Review of the commentary by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Dennis Waite, ca. 2011

This book is a commentary on the kenopaniShad, based upon the bhAShya of Shankara. This Upanishad is one of the 10 major ones (so-called because Shankara has commented upon them) and is one of the first to be taught to new seekers (after other introductory texts such as tattva bodha). It is all about ‘knowing’ Brahman – the misconceptions about what this might mean and the truth of the matter.

The benefits of sampradAya teaching of the Upanishads, and the brilliance of Swami Dayananda in performing this function, have both already been described in my earlier review of his two-volume Mundaka Upanishad. And he points out in this commentary that the tradition is that the teacher teaches his pupils until they understand the truth. There is no mysticism involved, based upon some specious ‘experience’. “Where experience is involved,” he says, “there is no tradition involved.”

The structure of the book is as follows. First there is quite a long introduction, which explains the pramANa-s (means for acquiring knowledge) and, in particular, the need for shAstra (scriptures) to tell us what is not available to the other means, namely that ‘I am Brahman’. It unfolds the nature and function of the Upanishads and explains why we should ‘respect’ this source (a less emotive translation of shraddhA, normally given as ‘faith’). As the invocation says, sarvaM brahmaupaniShadam – everything that is here is Brahman, and the only source for this knowledge is the Upanishads.

The Upanishad itself is then taken. Each mantra, including the initial invocatory prayer, is presented in Devanagari, followed by an IAST (International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration) representation. Each word or phrase is then separately translated and this is followed by a straight English representation of the mantra. There is then an extensive commentary of the verse, often running to many pages.

The Conclusion briefly summarizes the essence of the Upanishad and relates the story in the third and fourth chapters to the need for us to recognize Ishvara in our lives. This is followed by the complete text in Devanagari (only 6 pages) and an alphabetical index to the mantras. This is the only index given but that is normal for an Upanishadic commentary.

Quite a lot of Sanskrit terminology is used but these are nearly always translated on first appearance and most are usefully learned since they will be encountered in many other books and essays. A consequence of this is that it is not so easy to use the book simply for reference, since looking up a particular mantra one is likely to find untranslated Sanskrit words! But, in any case, the full value is only gained by reading from start to finish, as principles introduced in the first chapter are referred back to later.

As most readers will know, the title of the Upanishad derives from the first mantra – keneShitaM patati preShitaM manaH etc: ‘Willed by whom does the mind go towards its objects’, ‘By whom is the speech willed that people speak?’ The word ‘kena’ means ‘by whom’, i.e. what is the motivating agent behind all that we do? And the answer begins with the second mantra, which merits one of the longest commentaries in the book. The somewhat mystifying answer given by the Upanishad is that the agent is ‘the ear of the ear’, ‘mind of the mind’ and so on. And this refrain – shrotrasya shrotram, manaso mano – is repeated frequently throughout (in the commentary).

I have not previously encountered any real explanation for why the Upanishad should use this peculiar mode of explanation. I once assumed it was simply because they often employ a poetic style rather than straight prose or a scientific form. Not so! Swami Dayananda explains that, if we were simply told that the Atman is Consciousness and this is not the eyes or ears etc, then we would inevitably form the view that we had to ‘realize’ something separate or experience some bliss that is beyond normal experience. I.e. we would conclude that it was an effective object, separate from the subject ‘I’. In fact, it is that because of which I hear and see or am conscious of anything. We do not need to search anywhere, because we are never away from it. As he says: “There is no distance between the vastu, the reality, and any perception whatsoever; this is what the teacher wants to convey.” And: “The teacher need not give any other description about the vastu because the vastu is self-revealing. You cannot define consciousness; you need not define consciousness. It is only a word, and the meaning of the word is just ‘you’.” So simple, yet so powerful!

Later in Chapter 1, he gives an excellent explanation of why Atman cannot be described or thought of, involving an analysis of words and how they operate (‘Eyes, speech and mind do not go there…’). And the theme crops up again in the second chapter. Swamiji points out that Brahman only becomes ‘known’ when it is no longer an object of seeking. And you cannot simply give up seeking, because Brahman will still be thought of as an object of knowledge. Paradoxically, it is only when it ceases to be an object of knowledge for us that we can be said to ‘know’ it. Hence the poetic translation of Purohit Swami in the Faber and Faber ‘Ten Principal Upanishads’: “Who says that the Spirit is not known, knows; who claims that he knows. knows nothing. The ignorant think that Spirit lies within knowledge, the wise man knows It beyond knowledge.” And it is not that Brahman is ‘beyond’ thought. As Swamiji puts it: “There is no such thing as beyond thought at all. Beyond thought is just another thought, the thought of the beyond!”

There is also a good explanation in this last section as to why a mind is still needed in order to ‘know’ Brahman, in clear contradiction of the mistaken idea presented by some teachers that it is necessary to somehow ‘get rid of’ the mind in order to gain enlightenment. I will probably talk about this in a blog.

I recall listening to Swami Parthasarathy’s discourses on the Kena many years ago and he stated that the same teaching was effectively covered three times. The first part of the Upanishad was for the highest qualified students; the second part was for the middling student who hadn’t quite ‘got it’ from the first part; and the story in the last two chapters was for the lowest grade student who still needed further explanation after the first two chapters. Personally, I never found it to work this way and didn’t really see the point of the story at all! I also have to say that Swamiji’s commentary on this section was less revealing than that for chapters 1 and 2, although the elucidation of the story itself was clear enough. Again there is an emphasis on the fact that Brahman cannot be known by the mind. But for me this is confused by bring in the deva-s (gods).

It is my understanding that this book was produced a couple of years after the Mundaka, although (again my understanding) based upon transcripts of talks given much earlier (but I may be mistaken). The reason I say this is that it seems that the total clarity of expression, abundantly present in most of Swamiji’s books, seemed to be just slightly lacking here, especially in the last section. This may be the result of the editing – it is clearly difficult to adapt a talk, originally given to a class of regular students, into a book. Swamiji does state in his Preface that he did go through the transcript and “cross many a ‘t’ and dot a few ‘i’s”. There are also a number of instances where quotations are given in Sanskrit but not translated.

But the bottom line has to be that a book by Swami Dayananda with a few deficiencies is still infinitely better than many other books which have perfect editing! This is still a valuable book and superior to any other commentary that I have come across. This is because there is far more here than a simple translation, followed by a rephrasing of the content in terms more applicable to our age. Swami Dayananda’s ability to find an appropriate analogy from our own experience in order to explain a concept, which might otherwise seem difficult, is unparalleled. Even with the few quibbles, the book easily still merits 5*.