6 · Mundaka — The Knowledge That Shaves

The Mundaka Upanishad takes its name from the verb mund, to shave — and the tradition reads the name two ways. It is the Upanishad of the shaven-headed renunciate, the one who has cut the world’s ties; and it is the Upanishad of the knowledge that shaves, that cuts away ignorance the way a razor cuts the hair from the scalp. Either reading is right; the text holds both. It is one of the most lyrical of the principal Upanishads, written largely in verse, and one of the most quoted — its lines have walked into the modern Indian imagination in ways that few other ancient texts have.

It opens with a lineage. Brahma, the creator, taught this knowledge to his eldest son; the son taught it to the next sage, and so on down a named chain, until it reaches Shaunaka, a great householder, who comes to the sage Angiras with the question every later seeker has wanted to ask: what is that, knowing which, all this is known?

It is a stunning question. Most knowledge is local — learn one thing and you know that thing. Shaunaka is asking whether there is a kind of knowledge such that to know it is to know everything else by implication. Angiras’s answer is the doorway through which all later Vedanta walks. There are two knowings, he says, and the knowers of Brahman speak of them — the lower, and the higher.

Tatrāparā ṛgvedo yajurvedaḥ sāmavedo ‘tharvavedaḥ | … atha parā yayā tad akṣaram adhigamyate ||

Of these, the lower is — the Rig Veda, the Yajur, the Sama, the Atharva, the rules of pronunciation, the rituals, the grammars, the astronomy. And the higher is that by which the imperishable is known.

The Upanishad has done something staggering. It has taken the entire sacred literature of the tradition — the four Vedas themselves — and classed it as apara, the lower knowledge. Not wrong, not dispensable, but lower. The higher knowledge is the direct knowing of the imperishable, of Brahman; everything else, however sacred, is preparation for it. This is one of those moments where an Upanishad quietly redefines the religion that produced it.

The text then describes the seeker the higher knowledge is for — disciplined, peaceful, having seen that no work, however well done, produces anything that lasts. Examine the worlds that come from action, the Upanishad says, and conclude — that which is uncreated is not got by what is done. Action produces effects, effects pass, nothing acquired through doing endures. The seeker, having seen this, takes fuel in hand — the traditional sign of approaching a teacher — and goes to one who is shrotriya and brahma-niṣṭha, learned in the scripture and established in Brahman. The Upanishad is precise: not merely learned. Established.

The teaching the seeker then receives is given through the most famous image in the Mundaka — two birds, of beautiful plumage, friends, sit on the same tree.

Dvā suparṇā sayujā sakhāyā samānaṃ vṛkṣaṃ pariṣasvajāte | Tayor anyaḥ pippalaṃ svādv atty anaśnann anyo abhicākaśīti ||

Two birds, ever companions, embrace the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit; the other, not eating, looks on.

Read the verse carefully, because the whole Upanishad rests on it. Two birds on a single tree. They are friends. They are not strangers; they are not adversaries. One bird is eating — tasting the fruit of the tree, alternately sweet and bitter — pleasure and pain, gain and loss, all the experience that comes with the contact with the world. The other bird sits, anaśnann, not eating — abhicākaśīti, simply looking on, watching, lit with attention. This second bird, the Upanishad will tell you, is the Self. The first is the self-as-actor, the jiva, the embodied soul caught in the eating. They share the same tree — the same body, the same life. And the freedom of the eater comes, the next verse says, when the first bird, grieving, sees the other bird, the Lord, and his greatness — and his grief departs. The turn from one to the other is the whole movement of the Upanishads. You stop being the eater. You discover you have been, all along, also the watcher. The watching does not interrupt the eating; the eating is now seen, and the seeing is what was lost.

The Mundaka does not stop there. It gives you, near its centre, the verse that has become the motto of the modern Indian republic — the words carved at the base of the national emblem, on every official seal:

Satyam eva jayate nānṛtam — Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood.

The verse goes on: by truth the divine path is laid out, by which the seers, having attained, go to the supreme abode of the real. You will hear satyameva jayate spoken in courts, on currency, in oaths. Few who quote it remember it is from the Mundaka. It is good to remember. The Upanishad is not making a slogan; it is making a metaphysical claim. Falsehood may dominate for a season. The real is what remains.

The third and final mundaka — mundaka here meaning “part,” as the sections are called — gathers the teaching into image after image. The Self is to be sought, the Upanishad says, not by speech, not by intellect, not by much hearing of the scriptures; it is reached only by the one whom it chooses, and to that one it reveals its own form. There is a hint of grace in this verse the colder Advaita traditions sometimes neglect. The recognition is not earned the way a wage is earned; it comes to the one who has prepared the ground, when it comes.

The text closes with images of arriving. As rivers, flowing, lose their name and form in the ocean, leaving aside their name and form, the knower, freed, goes to the divine Person who is higher than the high. The river-and-sea image we saw in the Prashna; here it is the sealing image of the whole work. He who knows that supreme Brahman becomes Brahman. Not unites with. Becomes.

For an art of living, the Mundaka leaves you with a discipline you can practise in any hour. Notice the two birds. Notice yourself eating — reacting, wanting, fearing, enjoying — and notice that something in you is also simply seeing the eating happen. The seeing is not new. You have been doing it your whole life without naming it. Stand, for a moment, in the second bird. Notice that the eating goes on without your supervision and is none the worse for being watched. Then return to the day. The Mundaka is teaching that the watching is your real identity, and the eating is what the watching has been doing while forgetting itself. Remember, and the grief departs.