Upanishad Series - Ep. 6 (Mundaka Upanishad)
What if you had all the knowledge that has ever existed on Google?
Thousands of years ago, a student & seeker named Shaunaka asked a similar question to his guru Rishi Angiras, “What is that, knowing which, everything becomes known?” And that’s how we get the Mundaka Upanishad so here’s the tea.
Mundaka Upanishad is found in the Atharva Veda, with 64 mantras spread across 6 sub-sections.
Mundaka literally means shaving off the head, so just as a razor shaves off our hair, the knowledge given in this text removes all our ignorance & leaves us with the Ultimate Truth.
The first out of the three big takeaways we can find here is that there are 2 kinds of knowledge - Apara Vidhya (Lower) & Para Vidhya (Higher).
The Lower knowledge comprises of knowing our scriptures like the Vedas, our karma kaanda or rituals, and practicing them to gain merit.
They are good to begin our spiritual journey but we’re warned that they are not the final path or destination because even the merits of our karma will get exhausted & we will return to Earth after attaining the heavens, back to the cycle of life & death.
If we have to move beyond that, to get moksha or liberation, we need to focus on Para Vidhya - the knowledge of the Supreme Purusha or Brahman.
Which brings us to the second of the three big ideas - we get a detailed description of how the Supreme God, created the universe - how everything we see, including ourselves, comes from him.
So every person you meet, every place you visit, everything you can ever see in this entire universe has this Brahman, lodged inside the cavity of their heart or existence. Imagine this universe to be the painting on the canvas of this formless, divine superboss.
So how does one reach or unite with this Brahman? That’s explained using the third big idea, the most beautiful analogy of Indian philosophy, called the two birds.
We are given the example of two birds on the same tree - one is eating the sweet fruits, getting sad & angry when it gets over, but the other bird is just observing it quietly. The first bird is us, the individual Jeeva, the embodied soul in our physical body, being attached to this material world.
However, there is the Higher Spiritual Self we seek, the enlightened Golden Bird, who we call God, but that is actually our true reality. We then realise that we are the Purusha, the Supreme WITNESS, not the doer, so we should stop depending on or being attached to this fruit, like the hungry bird, which is simply a representation of our feelings, desires, dreams, wants & needs.
In simple words, the Upanishad reminds us that this God we are seeking is not some external guy sitting in the sky, but our own very true existence & nature. We are God, we are Divine, and we are the eternal universe. Realising that is the goal of our life.
The Mundaka does exactly what it promises - stripping away everything temporary, leaving us with the one simple Truth.