The Mundakoupanishad : Post-64 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 07, Aug 2024. 06:30.

The First Mundaka: 

Second Khanda

Mantras: 10, 11, 12.

POST-64.

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Mantram - No 10.

Thinking that external sacrifices and charities are all, i.e., the best, these deluded ones do not know of anything better. Enjoying in heaven the fruits of meritorious deeds, at the end of it, they fall down to this world or even to a lower world.

Because of the lack of proper knowledge, ordinary people do not have the consciousness of the fact that there is a higher state of emancipation. Their lot is suffering alone because wherever there is lack of knowledge, there pain is the experience. A meritorious deed temporarily raises an individual to a region of enjoyment, because the effect of a deed is temporary. At the end of the momentum of the meritorious deed, the individual reverts to his native condition of imperfection and desire for action, i.e., he once again becomes what he was previously. No deed can permanently raise an individual to a high and glorious state, as every deed is only a phenomenon. And, further, due to the presence of passion and greed, the individual may even fall down to lower regions.

Mantram - No. 11

Those people who have faith and practise austerity, who live in forests with calmness of mind and full with knowledge, living on alms, being freed from all desires, pass through the passage of the sun to where is that immortal and imperishable Purusha.

The Mantra refers to Krama-Mukti, or gradual liberation, attained by the Upasakas of Saguna Brahman. These Upasakas are the Vanaprasthas living in forests a life of austerity and devotion.

Mantram -  No. 12:

Examining the nature of the regions attained through action and finding out their worthlessness, a wise person should get totally disgusted with them, because that which is not made cannot be attained through what is made or done. For the sake of the knowledge of that (which is not made), one should approach, with Samit in his hand, a preceptor who is well-versed in scriptures and also established in Brahman.

The efforts of an individual are generally stained by ignorance, selfish desires and actions connected with those desires. Karmas are enjoined only on such people as cannot extricate themselves from the clutches of these fetters. The different regions and experiences which are accessible to these people, are also of the same nature as their causes. They give rise to such unpleasant experiences as rise and fall in different states. They are also dependent on and affected by the defects consequent upon the non-performance of what is enjoined and the performance of what is prohibited. People who revel in mere phenomenal selfish actions alone, get such births as those of beasts, demons, etc. These experiences should be properly analysed with the help of such proofs of knowledge as perception, inference, verbal testimony and comparison. The true nature of these experiences in the different worlds should be known in its essential form. 

These experiences are the different roads to Samsara. They extend from the unmanifest potentiality of beings to the lowest inanimate matter. They are either manifested or unmanifested, physical, astral or mental, objective or subjective. They are interdependent like the seed and the tree. They are the sources of extreme misery and are absolutely essenceless. They are illusory like a juggler's trick or water in the mirage or a city in the clouds or like objects in dream or like a breaking bubble. They are now seen and now not seen. Such experiences should be known to be the results of desires and actions belonging to the mind and senses. An aspirant should turn his back to all these and should come to the conclusion that the whole universe is produced by nescience and its undesirable consequences. The network of this universe is kept intact in the forms of pleasure and pain, virtue and vice, good and evil, etc.

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Mantram - No 12

Continued

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