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WorkUddālaka Āruṇi

Chāndogya Upaniṣad

A father teaches his son what the self is with a lump of clay, a banyan seed and salt dissolved in water.

by Uddālaka Āruṇi51 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
  • English, a translation held here, and your language
  • German, a translation held here
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Original title
Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI
Original language
Sanskrit

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Overview

Śvetaketu went away to study the Vedas at twelve and came home at twenty-four, conceited, the text says, and his father asked him one question: had he asked for the teaching by which what has not been heard becomes heard and what has not been known becomes known? This is the sixth book of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, an anonymous Vedic text dated roughly to the seventh or sixth century BCE, and the father who teaches through it is Uddālaka Āruṇi, a brahmin of the Kuru and Pañcāla country whom other Vedic texts name as the teacher of Yājñavalkya and others. His answer begins with clay: know one lump and you know everything made of clay, since a pot is only a name given in speech and the clay is what is real. In the beginning, Uddālaka goes on, there was only sat, being, one without a second. Some say non-being came first, and he asks how being could come out of what is not. Being wished to become many and brought forth heat, water and food, and everything is a mixture of the three. Then the lessons turn to experiment. He makes his son fast for fifteen days, until he can no longer recite the Vedas, then eat and remember them. He has him split the seed of a banyan fig until there is nothing left to see, and tells him the great tree grows from that unseen fineness; he has him leave salt in water overnight and taste it everywhere without being able to find it. Nine times the lesson closes on the same words: that finest essence is the self of everything, it is the real, and tat tvam asi, you are that, Śvetaketu. Śaṅkara, the founding teacher of Advaita Vedānta, read those three words as stating that the self and Brahman, the ultimate reality, are one; Madhva, who taught that the two are forever distinct, divided the syllables differently and read a denial. The Sanskritists Joel Brereton and Patrick Olivelle argue that the phrase tells Śvetaketu he is made in that way, not that he is identical with it. Arthur Schopenhauer met the words in a Latin version made from a Persian translation and returned to them throughout The World as Will and Representation. Max Müller put the book into English in 1879, and Paul Deussen, a lifelong follower of Schopenhauer, into German in 1897.

Key concepts

What is sat?

Sat is Sanskrit for being, "that which is". Uddālaka says that in the beginning there was only sat, one without a second, and that everything else came from it by its own wish to become many. It is not a god standing outside the world. It is what the world is made of and what remains when every name is taken away, as clay remains under every pot.

Why does Uddālaka call a pot "only a name"?

Because the pot adds nothing real to the clay. A change of shape gives speech a new word, pot, jar, dish, but what is true of it is clay. The same holds for gold and its ornaments and iron and its tools. The point of the comparison is a method: whoever knows the one stuff knows everything made of it, and that is the knowledge Uddālaka asks his son whether he ever learned.

What are heat, water and food in this text?

They are the three forms being took first, and everything in the world is a mixture of them. Heat came from being, water from heat, which is why people sweat when hot, and food from water, which is why food grows where it rains. In the body, food becomes flesh and mind, water becomes blood and breath, heat becomes bone and speech.

What is the "finest essence" Uddālaka keeps returning to?

It is being in the form too fine to see, the subtle stuff that underlies every visible thing and is the self of all of them. Uddālaka shows it by subtraction: inside a banyan fruit is a tiny seed, inside the seed nothing anyone can see, and yet from that unseen fineness the great tree grows. The same essence is the self of the person looking for it.

What does tat tvam asi mean?

Tat tvam asi is Sanskrit for "you are that". It is the refrain that closes each of Uddālaka's nine lessons: that finest essence is the self of the whole world, it is the real, it is the self, and you are that, Śvetaketu. Müller translates it "thou art it", Deussen "das bist du". What "that" points to in each lesson is the being the image has just shown.

Themes of the book

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

One Lump of Clay

Know one lump of clay and you know every pot, because the pot is a name and the clay is what is real. Whether the whole world can be known that way, through the one thing it is made of, is the wager of the lesson.

Uddālaka begins not with the self but with the world. In the beginning there was being alone, one without a second; some say non-being came first, and he asks how being could ever come out of what is not. Being wished to become many and brought forth heat, heat brought forth water, water brought forth food, and everything is a mix of the three: the red of a flame is heat, its white is water, its black is food. Change, on this account, is a change of names, and the stuff stays.

  • being
  • reality
  • metaphysics
  • cosmology
  • creation
  • causation
  • elements
  • matter
  • substance and form
  • unity and plurality
  • change
  • truth

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Food, Breath and Mind

Mind is made of food, breath of water, speech of heat. If a person is built from what they eat and drink, what then is left of them in sleep and at death?

Uddālaka tests his teaching on his son's body. Śvetaketu fasts for fifteen days and finds the Vedas gone from his memory; he eats, and they come back, like a dying ember made to blaze with grass. Sleep is explained the same way: the sleeper has gone back to his own being, which is why people say he sleeps. At death the order runs in reverse, speech into mind, mind into breath, breath into heat, heat into the highest being, and the body withers when the living self leaves it, but the living self does not die.

  • nutrition
  • nourishment
  • body
  • embodiment
  • mind
  • memory
  • vital breath
  • life
  • sleep
  • death

Enter a dialogue

You Are That

Nine times the lesson ends on the same words, that the finest essence is the self of everything, and you are that, Śvetaketu. What a person would have to see to believe it is what the experiments are for.

Each image takes away something the son relies on. Honey cannot say which flower each drop came from, rivers in the sea no longer know which river they were, so beings merged in being do not know it. A banyan seed split open shows nothing, yet the great tree grows from that. Salt dissolved overnight cannot be found but tastes in every sip. Then the lesson turns to the way home: a man led blindfolded from Gandhāra finds it by asking, and an accused man holding a heated axe is burned or spared by whether he speaks the truth.

  • self
  • identity
  • consciousness
  • perception
  • knowledge
  • liberation
  • rebirth
  • teaching

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Within this work

passages held
51
distinct concepts
55
by passages held, corpus-wide
#652

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: “being” and “self”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 19 pairings. 43 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
beingself11
metaphysicsself9
deathself8
cosmologyself5
realityself5
beingcosmology4
beingdeath4
cosmologymetaphysics4
deathmetaphysics4
beingreality3
metaphysicsreality3
cosmologydeath2
knowledgereality2
beingmetaphysics1
beingmind1
cosmologyknowledge1
deathknowledge1
knowledgemetaphysics1
knowledgeself1

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. Chāndogya Upaniṣad (Chāndogya Upaniṣad VI) you are here SADEEN
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