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WorkĀdi Śaṅkara

Taittiriya Upanisad with the Commentary of Sankaracarya

Five selves, each inside the last, from the body made of food to the self made of bliss, and Śaṅkara's argument that even bliss is not the end.

by Ādi Śaṅkara264 passages held

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

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Overview

Eight aphorisms of the Brahma Sūtras ask whether the self made of bliss, a figure from the Taittirīya Upanishad, is Brahman, the ultimate reality. Commenting on them, Śaṅkara first explains them as saying yes, then sets that explanation aside. His bhāṣya, or commentary, on the Taittirīya Upanishad itself gives the second answer throughout. The Upanishad forms three chapters of a ritual text of the Black Yajurveda, and its middle chapter works inward through the person: a self made of food, the body; inside it one made of breath; then one made of mind, one made of understanding, and innermost one made of bliss. Each is shaped like a person, with a head, two sides and a lower part, and of the bliss-self the text says that its foundation is Brahman. Śaṅkara holds to the grammar. The suffix that means "made of" marks a product in the first four names, so it must mark one in the fifth; the bliss-self is still a sheath, and Brahman is the ground it stands on. The same care goes into the chapter's definition of Brahman as truth, knowledge and the infinite. Knowledge there means awareness itself, he argues, not someone who knows, because a knower would be divided from what it knows and could not be infinite. The first chapter, which includes a teacher's charge to students leaving his house, he reads as preparation for this knowledge. Sureśvara, Śaṅkara's pupil, wrote a verse commentary on this commentary, which R. Balasubramanian later translated into English.

Key concepts

What are the five sheaths?

They are the five selves the Upanishad lists from outside in: the self made of food, which is the body; the self made of breath; the self made of mind; the self made of understanding; and the self made of bliss. Each covers the next like a sheath. Śaṅkara reads all five as coverings of the true self, which is Brahman, the ground of the innermost.

What does 'truth, knowledge, the infinite' mean?

It is the Upanishad's definition of Brahman, satyaṃ jñānam anantam. Śaṅkara takes each word as setting Brahman apart: truth from what changes, knowledge from what is unconscious, the infinite from what is limited. Together they do not list qualities of a thing but point to the one reality that is none of the things we know.

Why does Brahman count as the 'foundation' of the bliss-self?

Each of the five selves is pictured as a person with a head, two sides and a lower part on which it rests. Of the bliss-self the text says that its lower part, its foundation, is Brahman. Śaṅkara takes this to mean that Brahman is not one more sheath but the ground every sheath stands on, the self that remains when all five are seen through.

What is the 'measure of bliss'?

It is a passage that ranks happiness. It starts with a young man, good, learned and strong, who owns the whole earth, and calls his joy one unit. Each higher kind of being, from celestial musicians to the gods and the creator, has a hundred times the joy of the last. Every step is also reached by the person versed in scripture and free of desire.

What does it mean that words turn back from Brahman?

The Upanishad says that words, together with the mind, turn back from Brahman without reaching it. Śaṅkara does not read this as making Brahman unknowable in every sense. Words cannot describe it as an object, since it has no form, quality or relation for them to name, but whoever knows it as their own self is free of all fear.

Themes of the book

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

Five Selves and the Ground Beneath

How far inward does a person go before reaching what they really are? The Upanishad peels back five selves, and the commentary refuses to stop even at the one made of bliss.

The middle chapter works inward through the person: a self made of food, the body, then selves made of breath, mind and understanding, and innermost one made of bliss, each shaped like a person with a head, two sides and a lower part. Of the bliss-self the text says its foundation is Brahman. Śaṅkara holds to the grammar: the suffix meaning "made of" marks a product in the first four names, so it must in the fifth. Bliss is still a sheath, and Brahman is the ground it stands on.

  • self
  • bliss
  • consciousness
  • food
  • vital breath
  • body
  • mind
  • embodiment
  • selfhood
  • meditation
  • desire

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Truth, Knowledge, the Infinite

Can three words define what words cannot reach? The Upanishad offers a definition of Brahman, and the commentary weighs every word of it.

Brahman is truth, knowledge and the infinite, and Śaṅkara reads each term as excluding something. Truth rules out whatever changes, and infinite rules out every limit. Knowledge, he argues, means awareness itself, not someone who knows, because a knower would be divided from what it knows and could not be infinite. The definition marks Brahman off from everything else rather than describing it as an object, since words and mind turn back from it. Whoever sets the smallest gap between self and Brahman, the text warns, has fear.

  • brahman
  • knowledge
  • nonduality
  • nondualism
  • self-knowledge
  • liberation
  • infinity
  • language
  • creation
  • causation
  • fear
  • scriptural interpretation

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Learning and the Search

What should a teacher give a student, rules for living or the answer itself? The Upanishad offers both, a farewell charge at the end of study and a son sent again and again to find Brahman for himself.

The first chapter covers recitation, meditations and the teacher's charge to students leaving his house: speak the truth, do what is right, honour mother, father, teacher and guest as gods. Śaṅkara reads all of it as preparation, purifying the mind for a knowledge no conduct can produce. The last chapter shows the search itself. Bhṛgu asks his father Varuṇa what Brahman is and is told only to seek it by austerity. He takes food, breath, mind and understanding for Brahman in turn before he finds bliss.

  • education
  • duty
  • ethical conduct
  • ascetic discipline
  • spiritual inquiry
  • prayer
  • ritual
  • ritual action
  • karma
  • meditation
  • scripture

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Within this work

passages held
264
distinct concepts
226
by passages held, corpus-wide
#280

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: “brahman” and “meditation”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 25 pairings. 82 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
brahmanmeditation19
nondualityself18
brahmancosmology15
brahmanknowledge15
brahmannonduality15
brahmanself15
knowledgeself15
brahmanliberation14
liberationself-knowledge14
brahmanself-knowledge13
knowledgeliberation11
nondualityself-knowledge8
cosmologymeditation7
cosmologyself7
knowledgenonduality7
liberationnonduality6
liberationself5
cosmologyknowledge3
knowledgemeditation3
liberationmeditation3
meditationself-knowledge3
cosmologynonduality2
knowledgeself-knowledge2
meditationself2
meditationnonduality1

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)

    Sureśvara, his pupil, wrote verse commentaries on two of Śaṅkara's Upanishad commentaries, this one and the Taittirīya; the Bṛhadāraṇyaka is by far the larger of the two.

     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) you are here 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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