| |
Maitri Upanisad
Chapter Six
27. Elsewhere it has been said: This is the brightness of Brahman, the supreme immortal, the bodiless. The warmth of the body is its ghee. It is set, visible, in space: they dispel the space within the heart with one-pointed mind so that its light strikes them, as it were. Then one quickly attains the state of that, just as a lump of iron placed in the earth quickly attains the condition of earth. Just as fire, blacksmiths and so on have no power over a lump of iron that is in the clay-like state, thought perishes along with its support.
Someone has said:
The treasury formed of the space in the heart,
Joy, the supreme abode.
It is itself, and out yoga
And the splendour of fire and the sun.
28. Elsewhere it has been said: When one has gone beyond the element, senses and objects, then one seized the bow whose string is the renouncer’s life and whose stave is steadfastness, and with an arrow made of freedom from conceit one strikes down the primal door-keeper of Brahman. (That overseer of conceit, who has confusion as his crown, craving and envy as his earrings, and sloth, drunkenness and impurity as his staff of office, seized the bow whose string is anger and whose stave is greed, and kills beings with an arrow made of wanting.) After killing him, one crosses to the farther shore of the space within the heart on the boat of the OM>
Then, as the space within becomes visible, slowly, as a miner in search of minerals enters a mine, one should enter the hall of brahman. Then by the guru’s instruction one should throw off the sheath of Brahman with its four laryers of net. Then pure, cleansed, void, at peace, without breath, selfless, without end, indestructible, steadfast, eternal, unborn, independent, one rests in one’s own greatness. Then, seeing the one who rests in his own greatness, one looks upon the wheel of samsara as a wheel that rolls on.
Someone has said:
For the embodied one who has practiced for six months,
Eternally freed,
The endless supreme secret,
The right yoga, moves on:
But never for the embodied one
Who is all ablaze,
Pierced by passion and darkness,
Attached to children, wife and family.
29. After he had said this, Sakayana went within his heart. He paid homage to him. Then he said: ‘O king, by this knowledge of Brahman the sons of Prajapati mounted the path of Brahman.
‘By the practice of yoga one achieves contentment, endurance of the pairs, and peacefulness. One should not make known this supreme secret to one who is not a son, not a student, or not at peace: so one should give it to one who is devoted to nothing else, who is endowed with all virtues.
30. OM. One should be in a clean place, clean, resting in purity (sattva), studying truth, speaking truth, meditating on truth, sacrificing to truth. Then one finds fulfillment in the true Brahman, that delight in truth. Having become other, and cut what binds one to the fruits of that, one lives free from expectation towards others as to oneself, freed from fear, without desire, having attained indestructible, measureless joy. This is the ultimate digging up of the supreme treasure freedom from desire.
‘The person made of all desires, whose distinguishing mark is determination, will and conceit, is bound: the one opposite to this is freed.
‘On this, some say: Under the influence of the differentiation of nature, the strand has taken on the bondage of the self to determination. When the fault of determination perishes, there is liberation. by mind one sees; by mind one hears. Desire, imagination, doubt, trust, lack of trust, constancy, inconstancy, shame, meditation, fear-all this is mind. Carried along by the floods of the strands, soiled, unsteady, fickly, greedy, yearning, unconcentrated, one goes on to conceit. Thinking, This am I, this is mine one binds oneself by oneself like a bird in a net.
‘So the person whose distinguishing mark is determination, will and conceit, is bound: the one opposite to this is freed. Therefore one should stay without determination, without will, without conceit. This is the sign of liberation; this is the path to Brahman here; this is the opening of the door here: by it one will go to the far shore of the darkness. Here all desires are brought together. On this folk say:
When the five knowing cease,
Together with the mind,
And the intelligence does not stir,
They call that the highest bourne.
After Sakayanya had said this, he went within his heart. He paid homage to him, revering him in the proper way: and having done what was to be done, as Marut he went by the northern path. One cannot get there by a lesser road.
This is the road to Brahman here. Breaking through the door of the sun one goes up outward. On this folk say:
‘The one who, lamp-like, rests in the heart
Has endless rays,
White and black, brown and blue,
Tawny and faintly red.
‘A single one of these, set above,
Breaks through the circle of the sun,
And gains the world of Brahman.
By it folk go to the highest bourne.
‘It has another, it has rays
Arrayed above
By which one wins the very own homes
Of the troops of gods.
‘Below them, it has rays of many forms,
Faintly glowing.
By them here the powerless one
Wanders round to experience his actions.’
So the blessed sun is the cause of creation, heaven, and release.
<< Back
Next
>>
|
|
|
