Upanishads Quotes. Brahman is Reality, Knowledge, and Infinity. (Taittiriya Upanishad 2.1.3) Brahman is Consciousness. (Aitareya Upanishad 3.1.13) All this that we see in the world is Brahman. (Chhandogya Upanishad 3.14.1) Brahman is bliss (Ananda) (Taittiriya Upanishad 3.6.1) Aum. Asato ma sad-Gamaya; tamaso ma Jyotirgamaya; Mrityor-ma amrutam.
- The Upanishads Quotes #1 'What man dwelling on the decaying mortal plane, having approached the undecaying immortal one, and having reflected upon the nature of enjoyment through beauty and sense pleasure, would delight in long life?'.
- Explore some of Maitri Upanishads best quotations and sayings on Quotes.net - such as '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.'
- Vedanta especially is based on the Upanishads. On this blogpost I illustrate the basic thought in the Upanishads with quotes from the principle Upanishads. Tradition about the Upanishads Also spelled: upanisad, upanisads. The Upanishads were said to be the reflection of teachings given by the teacher (or guru) to the student.
- Quotes on Upanishads. Quotes from Sri Aurobindo Quotes from other personages keyboardarrowup. Connect on Whatsapp. An Initiative by Vande Mataram Library Trust (VMLT), Gurugram & Sri Aurobindo Foundation for Indian Culture (SAFIC), Sri Aurobindo Society, Puducherry.
In this page we'll collect Swami Vivekananda‘s quotes and comments on the Upanishads. Related articles and sub-articles are listed at the bottom of the page
- Any attempt to torture the texts of the Upanishads appears to me very ridiculous.[Source]
- Fathers of Calcutta, do you not feel ashamed that such horrible stuff as these Vamachara Tantras, with translations too, should be put into the hands of your boys and girls, and their minds poisoned, and that they should be brought up with the idea that these are the Shastras of the Hindus? If you are ashamed, take them away from your children, and let them read the true Shastras, the Vedas, the Gita, the Upanishads.[Source]
- Go back to your Upanishads — the shining, the strengthening, the bright philosophy — and part from all these mysterious things, all these weakening things.[Source]
- In modern language, the theme of the Upanishads is to find an ultimate unity of things. Knowledge is nothing but finding unity in the midst of diversity. Every science is based upon this; all human knowledge is based upon the finding of unity in the midst of diversity; and if it is the task of small fragments of human knowledge, which we call our sciences, to find unity in the midst of a few different phenomena, the task becomes stupendous when the theme before us is to find unity in the midst of this marvellously diversified universe, where prevail unnumbered differences in name and form, in matter and spirit — each thought differing from every other thought, each form differing from every other form. Yet, to harmonise these many planes and unending Lokas, in the midst of this infinite variety to find unity, is the theme of the Upanishads.[Source]
- In the Upanishads, we see a tremendous departure made. It is declared that these heavens in which men live with the ancestors after death cannot be permanent. Seeing that everything which has name and form must die. If there are heavens with forms, these heavens must vanish in course of time; they may last millions of years, but there must come a time when they will have to go. With this idea came another that these souls must come back to earth, and that heavens are places where they enjoy the results of their good works, and after these effects are finished they come back into this earth life again.[Source]
- Just as the Greek mind or the modern European mind wants to find the solution of life and of all the sacred problems of Being by searching into the external world. So also did our forefathers, and just as the Europeans failed, they failed also. But the Western people never made a move more, they remained there, they failed in the search for the solution of the great problems of life and death in the external world, and there they remained, stranded; our forefathers also found it impossible, but were bolder in declaring the utter helplessness of the senses to find the solution. Nowhere else was the answer better put than in the Upanishad: यतो वाचो निवर्तन्ते अप्राप्य मनसा सह। — 'From whence words come back reflected, together with the mind'; न तत्रचक्षुर्गच्छति न वाग्गच्छति। — 'There the eye cannot go, nor can speech reach'. There are various sentences which declare the utter helplessness of the senses, but they did not stop there; they fell back upon the internal nature of man, they went to get the answer from their own soul, they became introspective; they gave up external nature as a failure, as nothing could be done there, as no hope, no answer could be found; they discovered that dull, dead matter would not give them truth, and they fell back upon the shining soul of man, and there the answer was found.[Source]
- तमेवैकं जानथ आत्मानम् अन्या वाचो विमुञ्चथ। — 'Know this Atman alone,' they declared, 'give up all other vain words, and hear no other.' In the Atman they found the solution — the greatest of all Atmans, the God, the Lord of this universe, His relation to the Atman of man, our duty to Him, and through that our relation to each other. And herein you find the most sublime poetry in the world. No more is the attempt made to paint this Atman in the language of matter. Nay, for it they have given up even all positive language. No more is there any attempt to come to the senses to give them the idea of the infinite, no more is there an external, dull, dead, material, spacious, sensuous infinite, but instead of that comes something which is as fine as even that mentioned in the saying —
न तत्र सूर्यो भाति न चन्द्रतारकं नेमा वेद्युतो भान्ति कुतोऽयमग्निः।
तमेव भान्तमनुभाति सर्वं तस्य भासा सर्वमिदं विभाति॥
What poetry in the world can be more sublime than this! 'There the sun cannot illumine, nor the moon, nor the stars, there this flash of lightning cannot illumine; what to speak of this mortal fire!' Such poetry you find nowhere else. Take that most marvellous Upanishad, the Katha. What a wonderful finish, what a most marvellous art displayed in that poem! How wonderfully it opens with that little boy to whom Shraddhâ came, who wanted to see Yama, and how that most marvellous of all teachers, Death himself, teaches him the great lessons of life and death! And what was his quest? To know the secret of death.[Source] - The Jnana Kanda of the Vedas comprises the Upanishads and is known by the name of Vedanta, the pinnacle of the Shrutis, as it is called. Wherever you find the Âchâryas quoting a passage from the Shrutis, it is invariably from the Upanishads. The Vedanta is now the religion of the Hindus. If any sect in India wants to have its ideas established with a firm hold on the people it must base them on the authority of the Vedanta. They all have to do it, whether they are Dvaitists or Advaitists. Even the Vaishnavas have to go to Gopâlatâpini Upanishad to prove the truth of their own theories. If a new sect does not find anything in the Shrutis in confirmation of its ideas, it will go even to the length of manufacturing a new Upanishad, and making it pass current as one of the old original productions. There have been many such in the past.[Source]
- The one fact I found is that in all the Upanishads, they begin with dualistic ideas, with worship and all that, and end with a grand flourish of Advaitic ideas.[Source]
- The Upanishads are the Bible of India. They occupy the same place as the New Testament does. There are [more than] a hundred books comprising the Upanishads, some very small and some big, each a separate treatise. The Upanishads do not reveal the life of any teacher, but simply teach principles. They are [as it were] shorthand notes taken down of discussion in [learned assemblies], generally in the courts of kings. The word Upanishad may mean 'sittings' [or 'sitting near a teacher']. Those of you who may have studied some of the Upanishads can understand how they are condensed shorthand sketches. After long discussions had been held, they were taken down, possibly from memory. The difficulty is that you get very little of the background. Only the luminous points are mentioned there. The origin of ancient Sanskrit is 5000 B.C.; the Upanishads [are at least] two thousand years before that. Nobody knows [exactly] how old they are. The Gita takes the ideas of the Upanishads and in [some] cases the very words. They are strung together with the idea of bringing out, in a compact, condensed, and systematic form, the whole subject the Upanishads deal with.[Source]
- The Upanishads are the great mine of strength. Therein lies strength enough to invigorate the whole world; the whole world can be vivified, made strong, energised through them. They will call with trumpet voice upon the weak, the miserable, and the downtrodden of all races, all creeds, and all sects to stand on their feet and be free. Freedom, physical freedom, mental freedom, and spiritual freedom are the watchwords of the Upanishads.[Source]
- The Upanishads teach us all there is of religion.[Source]
- There are one or two more ideas with regard to the Upanishads which I want to bring to your notice, for these are an ocean of knowledge, and to talk about the Upanishads, even for an incompetent person like myself, takes years and not one lecture only. I want, therefore, to bring to your notice one or two points in the study of the Upanishads. In the first place, they are the most wonderful poems in the world. If you read the Samhita portion of the Vedas, you now and then find passages of most marvellous beauty. For instance, the famous Shloka which describes Chaos — तम आसीत्तमसा गूढमगे etc. — 'When darkness was hidden in darkness', so on it goes. One reads and feels the wonderful sublimity of the poetry. Do you mark this that outside of India, and inside also, there have been attempts at painting the sublime. But outside, it has always been the infinite in the muscles the external world, the infinite of matter, or of space. When Milton or Dante, or any other great European poet, either ancient or modern, wants to paint a picture of the infinite, he tries to soar outside, to make you feel the infinite through the muscles. That attempt has been made here also. You find it in the Samhitas, the infinite of extension most marvellously painted and placed before the readers, such as has been done nowhere else.[Source]
- Upanishads have one subject, one task before them — to prove the following theme: 'Just as by the knowledge of one lump of clay we have the knowledge of all the clay in the universe, so what is that, knowing which we know everything in the universe?'[Source]
- We now come to the teachings of the Upanishads. Various texts are there. Some are perfectly dualistic, while others are monistic. But there are certain doctrines which are agreed to by all the different sects of India. First, there is the doctrine of Samsâra or reincarnation of the soul. Secondly, they all agree in their psychology; first there is the body, behind that, what they call the Sukshma Sharira, the mind, and behind that even, is the Jiva. That is the great difference between Western and Indian psychology; in the Western psychology the mind is the soul, here it is not. The Antahkarana, the internal instrument, as the mind is called, is only an instrument in the hands of that Jiva, through which the Jiva works on the body or on the external world. Here they all agree, and they all also agree that this Jiva or Atman, Jivatman as it is called by various sects, is eternal, without beginning; and that it is going from birth to birth, until it gets a final release. They all agree in this, and they also all agree in one other most vital point, which alone marks characteristically, most prominently, most vitally, the difference between the Indian and the Western mind, and it is this, that everything is in the soul. There is no inspiration, but properly speaking, expiration. All powers and all purity and all greatness — everything is in the soul. The Yogi would tell you that the Siddhis – Animâ, Laghimâ, and so on — that he wants to attain to are not to be attained, in the proper sense of the word, but are already there in the soul; the work is to make them manifest. Patanjali, for instance, would tell you that even in the lowest worm that crawls under your feet, all the eightfold Yogi's powers are already existing. The difference has been made by the body. As soon as it gets a better body, the powers will become manifest, but they are there.[Source]
Katha Upanishad Quotes
Katha Upanishad
Quotes From The Upanishads
Main article: Swami Vivekananda's quotes and comments on Katha Upanishad and Nachiketa
- If I get ten or twelve boys with the faith of Nachiketa, I can turn the thoughts and pursuits of this country in a new channel.[Source]
- Om stands for the name of the whole universe, or God. Standing midway between the external world and God, it represents both. But then we can take the universe piecemeal, according to the different senses, as touch, as colour, as taste, and in various other ways. In each case we can make of this universe millions of universes from different standpoints, each of which will be a complete universe by itself, and each one will have a name, and a form, and a thought behind. These thoughts behind are Pratikas. Each of them has a name. These names of sacred symbols are used in Bhakti-Yoga. They have almost infinite power. Simply by repetition of these words we can get anything we desire, we can come to perfection. But two things are necessary. 'The teacher must be wonderful, so also must be the taught', says the Katha Upanishad.[Source]
- The Katha Upanishad says, 'That, seeking which a man practices Brahmacharya, I will tell you in short what that is, that is Om. … This is Brahman, the Immutable One, and is the highest; knowing this Immutable One, whatever one desires one gets.'[Source]
Upanishads Quotes About Love
See also
upanishads Slot era murka. contains some of the most profound wisdom of hindus. they carry the mystical teachings of knowing your true nature. if you are on the path of self-realization then you must go through these scriptures.
in old times disciples used to sit near the enlightened master and imbibe the spirit and wisdom of the guru. the master was only interested in the inner growth of the disciples and the disciples were only interested in knowing the supreme truth. there was total trust and openness between the master-disciple. in that loving atmosphere, the upanishads were born and passed from generation to generation as an oral teachings.
no one knows who has written them. as in old times, many authors didn't choose to write their name on books. as truth is nobody monopoly and everyone will attain to it one day. Casino mansion.
31 wisdom quotes from upanishads:
- that immortal brahman alone is before, that brahman is behind, that brahman is to the right and left. brahman alone pervades everything above and below; this universe is that supreme brahman alone. – mundaka upanishad
- this syllable Om is indeed brahman. this syllable is the highest. whosoever knows this syllable obtains all that he desires. – katha upanishad
- Om is the bow; the atman is the arrow; brahman is said to be the mark. it is to be struck by an undistracted mind. then the atman becomes one with brahman, as the arrow with the target. – mundaka upanishad
- the knowing self is not born; it does not die. it has not sprung from anything; nothing has sprung from it. birthless, eternal, everlasting and ancient, it is not killed when the body is killed. – katha upanishad
- the wise man beholds all beings in the self and the self in all
beings; for that reason he does not hate anyone. – isa upanishad - it is indeed the mind that is the cause of men's bondage and liberation. the mind that is attached to sense-objects leads to bondage, while dissociated from sense-objects it tends to lead to liberation. – amrita-bindu upanishad
- the self that is subtler than the subtle and greater than the great is seated in the heart of every creature. one who is free from desire sees the glory of the self through the tranquillity of the mind and senses and becomes absolved from grief. – katha upanishad
- this atman, resplendent and pure, whom the sinless sannyasins behold residing within the body, is attained by unceasing practice of truthfulness, austerity, right knowledge and continence. – mundaka upanishad
- to the seer, all things have verily become the self: what delusion, what sorrow, can there be for him who beholds that oneness? – isa upanishad
- dissolve the self in the supreme self as the pot-space is dissolved in infinite space; then, as the infinite be silent for ever, o sage! – adhyatma upanishad
- knowing that great and all-pervading self by which one sees (the objects) both in the sleep and the waking states, the intelligent man grieves no more. – katha upanishad
- fools, dwelling in darkness, but wise in their own conceit and puffed up with vain scholarship, wander about, being afflicted by many ills, like blind men led by the blind. – mundaka upanishad
- liberated from the grip of egoism, like the moon (after the eclipse), full, ever blissful, self-luminous, one attains one's essence. – adhyatma upanishad
- he who perceives all beings in the self alone, and the self in all beings, does not entertain any hatred on account of that perception. – isavasya upanishad
- that which is consciousness alone which is all-pervading, which is eternal, which is all-full, which is of the form of bliss and which is indestructible, is the only true brahman (infinite consciousness). – varaha upanishad
- whether the body perishes now or lasts the age of moon and stars, what matters it to me having consciousness alone as my body ? what matters it to the sky in the pot, whether it (the pot) is destroyed now or exists for a long time. – varaha upanishad
- bondage is the imagination prompted by the desire for the eight powers. – niralamba upanishad
- man is bound by ‘mine', but he is released by ‘not mine'. he should abandon all the thoughts relating to externals and so also with references to internals. o ribhu, having given up all thoughts, you should rest content (in your soul) ever.' – varaha upanishad
- like the butter hidden in milk, the pure consciousness resides in every being. that ought to be constantly churned out by the churning rod of the mind. – amrita-bindu upanishad
- being first in a state of changelessness and then thoroughly forgetting (even) that state owing to the cognition of the (true) nature of brahman (infinite consciousness) – this is called samadhi. – tejo-bindu upanishad
- in order to realize the self, renounce everything. having cast off all (objects), assimilate yourself to that which remains. – annapurna upanishad
- when all longings that are in the heart vanish, then a mortal becomes immortal and attains brahman (infinite consciousness) here. – katha upanishad
- those who are clever in arguments about brahman, but are without the action pertaining to brahman (infinite consciousness) and who are greatly attached to the world – those certainly are born again and again (in this world) through their ajnana (ignorance). – tejo-bindu upanishad
- as rivers, flowing down, become indistinguishable on reaching the sea by giving up their names and forms, so also the illumined soul, having become freed from name and form, reaches the self-effulgent supreme self – mundaka upanishad.
- arise! awake! approach the great and learn. like the sharp edge of a razor is that path, so the wise say—hard to tread and difficult to cross. – katha upanishad
- that which cannot be expressed by speech, but by which speech is expressed. that alone know as brahman and not that which people here worship. – kena upanishad
- that which cannot be apprehended by the mind, but by which, they say, the mind is apprehended. that alone know as brahman and not that which people here worship – kena upanishad
- that which cannot be perceived by the eye, but by which the eye is perceived. that alone know as brahman and not that which people here worship – kena upanishad
- that which cannot he heard by the ear, but by which the hearing is perceived. that alone know as brahman and not that which people here worship. – kena upanishad
- children, immersed in ignorance in various ways, flatter themselves, saying: we have accomplished life's purpose. because these performers of karma do not know the truth owing to their attachment, they fall from heaven, misery— stricken, when the fruit of their work is exhausted. – mundaka upanishad
- as flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their names and forms, so a wise man, freed from name and form, attains the purusha, who is greater than the great. – mundaka upanishad
