The History of Buddhist Thought c16.12

c16.12

The Upanishads retain much of the early imagery and conceptions of the hymns and Brāhmaṇas, and they might have gone on refining these notions of the self as a small entity within the body, and of the world as generated by a primeval being, without reaching an essentially different standpoint. But new teaching came, which was looked upon as a revelation and taught as a secret. This was that the world not merely originated from one : it is one. It is Brahma, and Brahma is the self. When the pupil Śvetaketu had returned from twelve years’ study of the Vedas and thought himself learned, his father removed his conceit, and taught him the Great Utterance : *thou art that*. “The voice of a person, my dear, when dying goes to the mind; his mind to breath; his breath to heat; heat to the highest divinity. That which is the most minute, this universe has it as its ātman. That is the real. That is the ātman. That thou art, O Śvetaketu.” ¹ The doctrine of Śāṇḍilya is : “this my ātman within my heart, more minute than a grain of rice or barley or millet or the kernel of a grain of millet—this my ātman in my heart is greater than the earth, greater than the space of air, greater than the sky, greater than these worlds. Consisting of all actions, all desires, all odours, all tastes, embracing this all, this my ātman in my heart—this is Brahma.” ²