The Chandogya Upanishad : 1.2.5 & 3.1 : Swami Krishnananda

18/04/2019
Chapter -1 : Vaishvanara-Vidya -3.1.
2.THE COURSE OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH - 5. Last para, &
3. VAISHVANARA, THE UNIVERSAL SELF -1.

The Chandogya Upanishad : the tripod of Indian Culture, being constituted of the Upanishads, the Brahmasutras and the Bhagavadgita.


This section, dealing with the Panchagni-Vidya, is partly a description of a lofty type of meditation, so that we may live in this world without being bound by the laws of the world, and after death go to higher regions for the liberation of the spirit, ultimately. Partly, also, it is a light thrown on the fact of the misery of life. There is a side of things apart from the fact that there is a comical aspect involved in every working of Nature. Life is sorrow; life is full of misery. It is full of grief and pain, because one is living in a state of ignorance. The Upanishad on the one hand extols the greatness and the glory of knowledge which leads to the liberation of the soul, and on the other hand tells us how hard the laws will descend upon us and put us to the subjection of their mandate and requirements, and what sorrow will come upon us, what would be the unhappy state to which the soul would be subjected if it is deprived of this knowledge and lives merely a life of utter ignorance.

3. VAISHVANARA, THE UNIVERSAL SELF-1.


In the course of the study of the Panchagni-Vidya, it has been incidentally pointed out that there is great sorrow in life if it is attended with ignorance. Ignorance is the cause of suffering because it breeds erroneous action towards motives which are wrongly directed. This is the cause for the transmigratory cycle of the soul, which can be put an end to only by proper meditation on the inward structure of the Universe in its essential nature, and not as it appears to the senses in ordinary life. The birth and death of an individual, the process of reincarnation, the impulsion to action propelled by desires and the compulsion to restrain the consciousness within the four walls of one's own body—all these are aspects of the bondage of the individual. 

Life is an essence of bondage, a prison-house, as it were, because of a very complicated type of nescience, or ignorance, which has enmeshed the phenomenal existence of the jiva, the individual. There must be some remedy for this state of affairs. Is there not a way of freedom? Are we to suffer only in this manner, subjected to the law of transmigration, conditioned by the law of cause and effect, and having to pass through the ordeal of this life in which no factors there seem to be over which we have either any control or of which we have any knowledge? With a view to expound a doctrine of freedom, or the liberation of the spirit from the bondage of samsara, the Upanishad embarks upon a new subject subsequent to the exposition of the Panchagni-Vidya. The new section will be confined to the elucidation of the renowned meditation known as Vaishvanara-Vidya. In this context we are introduced to an anecdote, or a precedent story.

To be continued ..