The Upaniṣads / The Īśāvāsya

The Īśāvāsya (ईशावास्य)

Eighteen mantras. They are chapter 40 of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā (वाजसनेयि संहिता) in the Kāṇva (काण्व) recension. The book is short enough to sit whole. The Mādhyandina (माध्यन्दिन) recension has seventeen mantras. It places Kāṇva 12–14 before 9–11, and it ends differently, folding the golden-dish and Pūṣan verses into one closing verse. These pages follow the Kāṇva (काण्व) order.

Mantras 1 and 2 are the pair people bring when they ask how renunciation and action can sit in one book. Mantra 1 says enjoy by what has been renounced, and do not covet. Mantra 2 says, doing the rites here, wish to live a hundred years. Mīmāṃsā (मीमांसा) 1.1.1 is the inquiry into what is to be done. Brahma Sūtra (सूत्र) 1.1.1 is the inquiry into Brahman (ब्रह्मन्). This upaniṣad (उपनिषद्) does not award the quarrel to either sūtra (सूत्र). It sets the two mantras next to each other.

The eighteen

• 1. All this is to be covered by the lord. Enjoy by what has been renounced.
• 2. Doing the rites here, wish to live a hundred years.
• 3. Sunless worlds, for those who kill the self.
• 4. The one unmoving, swifter than mind.
• 5. It moves and it does not move. Far, and near.
• 6. Who sees all beings in the self, and the self in all beings.
• 7. When all beings have become the self, what delusion, what grief.
• 8. He has gone over: bright, bodiless, without wound.
• 9 through 11. Avidyā (अविद्या) and vidyā (विद्या), darkness and the crossing.
• 12 through 14. Becoming and destruction. The Mādhyandina (माध्यन्दिन) order puts these three first.
• 15 through 18. The face of truth covered by a golden dish. The prayer to Pūṣan (पूषन्), to wind, to Agni (अग्नि).