Meditations on the Isha Upanishad

Description

Meditations on the Isha Upanishad — Tracing the Philosophical Vision of Sri Aurobindo

by Debashish Banerji

From the inside cover: The Upanishad represent a foundation for Indian philosophies. Using complex linguistic devices such as puzzles, paradoxes, metaphors, dramatic personae and word-play, they force an engagement of consciousness. The Isha Upanishad is among the most concise and complex of Upanishads, and one of the most diversely interpreted. Sri Aurobindo wrote a commentary on this Upanishad, seeing it as embodying a problem of becoming, the attainment of consciousness in which unity and multiplicity are identical and do not erase each other. Drawing on this commentary as well as on the larger body of Sri Aurobindo’s works, this book presents four meditations on the Isha Upanishad. In the spirit of the Upanishad, these meditations are both presentations and contemplations meant to aid subjective orientation and alignment. At the same time, they trace the philosophical vision of Sri Aurobindo.

From the SABDA catalog listing: The author has written four meditations on the Isha Upanishad, drawing on Sri Aurobindo’s commentary on this Upanishad as well as on the larger body of his other works. These meditations follow Sri Aurobindo’s indication that the central idea of the Upanishad, a reconciliation and harmony of fundamental opposites, is worked out symmetrically in four successive movements of thought. The author’s exposition and study of these movements reveal how centrally the Isha Upanishad accords to the philosophical vision of Sri Aurobindo and are particularly pertinent to understanding the source of inspiration for The Life Divine.