《奥义书》对印度哲学有何影响？︱What Are the Upanishads to Indian Philosophy？

印度阿育吠陀繁体 2019-09-20 16:34

印度思想的至高杰作

《奥义书》构成了印度哲学的核心，它们是原初口头传播集合的惊世之作，被室利·奥罗宾多（ Shri Aurobindo）誉为“印度思想的至高杰作”。

在《奥义书》中，我们找到印度教的所有核心基本教义——“业力”（karma行动）、“轮回”（ 'samsara）、“解脱”（ 'moksha）、“阿特曼”（atman灵魂）、“梵”（ Brahman绝对全能）的概念；还提出了自我觉悟、瑜伽、冥想的主要吠陀教义。《奥义书》是人类和宇宙思想的巅峰，旨在将人类思想推向极限并超越。《奥义书》赋予我们灵性视野和哲理思辨，个人唯有通过自身努力才能达到真理。

《奥义书》（Upanishad）的含义

Upanishad是“坐下靠近”的意思，指仔细聆听古鲁或灵性导师（他已了悟宇宙基本真理）的神秘教义；还指一群学生在一段时间内坐在导师身旁，在安静的森林“修道院”或隐居地师从导师学习秘密的教导。Upanishad另一种意思是“梵知”（ 'Brahma-knowledge），借由该知识消除无知。Upanishad该复合词的其他一些可能意思有“并排放置”(对等或相关)、“接近”（接近神）、“秘密智慧”、“坐在开悟者身边”。

《奥义书》的创作时间

历史学家和思想家把《奥义书》的成书年代定在公元前800年到400年之间，尽管其许多诗歌版本可能写得更晚。事实上，《奥义书》是在很长一段时间内写成的，它们并不代表连贯信息体或特定信仰体系，却有一种共同思想和方法。

主要书籍

虽然《奥义书》有200多部，其中只有13部被确定为核心教义，它们是《唱赞奥义书》（Chāndogya）、《由谁奥义书》（Kena）、《爱多列雅奥义书》（Aitareya）、《考史多启奥义书》（Kaushitaki）、《羯陀奥义书》（Kathaka ）、《蒙查羯奥义书》（Mundaka）、《泰迪黎耶奥义书》（Taittirīya）、《大林间奥义书》（Brhadāranyak）、《白净识者奥义书》（Svetasvatara）、《伊沙奥义书》（Isa）、《六问奥义书》（Prasna）、《唵声奥义书》（Mandukya）、《弥勒奥义书》（Maitri Upanishads），布里哈达拉雅卡说，它是奥义书中最古老、最长的一本。

引导我从虚幻至真实

引导我从黑暗至光明

引导我从死亡至永生

奥义书的关键：个人灵魂（阿特曼atman）与万物是一，而“一”即“梵”，那变成“一切”，这可以通过觉知冥想可以证悟。

是谁著作《奥义书》？

奥义书的作者很多，他们并不限于祭司阶层，他们是易于迸发灵性智慧的诗人，他们旨在引导少数挑选的学生达到解脱，而他们自身已经达到此境界。有学者认为《奥义书》的主要人物是提出“不是这，不是这”（neti-neti）学说的大圣人亚耶纳夫卡尼亚（Yajnavalkya），他认为“真理唯有通过否定一切关于真理的思想才能找到”。《奥义书》中其他重要圣人有乌达拉卡·阿鲁尼（Uddalaka Aruni）、施魏塔克图（Shwetaketu）、山德里亚（Shandilya）、艾塔莱亚（Aitareya）、皮帕拉达（Pippalada）、萨纳特·库马拉（SanatKumara）。许多早期的吠陀老师，比如摩奴（ Manu）、布里哈斯帕蒂（Brihaspati）、阿雅斯雅（Ayasya）、那拉达（Narada），也见于《奥义书》。

人类是宇宙的核心奥秘，掌握着所有其他奥秘的钥匙。的确，人类是我们自己最大的谜。正如著名物理学家尼尔斯·玻尔（Niels Bohr）曾经说过“我们既是存在的伟大戏剧的观众，也是演员。”因此，发展所谓 “人类可能性科学”的重要性，印度在《奥义书》中寻找并发现了这种科学，试图解开人类之谜。

自我的科学

今天，我们看到人人都怀着越来越强烈的愿望去实现“真正的自我”。我们强烈地感到有必要把我们的知识变成智慧，一种了悟无限和永恒的奇怪渴望困扰着我们。正是在这种现代思想和理想的背景下，《奥义书》对人类文化遗产的贡献显尤重要。

《吠陀经》的目的是保障一切众生的真正福祉（无论世俗的还是灵性的），在此目标实现之前，有必要深入到内在世界深处。这就是《奥义书》精准做到的，它赋予我们关于自我的科学，帮助人类超越易逝的身体、感官、私我和所有其他非自我因素，《奥义书》告诉我们这个发现的伟大传奇——人心中的神性。

里面的故事

在印度文明发展的早期，人类就意识到人类所体验的奇怪新领域——即人类所揭示的内在本性，以及人类的意识和自我。随着时间的推移，它的数量和力量不断增加，至《奥义书》中成为了一股洪流，以系统、客观和科学的方式在体验深处追求真理。它向我们传达了一种印象，即这一新的研究领域对当代心智具有极大的吸引力。

这些印度思想家并不满足于他们的智力推测，他们发现，宇宙仍是未解之谜，随着这些知识的进步，这个谜只会加深，而加深的谜之重要组成部分就是人类自身的谜。《奥义书》已开始意识到这个现代科学强调的真理。

在《奥义书》中，我们可以看到伟大的印度思想家的思想活动，他们不受宗教教条、政治权威、舆论压力的束缚，一心一意追求真理，这在思想史上是罕见的。正如马克思·穆勒所指出的那样：“我们的哲学家中，没有一个不接受赫拉克利特、柏拉图、康德或黑格尔的学说，敢于竖起这样一座尖塔，从不畏惧暴风雨或闪电”。

伯特兰·罗素（Bertrand Russell）说得好：“除非人们的智慧和知识同等增长，否则知识的增长将导致悲伤增长。”当希腊人和其他国家的人专注于社会中人之主题时，印度人则专注于人之深度，人作为个体，正如斯瓦米·朗加纳塔南达（Swami Ranganathananda）所说：这是《奥义书》中印度雅利安人的执政激情之一，《奥义书》中伟大的圣贤关心的是个人，超越其政治或社会层面。这是一种探索，它不仅挑战生命，也挑战死亡，最终发现了人的不朽和神圣的自我。

塑造印度文化

《奥义书》强调内在苦修，为印度文化提供了一个永久的定位，他们全心全意地拥护希腊人后世格言“人，认识你自己。”印度文化的所有后续发展都受到《奥义书》遗产的有力制约。

《奥义书》通过非凡的、热情的思想和灵感，揭示了一个时代的特征，印度这片富饶的土地是成就《奥义书》的物质和精神气候。印度雅利安人的整个社会环境已经成熟，具有巨大潜力，他们有时间思考和提问，他们可以选择利用闲暇征服外部世界，也可以选择征服内在世界。由于他们的精神天赋，他们已经把其精神能量转向征服内在世界，而不是在感官层面上征服物质和生命世界。

普遍性和客观性

《奥义书》赋予我们一套普世见解，这种普遍性来自于其非个性，发现这些见解的圣贤们在寻求真理的过程中已丧失了自我个性，他们要超越本性，实现人之本性的超越。他们敢于接受这一挑战，《奥义书》是他们在人类灵性的惊人冒险中所采取方法、所进行努力和所取得成就的独特记录。这是通过充满力量和诗意的篇章传达给我们的，在追求不朽的过程中，圣人们把不朽赋予了传达不朽的文学。

Supreme Work of the Hindu Mind

The Upanishads form the core of Indian philosophy. They are an amazing collection of writings from original oral transmissions, which have been aptly described by Shri Aurobindo as "the supreme work of the Indian mind". It is here that we find all the fundamental teachings that are central to Hinduism — the concepts of 'karma' (action),'samsara' (reincarnation), 'moksha' (nirvana), the 'atman' (soul), andthe 'Brahman' (Absolute Almighty). They also set forth the prime Vedic doctrines of self-realization, yoga, and meditation. The Upanishads are summits of thought on mankind and the universe, designed to push human ideas to their very limit and beyond. They give us both spiritual vision and philosophical argument, and it is a strictly personal effort that one can reach the truth.

Meaning of 'Upanishad'

The term 'Upanishad' literally means, "sitting down near" or "sitting close to", and implies listening closely to the mystic doctrines of a guru or a spiritual teacher, who has cognized the fundamental truths of the universe. It points to a period in time when groups of pupils sat near the teacher and learned from him the secret teachings in the quietude of forest 'ashrams' or hermitages. In another sense of the term, 'Upanishad' means 'Brahma-knowledge' by which ignorance is annihilated. Some other possible meanings of the compound word 'Upanishad' are"placing side by side" (equivalence or correlation), a "near approach" (to the Absolute Being), "secret wisdom" or even"sitting near the enlightened".

Time of Composition of the Upanishads

Historians and Ideologists have put the date of composition of the Upanishads from around 800 - 400 B.C., though many of the verse versions may have been written much later. In fact, they were written over a very long period of time and do not represent a coherent body of information or one particular system of belief. However, there is a commonality of thought and approach.

The Main Books

Although there are more than 200 Upanishads, only thirteen have been identified out as presenting the core teachings. They are the Chandogya, Kena, Aitareya, Kaushitaki, Katha, Mundaka, Taittriyaka,Brihadaranyaka, Svetasvatara, Isa, Prasna, Mandukya and the Maitri Upanishads. One of the oldest and longest of the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka says:

"From the unreal lead me to the real!
From darkness lead me to light!
From death lead me to immortality!"

The crux of the Upanishads is that this can be achieved by meditating with the awareness that one's soul ('atman') is one with all things,and that 'one' is 'Brahman', which becomes the 'all'.

Who Wrote the Upanishads?

The authors of the Upanishads were many, but they were not solely from the priestly caste. They were poets prone to flashes of spiritual wisdom, and their aim was to guide afew chosen pupils to the point of liberation, which they themselves had attained.According to some scholars, the main figure in the Upanishads is Yajnavalkya,the great sage who propounded the doctrine of 'neti-neti', the view that"truth can be found only through the negation of all thoughts about it". Other important Upanishadic sages are Uddalaka Aruni, Shwetaketu,Shandilya, Aitareya, Pippalada, Sanat Kumara. Many earlier Vedic teachers like Manu, Brihaspati, Ayasya, and Narada are also found in the Upanishads.

The human being is the central mystery of the universe holding the key to all other mysteries. Indeed, human beings are our own greatest enigma. As the famous physicist, Niels Bohr once said, "We are both spectators and actors in the great drama of existence." Hence the importance of developing of what is known as the "science of human possibilities." It was such a science that India sought and found in the Upanishads in an attempt to unravel the mystery of human beings.

Science of the Self

Today, we see a growing urge in everyone to realize the 'trueself'. We are keenly feeling the need to make our knowledge flower into wisdom.A strange yearning to know about the infinite and the eternal disturbs us. Itis against this background of modern thought and aspirations that the contributions of the Upanishads to the human cultural legacy become significant.

The purpose of the Vedas was to ensure the true welfare ofall beings, worldly as well as spiritually. Before such a synthesis could be achieved, there was a need to penetrate the inner worlds to its depth. This is what the Upanishads did with precision and gave us the science of the self,which helps man leave behind the body, the senses, the ego and all other non-self elements, which are perishable. The Upanishads tell us the great saga of this discovery — of the divine in the heart of man.

The Inside Story

Very early in the development of the Indian civilization, the man became aware of a strange new field of human experience — the within of nature as revealed in man, and in his consciousness and his ego. It gather edvolume and power as years rolled on until in the Upanishads it became a delugeissuing in a systematic, objective and scientific pursuit of truth in the depth of experience. It conveys to us an impression of the tremendous fascination that this new field of inquiry held for the contemporary mind.

These Indian thinkers were not satisfied with their intellectual speculations. They discovered that the universe remained a mystery and the mystery only deepened with the advance of such knowledge, and one of the important components of that deepening mystery is the mystery of man himself.The Upanishads became aware of this truth, which modern science now emphasizes.

In the Upanishads, we get a glimpse into the workings of the minds of the great Indian thinkers who were unhampered by the tyranny of religious dogma, political authority, the pressure of public opinion, seeking truth with single-minded devotion, rare in the history of thought. As Max Muller has pointed out, "None of our philosophers, not accepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storm or lightning."

Bertrand Russell rightly said: "Unless men increase in wisdom as much as in knowledge, an increase in knowledge will be an increase in sorrow." While the Greeks and the others specialized in the subject of man in society, India specialized in man in depth, man as the individual, as Swami Ranganathananda puts it. This was one ruling passion of the Indo-Aryans in the Upanishads. The great sages of the Upanishads were concerned with the man above and beyond his political or social dimensions. It was an inquiry, which challenged not only life but also death and resulted in the discovery of the immortal and the divine self of man.

Shaping the Indian Culture

The Upanishads gave a permanent orientation to Indian cultureby their emphasis on inner penetration and their whole hearted advocacy of what the Greeks later formulated in the dictum "man, know thyself." All subsequent developments of Indian culture were powerfully conditioned by this Upanishadic legacy.

The Upanishads reveal an age characterized by a remarkable fervent of thought and inspiration. The physical and mental climate that made it possible is the land of plenty that was India. The entire social milieu of the Indo-Aryans was ripe with great potentialities. They had found leisure tothink and ask questions. They had the choice to utilize the leisure either to conquer the outer world or the inner. With their mental gifts, they had turned their mental energies to the conquest of the inner world rather than of the world of matter and life at the sensate level.

Universal and Impersonal

The Upanishads have given us a body of insights that have auniversal quality about them and this universality derives from their impersonality. The sages who discovered them had depersonalized themselves in the search for truth. They wanted to go beyond nature and realize the transcendental nature of man. They dared to take up this challenge and the Upanishads are the unique record of the methods they adopted, the strugglesthey under took and the victory they achieved in this astonishing adventure of the human spirit. And this is conveyed to us in passages of great power andpoetic charm. In seeking the immortal, the sages conferred the immortality upon the literature that conveyed it.

By Subhamoy Das

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