Prashna Upanishad with Shankara’s Commentary
by S. Sitarama Sastri | 1928 | 19,194 words
The Prashna Upanishad is a series philosophical poems presented as questions (prashna) inquired by various Hindu sages (Rishi) and answered by Sage Pippalada. The questions discuss knowledge about Brahman, the relation of the individual (Purusha) with the universal (Atman), meditation, immortality and various other Spiritual topics. This commentar...
Verse 6.6
अरा इव रथनाभौ कला यस्मिन् प्रतिष्टिताः । तं वेध्यं पुरुषं वेद यथ मा वो मृत्युः परिव्यथा इति ॥ ६ ॥
arā iva rathanābhau kalā yasmin pratiṣṭitāḥ | taṃ vedhyaṃ puruṣaṃ veda yatha mā vo mṛtyuḥ parivyathā iti || 6 ||
6. Know that knowable Purusha in whom the kalas are centred like spokes in the nave of a wheel. So, death, may not harm you.
Shankara’s Commentary:
Com.—As the spokes of a wheel are centred in the nave of the wheel, and depend on it, so the kalas, Prana, etc., are centred in the Purusha during their creation, support and destruction. Know that Purusha the Âtman of all kalas, worthy to be known (Purusha, because he is all-pervading, or because he stays in the heart); so, O disciples! death may not harm you. If the Purusha be not known, you will certainly become miserable, subject to the grief caused by death. The drift is that it may not so befall them.