7 · Taittiriya — The Five Sheaths and the Bliss

The Taittiriya Upanishad is one of the warmest of the principal ten — warm in a literal sense, the warmth of a school you can almost feel through the verses. It belongs to the Taittiriya branch of the Yajur Veda, and parts of it read like the curriculum of an old gurukula: prayers for the teacher to be heard, the student to be quick, the breath to be auspicious; instructions to a student leaving home; a catalogue of what to revere and how to revere it. Around this domestic core the Upanishad weaves one of the most influential pieces of philosophy in the tradition — the doctrine of the five koshas, the five sheaths — and ends in one of the most exhilarating affirmations the canon has on offer.

It is divided into three sections — the Shiksha Valli, the Brahmananda Valli, and the Bhrigu Valli — and each is a different register. The first is pedagogy. The second is metaphysics. The third is a son discovering, by stages, what his father had refused to tell him.

The Shiksha Valli is the school. It opens with the prayer that every Vedic class still opens with — Aum sham no mitraḥ, sham varuṇaḥ, may Mitra be gracious to us, may Varuna be gracious — calling on the gods of contract and water, of fire and wind and breath, to make the learning go well. The student is taught to speak the truth, follow the right way, do not let the study of the Veda lapse. He is taught about the seven syllables of bhuh, bhuvah, suvah, the names of the worlds and how to meditate on them. He is taught the relation between teacher and student — I am the food, I am the eater of food, the teacher declares, meaning that the giving of knowledge is itself a sacrifice in which both giver and receiver are nourished.

The most quoted lines of the whole Upanishad come at the end of the Shiksha Valli, and they are the parting words a teacher gives a student leaving the school for life as a householder. They are worth reading slowly, because they are still in use — fathers teach them to sons, teachers to students, every year:

Satyaṃ vada, dharmaṃ cara, svādhyāyān mā pramadaḥ. Mātṛdevo bhava, pitṛdevo bhava, ācāryadevo bhava, atithidevo bhava.

Speak the truth. Walk the right way. Do not neglect your own study. Let your mother be a god to you, your father a god, your teacher a god, the guest a god.

There are more lines in the speech, and they are equally precise. Take up only those actions of ours which are blameless, no others. What we have done well, that you imitate — nothing else. The Upanishad is being careful. It is not telling the student to copy his teachers in everything; it is telling him to take their best and leave their worst, which is the kind of honesty only a real teaching tradition risks. Give with faith. Give in plenty. Give modestly. Give with awe. Give with sympathy. Five qualities of giving, each different. Whenever you are in doubt about an action, the verse goes, look to how the wise act, the discerning ones, who are devoted, who are truthful — be like them. It is a school’s last lesson, and it is a whole ethics.

The Brahmananda Valli — brahmananda, the bliss of Brahman — turns inward. It opens with the line that gives Vedanta one of its working definitions of the absolute: Satyaṃ jñānam anantaṃ brahma — Brahman is truth, knowledge, infinity. The text then begins to do what it is famous for. It says, from this Self, ether arose; from ether, air; from air, fire; from fire, water; from water, earth; from earth, plants; from plants, food; from food, the person. The person is, at its outermost layer, a being made of food — annamaya purusha. But inside this body of food, the Upanishad says, is another body, made of breath — pranamaya. And inside that, made of mind — manomaya. And inside that, made of intellect — vijñanamaya. And innermost, the fifth, made of bliss — anandamaya.

These are the five koshas, the five sheaths, and the figure is one of the most useful images the Upanishads ever produced. The body you take yourself to be is only the outermost of five concentric beings that make up what you are. Each is finer than the one outside it, and each is, the Upanishad insists, embodied in the next. The body of food is filled with the body of breath; that is filled with the body of mind; that with the body of intellect; that with the body of bliss — and within the body of bliss is the Self, untouched by all five, present at every layer as the awareness in which the layer is known.

The Brahmananda Valli then does something almost startling — it calculates the bliss. It posits a young man at the height of human flourishing — strong, healthy, wise, master of an earth full of wealth — and calls that one measure of human bliss. Then it multiplies — a hundred such human blisses make one bliss of the ancestral fathers; a hundred of those make one of the celestial fathers; a hundred of those, one of the gods; a hundred of those, one of Indra; a hundred of those, one of Brihaspati; a hundred of those, one of Prajapati; a hundred of those, one of Brahman itself. And this bliss of Brahman, the Upanishad says calmly, is also available to the wise one who has heard the teaching. The point is not the arithmetic. The point is that the bliss the seeker is being pointed toward is not of a different kind from the joys he already knows — it is the same joy, magnified beyond measure, available in the recognition the teaching gives.

The Bhrigu Valli is a small narrative, and one of the loveliest. Bhrigu goes to his father, Varuna, and asks for the teaching of Brahman. The father gives him a single sentence to investigate — that from which all these beings are born, in which they live, into which on departing they enter — seek to know that. That is Brahman. And the rest of the chapter is Bhrigu coming back, again and again, with a different answer he has reached by austerity, each one truer than the last. Food is Brahman, he says first. The father sends him back. Prana is Brahman. Sent back. Mind. Intellect. Each one accepted as far as it goes, each one let go of. And finally — bliss is Brahman. From bliss all these beings are born, in bliss they live, into bliss they go. The father stops sending him back. The fifth sheath has been reached and recognised as the standpoint from which the question can finally be answered.

The Upanishad closes with one of the most exuberant utterances in the canon. Having recognised this bliss, the seeker breaks into song —

Aham annam aham annam aham annam, aham annādo, aham annādo, aham annādaḥ — I am food, I am food, I am food; I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food, I am the eater of food.

He is everything. He is what is consumed and he is what consumes; he is the song and the singer; he is the giver of the world and the receiver of it. The Upanishad ends in laughter — hā vu hā vu hā vu — the sage breaking into joy at having recognised what he is. It is not the Ashtavakra Gita’s severity. It is something gentler and more unguarded. The bliss is allowed to be bliss.

For an art of living, take from the Taittiriya two things, one from each end. From the parting speech of the Shiksha Valli, take the daily ethics: speak the truth, walk the right way, do not let your own study lapse — and revere mother, father, teacher, guest, in that order. It is not a programme; it is a posture. From the Bhrigu Valli, take the patience of the father. Whatever you have understood, sit with it. Then, if it turns out to be insufficient, go back, do the austerity, and come up with a deeper answer. Brahman is not the first definition you reached. It is the one no further definition can replace.