قاعة القراءة

The teaching to Śvetaketu (Chāndogya Upaniṣad, book VI)

Uddalaka Aruni

Sixteen prose sections. Śvetaketu returns conceited after twelve years of study, and his father teaches him what he did not learn: how, by knowing one thing, everything is known. He sets out the origin of the world from being (sat), "one without a second", which produces heat, water and food; the threefold composition of all things; the experiment of fasting; and nine illustrations — honey, rivers, the tree, the fig seed, salt in water, the man from Gandhāra, the dying man, the thief put to the ordeal of the axe — ending with the refrain "tat tvam asi, Śvetaketu". It is one of the founding texts of Vedānta.