ISAVASYA UPANISHAD : - Mantram -3.

ISAVASYA UPANISHAD :

or  


VAJASANEYI    SAMHITA    UPANISHAD


Mantram-3.



Discussion -4. "Historical Truth ---- because  of  such  individuals  and  communities "......


A  historical  truth  which  affects  the  individual  must  affect  the  life  of  any  community  constituted  of  such  individuals.

If  an  individual,  refusing  to  take  up  the  noble  task  improving  and  maintaining  himself,  always  tuned  up  to  the  higher  values  of  living,  he  is  to  take  up  a  programme  of  endless  and  fatiguing  activity,  pursuing  a  vigilant  and  alert  life  of  duties  performed  and  rights  demanded.

If  the  individual  is  fit  and  ready  neither  for  the  former  nor  for  the  latter,  he  should  be  considered  as  dead  and  inert,  dross,  steeped  in  inactivity,  living  in  the  "form  of  a  human  being"  but,  in  fact,  a  disgusting,  limp  man-of-matter  only.

In  fact,  the  Great  Rishi-s  consider  such  human  creatures  merely  as  walking  corpses!

Such  demeaning  and  ulcerated  entities  are  termed  here  in  this  scriptures  as  the  "slayers  of  their  Souls" (  Atma-hanah ).




The  first  mantram  exhorted  the  student  to  renounce  his  false  identifications  with  his  body-mind-intellect  layers,  and  thus  save  the  Self  and  come  to  enjoy  the  Self-Perfection.

Thus  live  on,  thereafter,  serving  mankind  and  wishing  to  live  a  full  hundred  years  of  ( your )  life  (  jijiviset ),  instead  the  second  mantram.

Here  in  this  mantram,  the  contrast  is  beautifully  brought  out  when  people,  who  are  living  neither  of  the  ways,  are  labelled  as  Self-Destroyers  or  Suicides  ( Atma-hanah ).

Identifying  with  the  body,  we  kill  the  Divinity  in  us;  detaching  from  it  ( tyktena ) you  come  to  enjoy  the  Self.


Next : Discussion-5. "Swami Sankaracharya's interpretations  .....

To be continued   ......