Mandukya Upanishad
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Māndūkya Upanishad is one of the shortest Upanishads that form the revealed, so called metaphysical, parts of the Vedas. It belongs to the Atharva Veda. It devotes itself entirely to the explanation of the spiritual - mystic - syllable Aum. It is in prose, consisting of twelve sentences.
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[edit] About the Upanishad
The name literally means the Scripture of Toad. However, the commentators, including Gaudapada and Sankara, do not explain the meaning of this further.
It is said Varuna, the lord of cosmic waters, has taken the form of a toad to preach this Upanishad. This story makes it more interesting since there is a hymn called Toad Hymn (manduka sukta) in the Rgveda, which is ostensibly an ode to the arrival of monsoons. But the cosmological significance of the hymn is yet to be unravelled. The connection between the hymn and the Upanishad, in terms of cosmological significance, may be an interesting point to search for.
Secondly, manduka is also a type of yoga--a "particular kind of abstract meditation in which an ascetic sits motionless like a frog" (Monier-Williams). Mandukasana is one of the 32 asanas (postures) described in yoga. Possibly the Upanishad, which is connected with meaning of Aum, which is essentially an object of meditation, has been named after Manduka to indicate the yoga aspect of the Aum.
On the other hand, some attribute this Upanishad to Sage Manduka. However, reference to this sage, just as sage Svetasvatara, to whom another celebrated Upanishad is attributed, does not appear anywhere else in the scriptures or other literature. (verify)
Manduka literally means son of Manduki. The seer with this matrynomic has been mentioned in the Vamsa brahmanas of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The same list mentions that Mandukeyas are his disciples.
Mandukeyas figure in Bhagavatapurana and elsewhere as the receivers of a branch of the Rg Veda from Indra pramati, probably their father, for practice and propagation.
This group of seers figure in Rg Veda also. Their hymns are mostly connected with phonetics of the Vedas. For eg., we have Hrsva (short) mandakeya as a vedic seer who has proposed semi vowels.(ref. phonology:critical concepts by Charles W. Kreidler) Also, we have a text on the etymology of Vedas with the name "Manduki Shiksha" which deals with the notes of classical music of India.
That there are more than one Mandukeya points to the possibility of this name being a Gotra. Interestingly, the Gotras of the Mandakeyas are also identified with Bhargavas, who are varunis.
Varuni means the son of Varuna, the same God who seemed to have come as the Toad to sing this Upanishad.
Thus, the allegory seems to be that Varuna himself has taken birth as Sage Manduka in his own lineage to preach this Upanishad.
For the very reason that it explains the esoteric meaning of the fundamental syllable Aum of vedic spiritual tradition, the Upanishad has been extolled greatly. The Muktikopanishad, which talks about all other Upanishads, says that if a person cannot afford to study all 108 Upanishads, it will be enough to read just the Māndūkya Upanishad. According to Dr.S. Radhakrishnan, in this Upanishad we find the fundamental approach to the attainment of reality by the road of introversion and ascent from the sensible and changing, cleansing the mind of thoughts, feelings and wishes related to the material, relative world, and reaching the soul which, being spiritual and having an absolute nature as the Lord, is the only one that can perceive Him, Who is also absolute and spiritual, and cannot be perceived with material relative senses.
[edit] Commentary by Gaudapada
The first extant commentary on this Upanishad was written by Gaudapada, before the time of Adi Shankara. This commentary, called the Māndūkya-kārikā, is the earliest known systematic exposition of the advaita point of view of Vedanta. Its importance can be gauged from the fact that when Shankara wrote his commentary on Māndūkya Upanishad, as he did for ten other Upanishads, he merged the Kārikā of Gaudapada with the Upanishad and wrote a commentary on the Kārikā also.
[edit] Explanation of Aum as in Mandukya Upanishad
[edit] Three mātrās
There are three mātrās in the word aum : ‘a’ as the ‘u’ in ‘but’; ‘u’ as the ‘u’ in ‘put’; and the ‘m’ in ‘balm’. The term mātrā is used for the upper limb of Nagari characters and a syllabic instant in prosody. Esoterically, the ‘a’ stands for the first stage of wakefulness, where we experience in our gross body the totality of external experiences through our mind and sense organs. The ‘u’ stands for the dream state of sleep in which mental experiences are available, though erratically, by the mind which is the only thing which is then awake, without the help of the external sense organs or the presence of the rationalising intellect.
[edit] Waking state and Dream state
The two kinds of experience, namely those of the waking state and those of the dream state, contradict each other, in the sense that a man may experience hunger in a dream though he has eaten in the waking state a few minutes earlier.
[edit] Deep sleep state
In the state of deep sleep, represented by the sound ‘m’, there is no consciousness of any experience; even the mind has gone to sleep. But still there is an awareness after the deep sleep is over that one has been sleeping. Māndūkya Upanishad says that in the state of deep sleep, the Atman which is always present, has been the witness to the sleep of the body and it is this source from which issues the memory of sleep.
[edit] Beyond the three states
It is the Atman which is also present beyond the three states of experience. The fourth state (turīya avasthā) (see turiya) corresponds to the silence that ensues after one has steadily pronounced aum. It is the state of no matra (amātrā). In that silence Consciousness alone is present; there is nothing else. Therefore there is nothing to be cognized or be conscious of. This is the substratum of even the other three states of experience. During the silence that follows the recitation of aum, one is advised to merge in that Consciousness, in fact, be that Consciousness. That Consciousness is the Atman. That is Brahman. To underscore the point that the ‘fourth state’ is not another ‘state’ of consciousness, but consciousness itself, turīya avasthā is simply called turīya (the fourth).
[edit] Gaudapada’s thesis
In his kārikā on the Upanishad, Gaudapada deals with all the outstanding problems of philosophy, such as perception, idealism, causality, truth, and reality. In turiya, he says the mind is not simply withdrawn from the objects but becomes one with Brahman, who is free from fear and who is all-round illumination. In both deep sleep and transcendental consciousness there is no consciousness of objects. But this objective consciousness is present in an unmanifested 'seed' form in deep sleep while it is completely transcended in the turīya. Specifically, if one identifies the amātrā state of silence with the turīya and meditates on it without intermission, one realizes one's self and 'there is no return for him to the sphere of empirical life', says Gaudapada.
[edit] Sources
- Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. The Principal Upanishads. George Allen and Unwin. 1969
- Eight Upanishads. Vol.2. With the commentary of Sankaracharya, Tr. By Swami Gambhirananda. Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 1990.
- Swami Nikhilananda: Mandukyopanishad with Gaudapada’s Karika and Sankara’s Commentary. Shri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Mysore. Sixth edn. 1974
- V. Krishnamurthy. Essentials of Hinduism. Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi. 1989
- Swami Rama. Enlightenment Without God [commentary on Mandukya Upanishad]. Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, 1982.
- Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads [1]. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. 1972.
[edit] External links
- GRETIL etext
- Mandukya Upanishad, Full etext from wikisource (Sanskrit).
- Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada Karika
- [2], Musical version of Mandukya Upanishad Composed by Pandit Jasraj.
