Mundaka Upanishad with Shankara’s Commentary

by S. Sitarama Sastri | 1905 | 19,662 words

The Mundaka Upanishad is a collection of philosophical poems used to teach meditation and spiritual knowledge regarding the true nature of Brahma and the Self (Atman). It is composed of the three main parts (mundakas): 1) The first of three parts expounds the science of higher and lower knowledge. 2) The second part describes the true nature of t...

कामान्यः कामयते मन्यमानः स कामभिर्जायते तत्र तत्र ।
पर्याप्तकामस्य कृतात्मनस्विहैव सर्वे प्रविलीयन्ति कामाः ॥ २ ॥

kāmānyaḥ kāmayate manyamānaḥ sa kāmabhirjāyate tatra tatra |
paryāptakāmasya kṛtātmanasvihaiva sarve pravilīyanti kāmāḥ || 2 ||

2. He, who broods on and longs for objects of desire, is born there and there with such desires; but of him whose desires have been fulfilled and who has realised, the Atman, the desires end even here (in this world).

 

Shankara’s Commentary:

Com.—This text shows that the primary help to him who is desirous of emancipation is the renunciation of all desire. He who covets visible or invisible objects of desire, brooding on their virtues is born again and again with those desires of external objects which are incentive to the performance of good and bad deeds. Wherever his desires direct him to perform karma for the realisation of their objects, he is born with those self-same desires in those objects. But of him who from a sound knowledge of the absolute truth has all his desires fulfilled, because the Atman is the object of his desire and whose Atman through knowledge has been made to assume its highest, i.e., true form by the removal of the lower form imposed on it by ignorance, all desires impelling him to do meritorious and sinful deeds are destroyed even while his body lasts. The drift is that desires do not spring up, because the causes of their rising are destroyed.

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