Prashna Upanishad

1. Part 1

   1.1Six seekers, all devoted to Brahman and searching for the highest truth, believed the respected sage Pippalada could teach them. So they carried firewood in their hands, the sign of humble students, and went to him.
2. 1.2The sage Pippalada told them to live with him one more year with self-discipline, self-control, and faith. After that they could ask anything. He promised to tell them all he knew.
3. 1.3Then Kabandhin Katyayana, one of the students, came to the sage and asked where all living creatures come from.
4. 1.4The sage Pippalada answers that Prajapati, the lord of all creatures, wanted to make living beings. He did hard spiritual practice and then made a pair: matter (rayi) and life-force (prana), so that together they could produce all creatures.
5. 1.5The sun stands for life-force and the moon stands for matter. Everything, both what has a shape and what has none, is a form of matter, so the body is matter.
6. 1.6When the sun rises and shines on the east, it gathers the living beings there into its rays. As it lights up every direction, above and below, it takes in all living beings.
7. 1.7So the sun rises as Vaishvanara, the fire that belongs to all people. It takes every form and is both life-force and fire. A verse is then quoted to show this.
8. 1.8The verse praises the golden sun that takes all forms and knows all things. It rises highest, shines alone, and warms us. With a thousand rays it is present everywhere and is the life of every creature.
9. 1.9The year is like Prajapati and has two paths, southern and northern. People who rely only on rituals and good deeds for a reward go by the southern path, the path of the ancestors, to the moon, and then are born again. That path belongs to matter.
10. 1.10Those who seek the true Self through discipline, self-control, faith and knowledge take the northern path to the sun. That is the deathless, safe and highest place, and from there they do not come back, because it is the final goal.
11. 1.11A verse describes the year-god in different ways. Some call him a father with five feet (the five seasons) and twelve shapes (the twelve months) who sends rain from high heaven. Others picture him riding a chariot with seven wheels and six spokes.
12. 1.12The month is also like Prajapati. Its dark half, when the moon shrinks, is matter, and its bright half is life-force. So some sages do their rituals in the bright half and others in the dark half.
13. 1.13Day and night are also like Prajapati: day is life-force and night is matter. The teacher says that couples who make love by day waste their life-force, while making love at night is right.
14. 1.14Food is also like Prajapati. From food comes the seed of life, and from that seed all creatures are born.
15. 1.15Couples who follow this rule of Prajapati have children, and they gain the world of Brahma here, a world of happiness. But those who live with discipline, self-control and truth go further.
16. 1.16The pure world of Brahma, the highest reality, belongs to those who have nothing crooked in them, no lies and no tricks.

17. Part 2

    2.1Next the student Bhargava Vaidarbhi asks the sage how many powers, or gods, hold up a living body, how many make it show itself, and which one is the greatest.
18. 2.2The sage says these powers are space, wind, fire, water, earth, speech, mind, eyes and ears. Once they show their strength, they argue, each boasting that it alone holds up the body.
19. 2.3Then Prana, the breath of life and the greatest of them, tells them not to be fooled. He alone, splitting himself into five kinds of breath, holds the body together.
20. 2.4The others do not believe him, so Prana starts to leave the body. As he goes, all the others are pulled out too, and when he returns they all return, like bees following their queen. Now convinced, speech, mind, eyes and ears praise Prana.
21. 2.5They praise Prana as fire, sun, rain, Indra the mighty god, wind and earth. He is matter and he is God. He is what exists, what does not exist, and what never dies.
22. 2.6Just as spokes are held in the hub of a wheel, everything rests on Prana: the sacred Vedas, the rituals, the warriors and the priests.
23. 2.7They continue praising Prana: as the lord of creatures, you move in the womb and are born again in every new life. All creatures make offerings to you, who live together with the senses.
24. 2.8This verse continues a hymn of praise to Prana, the life-breath that keeps every living thing alive. It says Prana is what carries offerings to the gods and to the ancestors. It is also the real power behind the work of the ancient seers, the Atharvangiras.
25. 2.9The hymn praises Prana, the life-breath, as Indra, king of the gods, because of its brightness. It calls Prana Rudra, a fierce protecting god. It is also the sun, which moves across the sky and is the greatest of all lights.
26. 2.10When Prana, the life-force, sends down rain, all living creatures are happy. They hope there will be plenty of food for everyone.
27. 2.11The hymn calls Prana pure in itself, needing no ritual to be made holy. It names Prana the one great seer, the one who takes in everything, and the good lord. The worshippers say they give Prana its food, and they call Prana, here named Matarisvan (the wind), their father.
28. 2.12The worshippers pray to Prana, the life-breath that lives in our speech, hearing, sight and mind. They ask it to be kind to them and not to leave the body.
29. 2.13The hymn ends by saying that everything in all the worlds is under the power of Prana, the life-force. The worshippers ask it to protect them as a mother protects her children, and to give them happiness and wisdom.

30. Part 3

    3.1A student named Kausalya Asvalayana asks the teacher about Prana, the life-force. Where does it come from? How does it enter the body, divide itself up, live there, and leave? And how does it hold up both the outer world and the inner one?
31. 3.2The teacher, the sage Pippalada, says these questions are even harder than the last ones. But because the student loves Brahman, the ultimate reality, he agrees to answer.
32. 3.3The teacher says Prana, the life-force, comes from the Self, the deepest reality. It follows the Self the way a shadow follows a person. It enters the body because of the mind's past thoughts and actions.
33. 3.4The main life-force works like a king. A king puts officials in charge of different villages. In the same way, Prana gives each of the other breaths in the body its own job.
34. 3.5The teacher names some of the breaths and where they work. Apana, the downward breath, works in the organs of waste and of making children. The main Prana lives in the eyes and ears and moves through the mouth and nose. Samana, the middle breath, spreads food evenly through the body, and the seven openings of the head, which let us sense the world, get their power from it.
35. 3.6The Self lives in the heart. From the heart spread 101 main channels, each with a hundred smaller branches, and each of those with 72,000 more. Vyana, the breath that moves all through the body, travels in these channels.
36. 3.7Through one special channel, Udana, the upward breath, carries a person out at death. Good deeds lead to a good world and bad deeds to a bad world. A mix of both leads back to being born as a human.
37. 3.8The breaths inside us match powers in nature. The sun is the outer Prana and helps our eyes see. The earth's power supports the downward breath. The space between earth and sky matches Samana, the middle breath, and the air matches Vyana, the breath that moves all through us.
38. 3.9Udana, the upward breath, is linked to the body's warmth and light. When a person's inner warmth goes out at death, their senses pull back into the mind, and they move on to a new birth.
39. 3.10Whatever a person is thinking at the moment of death, they carry that with them into Prana, the life-force. Prana, joined with the body's warmth and with the individual soul, then leads them to the world they have earned.
40. 3.11The teacher says that whoever truly understands Prana in this way will have a family line that does not die out, and will himself become immortal. He then quotes a verse to sum it up.
41. 3.12The verse says that whoever understands five things about Prana gains immortality. These are where it comes from, how it enters the body, where it lives, how it divides into five breaths, and how it works inside us.

42. Part 4

    4.1Another student, Sauryayanin Gargya, asks the teacher about sleep and dreams. What in a person sleeps, and what stays awake? What power sees dreams? Who feels the happiness of deep sleep, and what does it all rest on?
43. 4.2The teacher explains with a picture of the sun. When it sets, all its rays gather back into it, and when it rises, they shine out again. In the same way, during sleep all the senses gather into the mind, so the person does not see, hear, speak, move or feel, and we say he is asleep.
44. 4.3Even while a person sleeps, the breaths in the body stay awake like sacred fires kept burning in a house. The teacher Pippalada compares the different breaths (prana, the life-breaths) to the three fires used in Vedic worship.
45. 4.4The comparison goes on: one breath balances breathing out and in, like a priest making offerings. The mind is the one offering the worship. Another breath, the upward breath, is the reward, because each night in deep sleep it carries the mind to Brahman, the highest reality.
46. 4.5In dreams the mind plays freely. It sees again what it saw and hears again what it heard, even things from faraway places. It also sees things it never really saw or heard, because in dreams the mind makes up the whole world itself.
47. 4.6When the mind is filled with a deeper light, it stops dreaming. This is dreamless deep sleep, and in that state a peaceful happiness rises in the body.
48. 4.7Just as birds fly back to a tree to rest at night, everything in us goes back to rest in the highest Self, the Atman, in deep sleep.
49. 4.8This is the list of everything that rests in the Self in deep sleep: the elements like earth, water, fire, air and space, the senses and what they sense, the hands, feet and voice and what they do, and the mind, intellect, sense of 'I', thought, and breath, with all they handle.
50. 4.9The one who really sees, hears, smells, tastes, thinks and acts inside us is a knowing person. That inner person lives in the highest Self, which can never be destroyed.
51. 4.10Whoever knows this Self that cannot be destroyed reaches the highest thing. This Self has no shadow, no body and no color, and it shines. Knowing it, a person comes to know everything and becomes one with everything.
52. 4.11Pippalada finishes his answer to Gargya: whoever knows the undying Self, where the knower, the breaths, the senses and the elements all rest, knows everything and has reached into everything.

53. Part 5

    5.1Next, a student named Satyakama asks the teacher: if a person meditates on the sacred sound Om for the whole of life, until death, what does that person gain?
54. 5.2Pippalada answers that Om stands for both the highest Brahman, which is beyond everything, and the lower form of Brahman that we can picture. So by meditating on Om, a person reaches one or the other.
55. 5.3Om has three sounds: A, U and M. Someone who meditates only on the first sound, A, is soon reborn on earth as a human. There, with self-discipline, self-control and faith, that person lives a great life.
56. 5.4Someone who meditates on the first two sounds, A and U, goes after death to a heavenly world called the Soma-world. After enjoying it for a while, that person comes back to be born again.
57. 5.5Someone who meditates on all three sounds of Om, thinking of the Highest Person, goes to the light of the sun. Like a snake leaving its old skin, that person is freed from wrongdoing. Carried to the world of Brahma, the creator, that person learns to see the Highest Person who is everywhere.
58. 5.6The three sounds of Om, used separately, lead only to things that pass away. But when they are joined and used rightly in every kind of action, outer, inner or in between, the wise person does not shake with fear.
59. 5.7Through the different kinds of Vedic verses, a person reaches this world, the sky, or the world the poets describe. But through Om, the wise one reaches the Highest, which is peaceful and free from aging, death and fear.

60. Part 6

    6.1The last student, Sukesha, tells the teacher that a prince once asked him about the 'person of sixteen parts.' Sukesha honestly said he did not know, because telling a lie destroys a person to the root. The prince left in silence. Now Sukesha asks the teacher where that person is.
61. 6.2The teacher Pippalada replies that this person is right here inside the body. The sixteen parts all come from this person.
62. 6.3This inner person, before creating anything, thought: 'What is it that, when it leaves, I leave too, and when it stays, I stay?'
63. 6.4So this person first created prana, the life-breath. From the breath came faith, space, air, fire, water, earth, the senses, mind and food. From food came strength, self-discipline, sacred hymns, worship, the worlds, and names for everything.
64. 6.5The sage Pippalada explains that rivers lose their separate names when they flow into the ocean, and people then speak only of the ocean. In the same way, the sixteen parts that make up a person (breath, senses, mind and the rest) merge back into the true Self, called the purusha. Then only that Self remains, whole and undying.
65. 6.6Pippalada says that all the parts of a person rest in the true Self, like the spokes of a wheel meet in its hub. Know this Self, so that death cannot harm you.
66. 6.7The sage Pippalada tells his students that this is all he knows about Brahman, the highest reality. There is nothing higher than it.
67. 6.8The students praise Pippalada. They tell him he is like a father to them, because he carried them across from not knowing to true understanding, like a boat taking them to the far shore.