9 · Chandogya — That Thou Art

The Chandogya is one of the two great forests of the principal Upanishads — vast, ancient, untidy, full of digressions and ritual that the patient reader is rewarded for sitting through. It belongs to the Sama Veda, the chanted Veda, and many of its earlier chapters are about the sacred sound — what the udgitha, the high song of the ritual, is, and what to meditate on it as. It moves, gradually, from the chant outward, until by its middle books it is doing some of the most powerful philosophy the tradition will ever do, and giving the sentence that the entire Advaita Vedanta school will take as its foundation.

The Chandogya cannot be read the way the Mandukya can be read — in one sitting, whole. It is to be entered. You walk through it as you walk through a temple complex — small shrines first, side chapels, then deeper and deeper inner rooms, and finally the sanctum at the centre. What follows is the centre. There is a great deal of the periphery worth visiting, but if you have to choose, choose what comes here.

The greatest dialogue in the Chandogya — and one of the greatest in all the Upanishads — is the conversation in the sixth chapter between Uddalaka Aruni and his son Shvetaketu. Shvetaketu has spent twelve years at school. He has memorised the Vedas. He returns home, the Upanishad says, thinking himself learned and proud. And his father, seeing him, asks the question that begins the teaching: Shvetaketu, since you are so puffed up with what you know — did you ever ask your teacher for that teaching by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought becomes thought, the unknown becomes known? And Shvetaketu, honest, says no. What is that teaching, father?

What follows is one of the most patient and most beautiful pieces of instruction ever written down. The father teaches the son by example after example, each one a different facet of a single recognition. As by knowing one lump of clay, he says, all things made of clay are known — only the names and the forms differ; the clay alone is real — just so, the teaching of Brahman is the teaching by which everything made of It is known. As by knowing one ingot of gold, all things made of gold are known. As by knowing one pair of clippers, all things made of iron are known. Three images, the same point — the source is known, and the source is all that is, the rest are name and form.

Then the father makes his great move. He says — in the beginning, this was Being alone, one only, without a second. Sad eva saumyedam agra āsīd ekam evādvitīyam. Some, he notes, say the world began in non-being and from that came being — but that, he gently rebuts, makes no sense; how could being come from non-being? In the beginning was Being, and Being thought, let me be many, and out of Being came fire, and water, and earth, and from these the food and the breath and the mind — and the human being is composed of these, and the divinity that is in the human being is the same Being from which all of this came.

Then he says it, the sentence — the mahavakya, the great saying the rest of Vedanta will spend two thousand years honouring:

Sa ya eṣo ‘ṇimaitad ātmyam idaṃ sarvaṃ tat satyaṃ sa ātmā — tat tvam asi, Shvetaketu.

That subtle essence, of which all this is the Self — That is the real, That is the Self. That thou art, Shvetaketu.

He repeats it nine times across the chapter. After each repetition he gives Shvetaketu another image to sit with. Bring me a fruit of the banyan tree. Shvetaketu brings it. Break it. He breaks it. What do you see? Very small seeds, father. Break one of those. He breaks one. What do you see? Nothing at all, father. And the father says — from that nothing that you see, this great banyan tree rises. Believe me, my son. That subtle essence — that thou art, Shvetaketu.

He gives him salt. Put it in water tonight and bring it to me in the morning. In the morning Shvetaketu brings the water. Where is the salt? I do not see it, father. Sip from the top — how does it taste? Salty. Sip from the middle. Salty. Sip from the bottom. Salty. Throw it out and come back. The son does so. Where is the salt now? I do not know, father. In just the same way, the father says, the Being, the Self, is here in this body, though you do not see it — and there is nothing here, no fibre of this, that is not it. That thou art.

He gives him a bandage and tells him to be led blindfolded from his home village toward some distant place and abandoned there. The man, released, calls out for someone to direct him east, west, north, south, until at last he is set on a road back toward his home. In just the same way, the father says, a person turned away from his real Self by the desires of the world, when he finds a teacher who unbinds his eyes and says — east is that way — finds his way back. That thou art, Shvetaketu.

The patience of this teaching is its weight. Tat tvam asi. That — the source, the Being from which everything has come, the salt dissolved in every drop, the essence inside the seed of the banyan — That thou art. Not thou shalt become. Not thou shalt seek. That thou art, already, the only thing you have ever been. The work of the Upanishad is to let this recognition arrive — and the father, by giving it nine different shapes, is making sure that no matter what kind of mind the son has, one of the nine will land.

The other dialogue in the Chandogya worth carrying with you is the story of Satyakama Jabala. A boy goes to his mother and asks of what clan he is, so he may go to a teacher and say his lineage. His mother — Jabala — tells him truthfully that she does not know who his father was; she was a servant in her youth and bore him without knowing the man. She tells him, go to the teacher and say what is true — say you are Satyakama, son of Jabala. The boy goes. The teacher asks his clan. The boy answers truthfully, exactly as his mother had told him. None but a brahmin, the teacher says, could speak the truth like that. Fetch the fuel. I will teach you. The Upanishad’s quiet point — that truth itself is a lineage, more real than blood — sits inside that story without needing to be spelled out. The Chandogya is full of moments like that.

There is also, near the end, the long teaching of Sanatkumara to Narada — a slow climb through one thing after another to the highest — and the famous bhuma vidya, the teaching of the great. Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, knows nothing else — that is the great. Where one sees something else, hears something else, knows something else — that is the small. The great is the immortal. The small is the mortal. It is the Chandogya’s way of pointing again at what tat tvam asi has already pointed at — the one that is not contrasted with anything, because there is nothing for it to be contrasted with.

For an art of living, the Chandogya gives you the practice that has been at the centre of Vedanta ever since. Take some object that you have been mistaking for separate from you — your breath, your seeing, your wanting, the body that aches, the face in the mirror — and remember the sentence: tat tvam asi. Not as a mantra. As a recognition. The salt is in this glass too. The banyan is in this seed too. Whatever is in front of you, however small, is the same sat, the same Being, and the thou who is looking at it is not other than that Being. Sit, even for an hour, with that recognition held lightly, and the Upanishad will have done in you what the father did in his son — given the answer nine times until one of them lands.