Śruti / The twelve Upaniṣads / Śvetāśvatara · 11 of 12

11. The one god

Śvetāśvatara (श्वेताश्वतर)

The Śvetāśvatara (श्वेताश्वतर) belongs to the black Yajurveda, to a śākhā named for Śvetāśvatara. Six adhyāyas. The voice is later than the old prose upaniṣads. It is willing to say god, to say Rudra and Śiva, to speak of a lord who is the womb and the witness, and to speak of meditation in a way the earlier dialogues only approach. It is not one of the ten. A commentary under Śaṅkara's name is sometimes printed with it. The attribution is left as sometimes printed.

The book opens on the questions a theistic philosophy has to face: what is the cause, Brahman, or time, or necessity, or chance, or the person, or a combination? The answer it grows is a lord in whom the kinds of being rest, as a wheel's parts rest in the nave, or as rivers rest in the ocean. The person is bound by what he does, and he is freed when he knows the one who is other than the three strands and other than the limited self. The imagery of a wheel, a river, and a fire is the book's own pedagogy.

Meditation is taught as holding the mind like a driver reining in unruly horses (2.9); the self, like a lamp, then shows Brahman (2.15). That gathering is what this book means by yoga. Patañjali's 195 sūtras are a different book. The non-duality here is theistic: the one who is without qualities is also the god a meditator attends to. The places of the body are named as places a meditator may attend. This page does not turn those hints into a practice manual, and it does not give a count of breaths. The schools that later decide the lord's qualities, and the school that keeps the difference real, are the theistic primer. The theological sentence sat below is the book's summit in one verse. One god, hidden in every being, pervading, the inner self, the overseer of what is done, the witness, conscious, alone, and without qualities. Devotion and the via negativa are in the same verse. The god has a name in this book, and the verse also says nirguṇa.

The breakthrough is the synthesis. A reader who has come from Yājñavalkya's neti neti, and a reader who has come from Śrī Rudram's homage, meet here. The hidden god is the self of beings, and the self of beings is the god one may know. The book is content to hold both sentences.

एको देवः सर्वभूतेषु गूढः सर्वव्यापी सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा ।
कर्माध्यक्षः सर्वभूताधिवासः साक्षी चेता केवलो निर्गुणश्च ॥ eko devaḥ sarvabhūteṣu gūḍhaḥ sarvavyāpī sarvabhūtāntarātmā |
karmādhyakṣaḥ sarvabhūtādhivāsaḥ sākṣī cetā kevalo nirguṇaś ca ||

One god, hidden in all beings, pervading all, the inner self of all beings, the overseer of action, the dwelling of all beings, the witness, the conscious one, alone, and without qualities. Śvetāśvatara (श्वेताश्वतर) 6.11.

नेपालीमा

श्वेताश्वतर कृष्ण यजुर्वेदको हो, शाखाको नाम नै श्वेताश्वतर हो। छ अध्याय। स्वर पछिल्लो हो। रुद्र र शिव भनिन्छ। दश प्रमुखको भाष्य-समूह यो होइन। शङ्करको नामको टीका कहिलेकाहीँ छापिन्छ। श्रेय यहाँ टुङ्ग्याइँदैन।

कारण को हो भन्ने प्रश्नबाट सुरु हुन्छ। उत्तर एक देवता हो, सब भूतमा लुकेको, साक्षी, निर्गुण। ध्यानमा मनलाई सारथिले उद्दण्ड घोडा थामेझैँ थामिन्छ (२.९)। अनि आत्मा दियोझैँ ब्रह्म देखाउँछ (२.१५)। विधि र गिन्ती दिइँदैन। नेति नेति र श्रीरुद्रम् यहाँ एउटै वाक्यमा भेटिन्छन्।

Where it sits

Śrī Rudram is the homage this book's god already had. The last sitting holds two further books.