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WorkĀdi Śaṅkara

Brhadaranyaka Upanishad with the Commentary of Sankaracarya

Śaṅkara on the Upanishad of the sage Yājñavalkya, argued against a rival interpreter whose own writings are known mainly from the answers to them.

by Ādi Śaṅkara1,647 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
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Original title
Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya
Original language
Sanskrit

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Overview

No work by Bhartṛprapañca, an early interpreter of the Upanishads, has survived. When the Indian scholar M. Hiriyanna reconstructed his thought in 1924, he worked mainly from two places where he is answered: this commentary by Śaṅkara on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, and the long verse commentary on it by Sureśvara, Śaṅkara's pupil. Śaṅkara never names him; he is one of the unnamed interpreters the commentary keeps returning to. As far as he can be reconstructed, Bhartṛprapañca held that Brahman, the ultimate reality, is one, but a unity that contains real variety. The Upanishad itself is among the oldest, usually dated to the seventh or sixth century BCE, and forms part of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, a ritual text of the White Yajurveda. Much of it belongs to Yājñavalkya, a teacher who out-argues the priests at the court of King Janaka. Before he leaves home, Yājñavalkya offers to divide his property between his two wives, and Maitreyī, one of them, asks whether wealth would make her immortal; his answer is that nothing is dear for its own sake, only for the sake of the self. Śaṅkara reads that departure as scripture's own warrant for renunciation. The Upanishad's description of the self by denial alone — neti neti, "not this, not this" — he takes as the plainest statement that Brahman has no qualities at all.

Key concepts

What does 'neti neti', 'not this, not this', mean?

It is the Upanishad's way of describing Brahman by denial alone. Each thing that could be said of it, a shape, a quality, an action, is set aside in turn, because Brahman has none of them. For Śaṅkara this is not a confession of ignorance but the most exact teaching there is: what cannot be denied, after everything else is, is the self doing the denying.

What does 'I am Brahman' mean in this commentary?

It is the sentence by which, the Upanishad says, Brahman knew itself and so became all. Śaṅkara insists the same holds for any person: whoever knows 'I am Brahman' becomes all, and even the gods cannot stop it, since that person is their self. Knowing here is not learning a fact about Brahman but ceasing to take oneself for anything less.

Why can the self, the 'seer of seeing', never be seen?

Because it is what does the seeing. Yājñavalkya tells his questioners that one cannot see the seer of seeing or know the knower of knowing. Śaṅkara draws the consequence: the self is never an object among objects, it is the light by which all objects show up, and it needs no other light to be known.

What are hearing, reflection and meditation?

They are the three steps Yājñavalkya names when he tells Maitreyī that the self must be heard of, reflected on and meditated on. Hearing is learning the teaching from scripture and a teacher. Reflection is testing it with reasoning until doubt goes. Meditation is dwelling on it until no contrary idea remains. Śaṅkara treats them as the way knowledge of the self becomes steady.

What are the two kinds of renunciation the commentary describes?

One is the renunciation of the seeker, who wants to know the self and leaves household life and its rites to devote himself to that. The other is the renunciation of the knower, who already knows the self and for whom acts have simply lost their point. Śaṅkara finds both in Yājñavalkya, who teaches what he knows and then leaves home.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Not This, Not This

Can anything true be said of the highest reality at all? The Upanishad answers with a double denial, and the commentary treats that denial as its most precise statement.

Every description names a form, a quality, an action or a relation, and Brahman, Śaṅkara argues, has none of these, so scripture can point to it only by negating each in turn: not this, not this. What remains is no void but the knower itself, which cannot be known as an object, since a second knower would be needed to know it. When sun, moon and fire have set, Yājñavalkya tells King Janaka, the self is its own light. The many things are grasped the way a drum's notes are, through their source.

  • nonduality
  • brahman
  • knowledge
  • consciousness
  • perception
  • epistemology
  • ignorance
  • inference
  • language
  • speech
  • metaphysics

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For the Sake of the Self

Why does anyone love anything? Yājñavalkya's answer to his wife, given as he leaves home, turns every attachment back toward the self and asks what wealth can do against death.

Offered her share of the property before he departs, Maitreyī asks whether an earth full of wealth would make her immortal, and is told it would not. Husband, wife, sons and riches are dear, Yājñavalkya replies, for the sake of the self, so it is the self that must be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated on. Śaṅkara reads the departure as scripture's own warrant for renunciation. Desire shapes will and will shapes deeds, and the chain ends only where the self is known and nothing further is desired.

  • self
  • liberation
  • self-knowledge
  • renunciation
  • desire
  • immortality
  • death
  • selfhood
  • embodiment
  • rebirth

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What Ritual Can Reach

If sacrifices and meditations lead to real worlds, why are they not enough? The commentary weighs the Upanishad's ritual chapters against the knowledge it says they cannot give.

The Upanishad belongs to a ritual text and opens with the sacrificial horse, and teaches meditations, prayers and the paths of the dead. Śaṅkara grants each its result, but every result stays inside rebirth, as a caterpillar passes from blade to blade. Against interpreters who bind even the knower to rites until death, and one who held Brahman to contain real variety, he argues that whoever knows 'I am Brahman' becomes all, while a worshipper who sets himself apart from his god remains like cattle to the gods.

  • ritual
  • karma
  • ritual action
  • vedic ritual
  • cosmology
  • meditation
  • afterlife
  • vital breath
  • prana
  • food
  • creation
  • scriptural interpretation
  • scriptural authority
  • interpretation
  • action

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Within this work

passages held
1,647
distinct concepts
756
by passages held, corpus-wide
#35

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “consciousness” and “self”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 28 pairings. 80 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
consciousnessself79
liberationself-knowledge70
karmaliberation46
liberationself40
cosmologyself38
knowledgeliberation33
knowledgeself28
cosmologyritual26
knowledgeritual24
karmaself-knowledge21
karmaself19
cosmologykarma18
cosmologyknowledge18
karmaritual18
karmaknowledge16
consciousnessliberation15
liberationritual15
cosmologyliberation14
ritualself-knowledge13
consciousnessself-knowledge12
cosmologyself-knowledge8
knowledgeself-knowledge6
selfself-knowledge4
consciousnessknowledge3
ritualself3
consciousnesscosmology2
consciousnesskarma2
consciousnessritual1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. A Thousand Teachings (Upadeśasāhasrī)

    The one treatise of his that is not a commentary and that scholars widely accept as his own: the place to see how he taught, not only what.

     SA
  2. Aitareya Upanisad, with the Commentary of Sankaracarya (Aitareya-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya)

    Three chapters of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, a ritual text of the Ṛgveda tradition, that tell a creation story; for Śaṅkara its point is that Brahman is consciousness.

     SA
  3. Brahmasūtra-bhāṣya

    His principal work, a commentary on the most compressed of the texts he explained; both later schools of Advaita grew from commentaries on it.

     EN
  4. Brhadaranyaka Upanishad with the Commentary of Sankaracarya (Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya) you are here SA
  5. Īśa-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya

    One of his shortest commentaries, in which the case against combining ritual and knowledge that the longer commentaries argue at length is made on a single disputed verse.

     EN
  6. Kaṭha-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya

    The Kaṭha is a poem from the Black Yajurveda tradition, two chapters of three sections each; Śaṅkara's prose commentary follows it line by line.

     SA
  7. Māṇḍūkya-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya

    A commentary on a commentary: Śaṅkara glosses both the Upanishad and the verses of Gauḍapāda, his teacher's teacher in the tradition, whose Kārikā scholars count as the earliest surviving systematic treatise of Advaita.

     EN
  8. Praśna-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya

    A teaching dialogue from the Atharvaveda tradition, six questions put to one teacher, which Śaṅkara follows from the origin of living beings to the nature of the knower.

     SA
  9. Śrīmad Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya (Bhagavadgītā-bhāṣya)

    One of the three commentaries on which Advaita rests, beside those on the Upanishads and the Brahma Sūtras, and the one in which Śaṅkara must draw a case for giving up action from a text that urges a warrior to fight.

     EN
  10. Taittiriya Upanisad with the Commentary of Sankaracarya (Taittirīya-Upaniṣad-bhāṣya)

    The source of the five selves, or sheaths, that later Advaita manuals such as the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi teach at length; here Śaṅkara reads them in the Upanishad itself.

     SA
  11. Vivekacūḍāmaṇi

    A teaching manual copied in many Advaita monasteries; tradition counts it as Śaṅkara's, and most modern scholars doubt it is his.

     SA
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