In the ritual parts of the Vedas the emphasis has been on performing various rituals to please the Devas and get whatever you want from them. This ‘whatever’ refers to worldly riches, good companions and children, a secure and comfortable life, protection from enemies, and may be heavenly abodes after death. But do all these make you happy forever?
The Upanishad part of the same Vedas answers this question in the negative. It spells out the obvious – “none of these can”. Does it mean that the ritual parts of the Vedas are useless? No. They are useful for a person who is in the initial stages of his quest for happiness. But that happiness is not long lasting.
Sankara goes on elaborately on this seeming contradiction in the Vedas in his commentary on one of the Upanishads namely the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. Sankara argues that both have their applicability to people at different stages of their evolution. Higher you evolve, you find worldly things lesser and lesser attractive and you start looking for something more satisfying. That is when you turn to spirituality talked about in the Upanishads.
The same Yajnyavalkya who won thousands of cows and bags full of gold by defeating his opponents in philosophic debates, finally decided to move on to higher stage of life. He decided to renounce worldly life and take up Sanyasa. In Sanyasa, he planned to sever all his bonds with the world and live alone totally merged with the ultimate truth.
But he was a married man, with not one but two wives. He can’t just abandon them altogether without making arrangements for their later life without him. So, he divided all his wealth between these two wives and sought their permission to quit the life of a married man.
One of his wives namely Maitreyi was a quite evolved person. Her eyes were set on much higher things than worldly riches. So, she asked Yajnyavalkya whether she would get ever lasting happiness from all his wealth.
I am slightly deviating from the literal meaning of the word ‘Amritatva’ used by Maitreyi in this Upanishadic story. Commentators have interpreted amritatva to mean immortality which actually is its literal meaning. But I felt that that meaning does not fit in the context as I explain next.
Yajnyavalkya replies that there is no way one can get ever lasting happiness no matter how much wealth one has. That is because anything material is perishable. Sooner or later it is bound to get exhausted and you will lose your happiness. Acquiring wealth may make you happy for some time. But that can’t give you eternal happiness.
Probably Maitreyi expected this answer. So, she asks Yajnyavalkya to teach her that which would give her eternal happiness. She was not interested in worldly riches. To quote the discussion in the previous episode, Maitreyi had stopped running!
Yajnyavalkya was quite pleased with her. He starts his answer with an interesting question.
“Why does anyone acquire worldly riches?”
One may say it is for the sake of wife and children; for the sake of helping others and so on. Yajnyavalkya spells out the blunt truth that in the end whatever we do is to make ourselves happy. It is ‘we’ that we want to satisfy more than anyone else. Wife, children, companions and so on, are just excuses. All of them are for our own sake.
Yajnyavalkya goes on by putting another blunt question –
“Have you understood this ‘I’ for whose sake you do everything? Are you the father? or mother, or the son? Are you even this person whom you identify with a body? But this body does not last forever. Don’t you need to understand yourself first before immersing yourselves in self appeasement?”
Yajnyavalkya is not just putting a philosophical question. He claims that the answer to this question can give you eternal happiness! So, he says
“One should ponder over this question and analyze it deeply”.
So, he goes on to explain to her what an individual really is. He says that
“You are not someone limited to a body, name and form. You are much beyond that.”
Yajnyavalkya gives a very wide definition of what an individual is. He talks about the ‘universal identity’ that is the core theme of all the Upanishadic thought. By restricting yourself to a limited body, you always crave for enjoyment from ‘other’ using ‘your’ body. But he says that there is no such ‘other’. There exists just a single entity and that is ‘You’. He asks
“When everything is You, what will you get pleasure from? Using what? There is none other than you in reality!”
This explanation of Yajnyavalkya is a bit confusing, as it confused even Maitreyi. How can I be everything – the experiencer, the object of experience as well as the means to experience? But Yajnyavalkya is of firm opinion that this universalized state can give you eternal happiness. In a way, it is true since there is nothing else that can snatch your happiness!
Sankara being an Advaiti, wriggles a lot to explain this apparent confusion – the one appearing to be many and still being only one. He brings in the concept of Maya, illusion and so on. He says that it is illusion that makes the diversity in the world apparent. But the million-dollar question is – “illusion to whom? illusion about what?”. On one hand you are saying that there exists one and only one who is by definition omniscient, and on the other hand you are saying that this omniscient one undergoes illusion and ‘sees’ many things that never existed!
This has been the Achilles heel of Advaitis like Sankara, which later Indian duelist philosophers targeted, to pull down Sankara. I personally am not very comfortable with the idea of Maya or illusion since that raises several never-ending questions. Anyway, let us continue our discussion and see to what extent we can resolve these conflicts.
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