The ultimate medicine: Being what you really are
The Manas, they say, is twofold,
Either impure or pure,
Impure, when it imagines desires,
Pure, when it is free from desires.
The Manas therefore is the cause
Of bondage and liberation to us:
Of Bondage, when attached to an object,
Of liberation, when free from it.
Since by the objectless Manas
Liberation is conditioned,
So one who aspires after it,
Should free his mind from object.
Free from attachment to the sense world,
Who locks up his Manas in the heart,
And thus reaches Manas-lessness,
He goes to the highest one.
Restrain your Manas so long,
Until it is annihilated in the heart,
This is knowledge, this liberation,
The rest is all learned trash.
Not thinkable and not unthinkable,
Thinkable and unthinkable together,
Free from every partisanship
Is Brahman, which he then reaches.
Beginning the Yoga with Om,
Meditate wordlessly on the highest one,
Since through wordless meditation
Is being attainted, not mere non-being.
That is Brahman, the partless,
Changless and without deception;
"I am that Brahman", so knowing
One surely reaches the Brahman.
The changeless, endless,
Causeless, incomparable,
Without limits and without beginning,
One knows as the highest bliss.
There's no death, no becoming,
None bound, none aspirant,
No liberated existence, no desire for it,
That is the highest reality.
Know the Atman as one,
Then, waking, dream, and deep sleep,
Throwing off these states,
You will never be born again.
A single self-being is there,
It dwells in each and every being,
Uniform and yet multiform
It appears like the moon in a pond.
As the space, which a jar encloses,
When the jar is broken to pieces,
The jar alone breaks, not the space
Life is like the jar.
All forms are like the jar;
Unceasingly they break to pieces;
When departed, they are unaware,
Still his is aware eternally.
One who is enveloped in word-delusion,
Remains caught up in the heart-lotus,
But when the darkness grows clear,
He sees the unity all alone.
Brahman is the syllable of the Om-sound;
When it fades off, what remains,
The wise meditate on that eternal one,
The seekers of the peace of the soul.
Two sciences are necessary,
The Word-Brahman and the uppermost;
One who is versed in the Word-Brahman,
Attains to the highest Brahman too.
The wise, searching through books
For real insight into knowledge,
Throw off the mass of bookish stuff,
As one the chaff, who strives after corn.
The cows, to be sure, are many colored,
But uniform is the color of milk;
The Self-knowledge is like the milk,
Its characteristic like cows.
Like butter, hidden in milk,
True knowledge dwells in all that lives;
Ever, with mind as the churning rod,
Everyone should churn it out in himself (Arya).
Using the whirling rope of knowledge,
One should obtain, like fire by friction,
That partless, stainless silence;
"I am that Brahman", as it's said.
That which is the abode to all beings,
To which all beings are abode;
Which holds in it all affectionately,
That I am, the Vasudeva,
-That I am, the Vasudeva
This is a translation of the Brahmabindu Upanishad, one of the Yoga Upanishads included in Sixty Upanisads of the Veda, volume II, by Paul Deussen, published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers in Delhi.
(J.C.)
The text that is in the Deussen-edition called ‘Brahma-bindu’ is No. 20 in the classical numbering of the Muktika Upanishad and is called Amrita-bindu Upanishad in most translations. What Deussen called the Amrita-bindu Upanishad, is otherwise called the Amrita-nada. Thanks go to Philip Renard for this clarification.
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