, the father doesnt seem to teach, but just seems to speak calmly, and one feels like listening.
EE brings out the Upanishads for what they really are, an incredible advancement into the inquiry of Truth, using the principles of concentration and meditation, and the medium of story telling to pass down the wisdom of the ancients. I could not resist my tears as I read with joy of the tales of Yajnavalka, nor could I feel but astonished at the clarity of thought and the level of the discussion between Yama and Nachiketa.

I could go on, but there is little to say except that one should read this book. For those in search of additional readings, there is a book called "The Vedas", which is an english collection of the discourses of the Head of the Kancheepuram Shankaracharya school. It's a tough read, to be read with pencil and paper, and perhaps committing to memory some of the terms... but it is the Definitive primer into the Vedas and India's true heritage.

(Note: My book, "Yoga: Sacred and Profane (Beyond Hatha Yoga)" is now available at Amazon.)

In the Upanishads there are two selves. They are symbolized by two birds sitting on a tree branch. The one bird, the self with a small "s" eats. The other bird, the Self with a capital "S" observes. The first self is the self that is part of this world. The second Self is merely an observer that doesn't take part and is in fact beyond the pairs of opposites such as pleasure and pain that dominate our existence. This Self is formally called the Atman. In an important analogy, it is said that the Atman is the drop of water that glides off of the lotus leaf into the ocean of Brahman, with Brahman being the entirety of all that there is, in other words, God, the God beyond all attribution.

This presentation of the Upanishads--necessarily a selection, of course--by Eknath Easwaran is the best single volume that I have come across for the following reasons:

First, the translation by Easwaran is readable, edifying and congenial to the Sanskrit in so far as that is possible. The poetry in the original language and the word play are lost in translation as is always the case with poetry and highly symbolic language, and especially language that is meant to be taken on more than one level. However Easwaran's notes after each Upanishad help to give us an idea what the original is like and give the reader a feel for the some of the nuances.
Second, the chapter introductions and the concluding essay by Michael N. Nagler lend insight and clarity to the reader's understanding.
Third, the selections themselves and what is included in the selections are efficacious. By that I mean the ideas and the "feel" of the expression, the psychology, and the philosophy of the Upanishads and the larger Vedic tradition are made manifest. Some voluminous translations give us much more of the repetition and ritual than we need, while some volumes give us perhaps not enough.

In this regard I want to call the reader's attention to the slim volume The Ten Principal Upanishads (1937) by the poet W.B. Yeats, and Shree Purohit Swami. Easwaran's book contains more of the Upanishads and offers a more extensive commentary, but Yeats and Purohit are more poetic. I recommend that the reader read both books. Alas Yeats's book is out of print and so you'll have to find it at, probably, a college library.

Here is how Easwaran translates the invocation to the famous Isha Upanishad:

All this is full. All that is full.
From fullness, fullness comes.
When fullness is taken from fullness,
Fullness still remains.
Om shanti shanti, shanti

Now here is how Yeats and Purohit have it:

This is perfect. That is perfect.
Perfect comes from perfect.
Take perfect from perfect; the remainder is perfect.
May peace and peace and peace be everywhere.

I think the former is perhaps truer to the spirit of the philosophy of the Upanishad, but I think the latter is more poetic.

The Upanishads, usually acknowledged to be the culmination of the wisdom of the Vedas, form the basis for Hinduism as well as serving as a wellspring for Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, and yoga. Many ideas central to these ways of life are found in the Upanishads. In particular the Bhagavad Gita finds its inspiration and even some of its expression and even a bit of its form in the most famous and most often read Upanishad, the Katha. Nachiketas of the Katha becomes Arjuna of the Gita, while Death becomes Krishna of the Gita.

In his essay, Nagler writes, "Taken as a whole, the Upanishads contain the raw material of a profound philosophy."

In the tradition of India, philosophy and religion are not separate as they usually are in the West. In truth all religions contain not only religious ideas, but philosophical ones as well; but more than anything, religions are psychologies--guides on how to live life, and how to die. In the Upanishads we do not die. Death happens only to the bird that eats. Our real essence, the Atman is eternal, and therefore death is an illusion, a compelling illusion to be sure, but one that can be tossed off through an understanding that "thou art that" ("tat tvam asi") meaning that you and the universe (or Brahman) are one. Nagler writes, "Indian religious systems hold as a core belief that the individual is not that which dies but is instead the forces which brought the body and personality into existence and will continue shaping its destiny after what we call death..." (p. 287).

Easwaran is the author of many books on religion. I was particularly impressed with his book on The Bhagavad Gita (1985; 2000). See my review at Amazon.

When it comes to translation, there are two kinds of accurate - one is to focus on the ideas, the other on the feeling of the text. This text - as all fo Easwaran's - focuses on the feeling side, and thus opens the beauty of the Upanishads to new readers, while re-inspiring those who have encountered the more intellectual translations. It is the best place to begin a study of the Upanishads, and no good library of Hinduism should be without it.

I took off one star because some of the subtler meanings are not presented nor even suggested - though the language is so good, really only a half-star deduction is merited

On Upanishads:
Excellent read, puts you new lines, way beyond your day to day thoughts. Katha upanishad was the most interesting and captivating as I found the narration very good.

On the translation:
Translating a centuries old document into English is a challenging task. A word by word translation would be disastarous. Search in the web for Upanishads and compare it with the translation by the author - Eknath. Eknath Eswaran has done a wonderful job

On the commentary:
Some of upanishads do not need any comments are they are very self-explanatory (thx to the excellent translation).

But some of the upanishads are very difficult to relate to, and probably needed more commentary.

This book, along with its companion translations of the Dhammapada and Bhagavad Gita, also by Eknath Easwaran, should be required for any serious student of Eastern Wisdom. If you can't afford Swami Nikhilanandas multi-volume set of complete translations of every Upanishad, and even if you can, you should also have this volume on your shelf.

If you have stumbled into knowing what Upanishads - also sometimes known as Vedanta - are, you don't want to miss reading this lucid presentation in English. What is more, the author skillfully observes, by quoting the American psychologist William James, how the essence of the Upanishads can form a basis for fundamental education of the human mind