Swami Krishnananda-Analysis of BrahmaSutra, en
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AN ANALYSIS OF THE
BRAHMA SUTRA
By
Swami Krishnananda
The Divine Life Society
Sivananda Ashram, Rishikesh, India
(
Internet Edition: For free distribution only
)
Website: www.swami-krishnananda.org
CONTENTS
Chapter I: The Forest Of The Brahma Sutra
3
Chapter II: The Critique Of Erroneous Doctrines
9
Chapter III: Erroneous Notions Refuted
14
Chapter IV: The Origin Of Bondage
18
Chapter V: Towards Liberation
22
Chapter VI: The Controversy Over Action And Knowledge
26
Chapter VII: Specimens Of Vedantic Meditations
31
Chapter VIII: Upasana - Upanishadic Meditations
37
Chapter IX: The Causal Law As A Limitation
44
Chapter X: Vaishvanara Vidya
47
Chapter XI: The Preliminaries To Sadhana
49
Chapter XII: Brahman And Its Realisation
54
Chapter XIII: Consideration On Some Issues Arising In The Brahma Sutra
58
An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda
1
CHAPTER I
THE FOREST OF THE BRAHMA SUTRA
The greatest truths available for human comprehension are supposed to be documented
in the great scriptures called the Upanishads. They are exultations of masters who are
deeply involved in the ultimate principles of the cosmos. They are realised souls, called
Rishis, but these Rishis in their expressions through the Upanishads spoke in terms of
their particular vision of the Ultimate Reality.
A common student of the Upanishads is likely to feel embarrassed over apparently
irreconcilable differences and contradictions among the statements of these great
Masters. Every kind of philosophy you will find in the Upanishads. There are provisions
for establishing the monism aspect of philosophy, the dualistic aspect, the active aspect,
the volitional aspect - everything can be found. Even Sankhya and Mimamsa have a
reference.
What is it that you are supposed to take from this big forest of statements on the nature
of Reality? To clarify the intention of these sages and to reconcile these statements in a
harmonious manner, and to point out that different expressions do not necessarily
mean contradictory presentations, Brahma Sutras was written. They can be harmonised
by a higher perception of what is there and what is happening. In order to harmonise
these multifaceted statements, Bhagavan Sri Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa wrote a new
text called the Brahma Sutras. Sutra is a thread that connects different parts of the
vision of Truth.
All the statements connected with Ultimate Reality, known as Brahman in the Sanskrit
language, have to be threaded together so that instead of the various statements of the
Upanishads being contradictory outbursts, they become beautiful pearls in the garland
of the knowledge of the Supreme Being, from various points of view. This act of
reconciliation is called
samanvaya
.
We have problems like this in the Gita also. What is it that the Gita is telling us? ‘Go
ahead and fight’; ‘Think of Me always’; ‘I am doing everything’ - what is the point in
saying all these things which seem to be negating one another?
When a Cosmic Perception enunciates a Truth, it may look like a multiple proclamation
of different hues, colours and emphases, which an ordinary person will not be able to
reconcile. You cannot know which is the correct vision and which is lesser or higher. To
obviate these difficulties, the great Master Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa wrote the
wonderful interpretative textbook called the Brahma Sutras.
‘What do you want?’ is the first question. ‘I want the ultimate Being, Brahman’. This is a
terrific question, and a statement. Who is it that wants Brahman?
To avoid the quandary that may arise out of making a statement of this kind, the Sutra -
the first one - avoids ‘who’, ‘why’ and all that. It simply makes an impersonal statement
that Brahman should be known. Who should know It, it does not say, because if you ask
such questions you will involve yourself in some kind of preliminary contradiction. Who
are you to know Brahman? What right have you? So, avoiding such possible objections,
the Brahma Sutra goes directly into the main theme, ‘It has to be known’.
An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda
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What is the meaning of ‘knowing’? You know that there is a meeting here, I know that
many people are sitting here, you know that I am speaking - this is a kind of knowledge,
of course. Is it in this sense that you have to know Brahman? Or is there any other way?
The word ‘Brahman’ comes from a Sanskrit root,
brhm
- to expand, to be
comprehensive, to include and be perfect. If the thing that is to be known you call
Brahman is that which is inclusive and comprehensive, it must be including the knowing
individual also. If the knowing person is outside this comprehensive Being, then that
being would not be comprehensive, because it has excluded the knower or the person
who aspires for it. So, it should include even the aspirant for it. Here is a knotty point
before us.
If that which is to be known includes the knower of it also, then what is the answer to
this question “Brahman is to be known?” Known by whom? It is already told that
nobody is there to know it. Yet at the very beginning itself is a statement, ‘It has to be
known’. Is Brahman knowing Itself? Brahman is to be known -
athato brahma jijnasa
-
when thus it is said, does it mean that Brahman is wanting to know Itself? What for is
this book which is to be read by people when only Brahman can know Itself and no one
else can know It? That is to say, there is no passage to It with which you can be
acquainted.
We are all in the world of dualistic perception. We are here seeing something and there
is something else which we are seeing. This is how we feel in this world. We cannot even
use the word ‘world’, unless it is seen and confronted by us, because worldly perception
which needs a duality, a dichotomy between the seer and the seen, which is the world,
creates another difficulty regarding the way in which we can bring together the seer and
the seen. The seer is not the seen, the seen is not the seer, is something very clear. You
are not the world that is seen and the world which is seen is not yourself.
Such being the case, how would you bring together in a state of harmony the seer and
the seen? Who is to work out this mystery? This deep analytical process, which will stun
the mind of any person and debar anyone from even approaching it; this wonderful self-
identical means of knowing Brahman is called
Jnana
, which cannot be translated into
English language easily. People say
Jnana
means knowledge, wisdom, but they are all
inadequate expressions of the operation that is taking place when Brahman is known.
You will be terrified at the very outset when feeling within yourselves the consequences
that may follow from attempting to know a thing which can be known only by Itself. The
meaning of this situation, if it has entered your mind, would explain to you what
Knowledge is. It is not anything that you are thinking in your mind. It is not a degree
qualification or a perceptual vision or empirical knowledge.
Jnana
may frighten away anyone even while approaching it. It can throw you out. You
cannot go near It, as it will happen if you go near a powerful magnetic field. It will kick
you back; you cannot go near. It is considering this aspect of the nature of
Jnana
, that
Bhagavan Sri Krishna mentions in the Gita - ‘this is a difficult path’.
Klesodhikataras tesham avyakta saktachetasam
Avyakta hi gatirdukham dehavadbhiravapyate
(Bhagavad Gita XII.5)
An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda
3
Body-consciousness is the obstacle to understanding what all this means. Body-
consciousness is just individual consciousness, affirmation of this particular
individuality, the ‘me’. It contradicts that which is inclusive and is complete and is itself,
as it were. Brahman is also called
bhuma
, the All-comprehensive Absolute, Plenum,
including everything. Those who are located in one body only - ego - are far from this
Fullness.
Again the fear strikes us: Including everything? Including me also? ‘Oh! This is not for
me, this is not for me!’ Everyone will say ‘this is not for me’, ‘I will not go near It!’.
Brahma-Sutrakara Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa knows all these problems, that people will
be turned away by the thought, the very thought of the question regarding Brahman.
The Upanishads define Brahman. Let us see again what kind of thing It is. What kind of
thing is Brahman?
Satyam, jnanam, anantam
. This is what the Taittiriya declares
regarding Brahman.
Satyam jnanamanantam brahma.
Yo veda nihitam guhayam parame vyoman.
Soshnute sarvan kaman saha brahmana vipashchiteti
One sentence, this particular declaration in the beginning of the Second Chapter of the
Taittiriya Upanishad can make you so happy, thrill you to the brim, if only you could
sense what depth of meaning this sentence contains. The moment you know Brahman,
the whole Universe of Bliss enters into you and simultaneously you enjoy the whole
universe;
saha brahmana vipashchita
.
You can enjoy so many things in this world. You can eat, you can go on a tour, you can
read books, you can go to a drama or a cinema, you can dance - there are so many
varieties of enjoyment; but when one enjoyment is taking place, another cannot come.
They are all different things. So, successively we are enjoying different things in the
world, but not all things at one stroke. Here is the difference.
The joys of all kinds of pleasurable encounters, whatever the number of these be,
innumerable, infinite ways of the enjoyment of things in the world - when they all get
clubbed together into a melting pot of a single instantaneous expression of Oceanic Bliss
- that will be your experience when you experience Brahman, perhaps.
You shudder even to think that such a Bliss is possible. Even the thought of such an
unthinkable Bliss can cause terror and tremor in our body. We can be in a state of terror
and tremor by seeing fearful things, but here we can have terror even by imagining the
superb Absolute - Brahman, wherein Bliss is a simultaneous completeness.
All disturbing and distracting notions in the mind have to be obviated first before we try
to plunge into the nature of Brahman that is to be known.
The Brahma Sutra makes a statement ‘Brahman is to be known’. Commentators write
pages after pages in explaining the meaning of one Sutra only,
athato brahma jijnasa
.
Volumes have been written, commentaries have been written, and commentaries on
commentaries, and a third commentary on the second and the first! Sankaracharya,
Ramanujacharya, Madhvacharya, Vallabacharya, Nimbarkacharya, all wrote great
commentaries on the Brahma Sutras.
Sankaracharya’s commentary was commented on by Vachaspati Mishra in his
An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra by Swami Krishnananda
4
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