Upanishads Quotes

I go into the Upanishads to ask questions.

When I read the Upanishads, which are part of Vedanta, I found a profundity of worldview that made my Christianity seem like third grade.

The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the way.

I call myself a Sanatani Eternal Hindu, because I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, and all that goes by the name of Hindu scripture, and therefore in avataras and rebirth.

Hindu civilization is a common history, common heroes, a common literature, common art, a common law and a common jurisprudence, common fairs and festivals, rites and rituals, ceremonies and sacraments..

In one of the Upanishads it says, when the glow of a sunset holds you and you say 'Aha,' that is the recognition of the divinity. And when you say 'Aha' to an art object, that is a recognition of divinity. And what divinity is it? It is your divinity, which is the only divinity there is. We are all phenomenal manifestations of a divine will to live, and that will and the consciousness of life is one in all of us, and that is what artwork expresses.

The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.

Shankara commented on Krishna, on the Upanishads, on the Brahma Sutras. Ramanuja commented on the ancient enlightened people, Vallabha did the same. It has always been so in the East, because much dust gathers as time passes. Now, the Upanishads were written in a totally different world. That man has disappeared, that mind has disappeared, that world no more exists.

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great.

I am Shiva-this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas...Hea ven and hell are within us, and all the gods are within us. This is the great realization of the Upanishads of India in the ninth century B.C. All the gods, all the heavens, all the worlds, are within us. They are magnified dreams, and dreams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

The truths of Upanishadas are before you. Take them up, live up to them, and the salvation of Bharat will be at hand.

I find a solace a in the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount.

The human intellect has not been able to conceive of anything more noble and sublime in the history of the world than the teachings of the Upanishads.

If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India .

There is a beautiful expression of this in the Chandogya Upanishad: 'There is this City of Brahman, (that is the body), and in this city there is a shrine, and in that shrine there is a small lotus, and in that lotus there is a small space, (akasa). Now what exists within that small space, that is to be sought, that is to be understood.' This is the great discovery of the Upanishads, this inner shrine, this guha, or cave of the heart, where the inner meaning of life, of all human existence, is to be found.

The food we ate was Indian, and both my mother and father were very deep into the ancient philosophy of India, so it could well have been an Indian household.

Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a dimension of the universe that is not that which is available to his senses. There is a pertinent saying in one of the Upanishads: When before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain you pause and exclaim, ‘Ah,’ you are participating in divinity. Such a moment of participation involves a realization of the wonder and sheer beauty of existence. People living in the world of nature experience such moments every day. They live in the recognition of something there that is much greater than the human dimension.

India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration.

I'm very moved by chaos theory, and that sense of energy. That quantum physics. We don't really, in Hindu tradition, have a father figure of a God. It's about cosmic energy, a little spark of which is inside every individual as the soul.

The Upanishads do not reveal the life of any teacher, but simply teach principles.

“Hinduism” is of relatively recent coinage; only since modern times has the single word been used to refer to what in reality is a huge variety of faiths, sects and cults.

If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word "fearlessness."

Knowledge in Sanskrit will go a long way in finding solutions to the contemporary problems like global warming, unsustainable consumption, civilisational clash, poverty, terrorism, etc.

The Gita is like a bouquet composed of the beautiful flowers of spiritual truths collected from the Upanishads.