Hear! See!, Only the Auspicious

Mundaka Upanishad has always been considered as a treasure of knowledge. I present here, the following invocation stanza from Mundaka Upanishad that I feel is very significant, profound and beautiful and which represents the entire nectar of this upanishad.

"May we hear the auspicous things

with our ears;

May we see the auspicious things

with our eyes."

You may wonder, what significance this stanza has! I have heard in a discourse, a story that helped me comprehend the stanza. There lived an old king, who wanted to renunciate and enthrone the Prince as the King. Unfortunately, the prince was naughty, irresponsible and callous and hence was not worthy to be a king. The King took the Prince to his Master (Guru) who lived in a hermitage in the forest and told the master, "Master, Make him a good King".

The Master said, " Don't worry my dear King. I'll take care". Then, the King left to his capital.

The master told the Prince, " My dear Prince, Just go and wander around the forest and come to me after one year and then, answer the question, "What is the sound of the forest all about?"

The prince wanders around the forest hearing all sorts of sounds and wondering why he has been asked such a simple question. Exactly after one year, the Prince goes to the hermitage and tells the master, " Master, here is the answer. The sound of the forest is the chirping of the birds, roaring of the elephats and the lions, buzzing of the beetles, creaking of the trees, rustling of dry leaves, splashing of the water falls and so on."

The master says, " My dear prince, you have not found it. Wander around for another year and tell me the sound of the forest. Confused, the prince wanders around the forest, hearing exactly the same set of sounds he had heard the previous year. One year passed and the prinns to the returns to the hermitage and answers the master with the same set of sounds. The master again, asked the prince wander for another year to find the sound of the forest.

The prince started to wander again. The Prince thought that, as long as I keep hearing the same things and tell the same answer, I am just going to wandering around this forest all my life and hence, I should hear something new. One day, tired and exhausted, he lay down on a bed of grass below a tree and went into a state of complete relaxation. His mind was placid, the body was relaxed, eyes closed and was almost in a sleepy, but conscious. Suddenly, he hears the sound of a seed sprouting into a small plant, the sound of a bud blossoming into a flower, the sound a spider projecting and sucking its threads, the sound of a honeybee sucking nectar from a flower and a lot more unheard sounds.

After one year, he goes to the master and says, " Master, I have found the answer, The sound of the forest is, "the sound of a seed sprouting into a small plant, the sound of a bud blossoming into a flower, the sound of spider projecting forth and sucking back its threads, the sound of a honeybee sucking nectar from a flower and so on". The master said, " Prince, now that, you are ready to be a worthy king".

Lessons Learnt -

1. In order to be a leader, it is essential to hear the unheard voices and to listen to the heart of your people.

2. Elevate the art of seeing and listening. I need to mention that, we as human beings have only two faculties to learn. One is seeing and the other is hearing. Speaking cannot be considered as a learning faculty as, the moment we start speaking, the process of learning is blocked.

3. Leadership is in being subtle.

Feel free to add if you have discovered more from the stanza and the story.

Picture : Shot at a garden in Tirumala last month

The bird on the tree

A friend asked me the meaning of the picture I have posted in my profile. It is strange that, we, as human beings have grown used to look for reason, rationale and logic in understanding anything and our mind has become so calculative that, even a thing of beauty is measured using some quantitative method. We fail to accept things that are beyond human understanding and brand them as irrational, illogical, abstract and what not. For some reason, I had a reason while posting that picture and the answer was handy when I heard the question.

Mundaka Upanishad depicts its very essence through a parable narrated in verse of 4 lines.

A bird is sitting on an immense tree having innumerable branches and huge foliage. The branches were laden with fruits of different sizes, shapes and stages of ripening. The lone bird chirped and jumped from one branch to another. The sweet taste of fruits made him happy, and his eyes sparkled with contentment and joy. His breast swelled up with the pride of having discovered and enjoyed the sweet fruits.

But soon, the bird tasted a bitter fruit and his joy turned sour; his ego deflated. Again it tasted some sweet fruits and rejoiced with happiness and pride. Again, some fruits turned out to be bitter and the bird was feeling miserable and helpless. Cursing the whole tree, the bird pondered, “All this is useless; there is no happiness or joy in these fruits. I don't want any of them.' Ah! The glorious feeling of discrimination and renunciation occupied his heart.

He looked hither and thither, and his eyes caught sight of a calm and serene looking bird sitting at the top of the tree. That Bird appeared to be in state of meditation, golden effulgence radiating from His countenance that illumined the whole tree including our little bird. Later, the bird realized that, the bird sitting on the top branch is just the reflection of himself in the divine form.

The picture is just the representation of my aspiring soul. My friend was convinced. May be this story would fit into the lives of most of us. How about you? Can you fit yourself as this bird?

The city of Brahman

Upanishads are the greatest source of knowledge and the essence through which the supremacy of humanity is revealed. Essentially, the upanishads form the knowledge part of the Vedas. Hence, without Upanishads, Vedas are just manuals of doctrinces, dogmas, details and the unessentials. There are 108 Upanishads in total and some like Chandogya Upanishad, Isa Upanishad, Mundakha Upanishad, Kena Upanishad are considered to be the key ones. Chandogya and Mundakha Updanishads are my favourite ones, for they help feel the supremacy and the profoundness of the self. The following leaflet formed a part of my marriage invitation and most thought I'm weird. My be I'm. My intention was to share this piece, so that they can appreciate themselves for being the Brahman. Are we not Brahmans? Why do we seek the Brahman everywhere, when we ourselves are one?

The Superman

He energized the conscious force and came to knowledge that matter is the Brahman. Far from Matter all existences are born: born by Matter they increase and enter into Matter in their passing hence. Then he went to Varuna, his father, and said, “Lord, teach me of the Brahman.” But his father said to him, “Energize the Conscious Energy in thee; for the Energy is Brahman."

Taittiriya Upanishad.

From the day I started my search, I have been trying to understand the totality of the above verse and I have not been able to understand. I sometimes hate the word totality as its use always deprives me of the partial and fragmentary comprehension I am capable of. I understand or I don’t understand. That’s the truth. Totality and Partiality are tricks to satiate my ego. But my search continued and time and again found shelter in various forms manifested by the teachings of the greatest prophets of the recent past. One such shelter is the following excerpt from Life Divine of Sri Aurobindo.

It enlightened me of the higher possibilities of humanity being manifested naturally as a process of evolution, as manifestation is progressive in nature and hence, humanity is the potent divinity.

The persistent ideals of the race are at once the contradiction of its normal experience and the affirmation of higher and deeper experiences which are abnormal to humanity and only to be attained, in their organized entirety, by a revolutionary individual or an evolutiuonary progression. To know, possesses and be the divine being in an animal and egoistic consciousness, to convert our twilit or obscure physical pain and physical mentality into the plenary supramental illumination, to build peace and a self existent bliss where there is only a stress of transitory satisfaction besieged by physical pain and emotional suffering, to establish an infinite freedom in the world which presents itself as a group of mechanical necessaities, to discover and realize the immortal life in a body subjected to death and constant mutation – this is offered to us as the manifestation of God in Matter and the goal of Nature in her terrestrial evolution. To the ordinary material intellect which takes its present organization for the limit of its possibilities, the direct contradictions of the unrealized ideals with the realized fact is a final argument against their validity. But if we take a more deliberate view of the world’s workings, that direct opposition appears rather as part of nature’s profoundest method and the seal of her complete sanction.


We speak of of the evolution of life in Matter, the evolution of Mind in Matter; but evolution is a word which merely states the phenomenon without explaining it. For there seems to be no reason why Life should evolve out of material elements or Mind out of living form, unless we accept the Vedantic solution that Life is already involved in Matter and Mind in Life because in essence Matter is a form of veiled Life, Life a form of veiled Consciousness. And then there seems to be little objection to the farther step in the series and the admission that mental consciousness may itself be only a form and a veil of higher states which are beyond mind. In that case, the unconquerable impulse of man toward God, Light, Bliss, Freedom, Immortality presents itself in its right place in the chain as simply the imperative impulse by which Nature is seeking to evolve beyond Mind, and appeard to be as natural, true and just as the impulse toward Life. As the impulse toward Mind ranges from more sensitive reactions of Life in the things like metal and plants up to its full organization in man, so in man himself there is the same ascending series, the preparation, if nothing more, of a higher and divine life. The animal is a living laboratory in which Nature has worked out man. Man himself may well be a living and thinking laboratory in whom and with whose conscious co-operation Nature wills to work out the Superman, the God. For it is likely that such is the next higher state of consciousness of which Mind is only a form and veil, and through the splendours of that light may lie the path of our progressive self-enlargement into whatever highest state is humanity’s ultimate resting-place.