Yajnavalkya

Qu'est-ce que l'Absolu ? Dieu existe-t-il ?

«Not this, not this»: the ultimate cannot be the object of any knowing

L'innommableIl le dit expressément

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, Yājñavalkya designates the ātman, identical with brahman, by the formula «not this, not this» (neti neti): it is ungraspable because it cannot be grasped, indestructible because it is not destroyed. To Gārgī he describes the imperishable (akṣara) through a long series of negations —neither coarse nor fine, neither short nor long, with no inside or outside— and, at the same time, as that under whose command the sun and moon are held apart. The reason for so much negation is epistemological: the ultimate is the knower, and he asks Maitreyī by what the knower could be known. It is not nihilism; it is the impossibility of turning into an object what is the subject of all knowing.

Qui suis-je ? Existe-t-il un vrai soi ?

The ātman sees without being seen: it is its own light and is brahman

Le Soi est l'AbsoluIl le dit expressément

In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Yājñavalkya defines the ātman as the ultimate subject of experience: the one who sees without being seen, hears without being heard, thinks without being thought and knows without being known (3.7.23). When King Janaka asks him what the light of a person is once the sun and moon have set, the fire has gone out and the voice is silent, he answers that the ātman is then its own light (4.3.6). That ātman persists in waking, dream and deep sleep, where it becomes «one ocean, without a second» (4.3.32). And Yājñavalkya identifies it plainly with the principle of everything: «this ātman is brahman» (4.4.5). The true self is not the body or the mind, but what illumines them and cannot be known as an object.

Pourquoi souffrons-nous ?

Everything other than the ātman is afflicted

L'ignorance de ce que nous sommesIl le dit expressément

In the debate at Janaka's court, Yājñavalkya closes several of his answers with the same phrase: what is other than the ātman is afflicted (ārta). He says it to Uṣasta, to Kahola and to Uddālaka Āruṇi, after describing the ātman as the one who sees without being seen (3.4.2; 3.5.1; 3.7.23). Suffering is thus tied to living turned towards what is perceived as something else, instead of recognising oneself in the subject who perceives it. Before Janaka he adds the mechanism: a person is made of desire; as is his desire, so is his will, as his will, so his action, and as his action, so he becomes (4.4.5). Whoever knows the ātman, he tells Kahola, leaves behind hunger, thirst, sorrow, delusion, old age and death.

Que se passe-t-il après la mort ?

As a caterpillar moves from blade to blade, the ātman passes to another body

Renaissance selon le karmaIl le dit expressément

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka contains, in Yājñavalkya's mouth, one of the first formulations of transmigration according to one's deeds. What he discusses alone with Ārtabhāga, away from the debate, is action: one becomes good by good action and bad by bad (3.2.13). Before Janaka he describes death: the senses gather in the heart, and the ātman, with its knowledge, its deeds and its past experience, leaves the body like a caterpillar that reaches for another blade before letting go of the last, or like a goldsmith who gives gold a new and more beautiful form (4.4.3–4). As is his desire, so will be his action, and as his action, so he will become. But one who desires nothing, whose only desire is the ātman, does not transmigrate: being brahman, he goes to brahman (4.4.6).

Comment atteint-on la libération ou le salut ?

Whoever knows the ātman and desires nothing more becomes brahman

Par la connaissance directeIl le dit expressément

For the Yājñavalkya of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, liberation is knowledge. He tells Maitreyī that it is the ātman that must be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated upon, for by knowing it everything is known (2.4.5). He teaches Janaka that one who desires nothing, whose only desire is the ātman, does not transmigrate: being brahman, he goes to brahman (4.4.6). That knowledge goes together with renunciation: the brahmins who know the ātman, he says, give up the desire for sons, wealth and worlds, and live on alms (3.5.1). Ritual, Vedic study, generosity and austerity serve to make one wish to know it (4.4.22), but do not produce it. He himself, before departing as an ascetic, proposes to divide his goods between his two wives.

Faut-il un maître ?

Knowledge is won in debate and passes through a lineage of teachers

La communauté et la traditionCela se déduit de sa doctrine

Yājñavalkya appears in the Bṛhadāraṇyaka within a network of teachers and disciples. He is presented as a pupil of Uddālaka Āruṇi (6.3.7) and in turn teaches King Janaka, his wife Maitreyī and those who question him at court. Knowledge is tested in public, in the theological debate (brahmodya) for Janaka's thousand cows, where Yājñavalkya answers eight opponents, and transmitted in private, as when he withdraws with Ārtabhāga to speak of action. The Upaniṣad closes its sections with lists of lineages (vaṃśa) that trace the teaching from teacher to teacher back to its source. The text contains no thesis on the need for a teacher: what it shows is that knowledge of the ātman lives in a community that debates, transmits and tests.

Le monde est-il réel ?

Where there is something like duality, one sees the other

Apparence sur l'unique réalitéCela se déduit de sa doctrine

Yājñavalkya does not deny that the world exists: he explains to Gārgī that all that is above the sky, below the earth and between them is woven on space, and space on the imperishable (3.8). But he introduces a decisive distinction. He tells Maitreyī that where there is «something like duality» (dvaitam iva) one sees, hears and knows the other; when everything has become one's own ātman, with what and whom would one see? (2.4.14). Multiplicity belongs to ordinary experience; in the ultimate vision there is no second. Verses he quotes before Janaka add that there is no diversity here at all, and that whoever sees as if there were goes from death to death (4.4.19). The world is real as that in which the ātman is manifest, not as something separate from it.

Qu'est-ce que l'amour ?

The husband is not loved for the husband's sake, but for the ātman

Le désir ardent et l'unionIl le dit expressément

Yājñavalkya's most famous passage on love is in his farewell dialogue with Maitreyī. Before leaving as an ascetic he offers to divide his goods; she asks whether wealth would make her immortal, and he answers with a teaching: it is not for love of the husband that the husband is dear, but for love of the ātman; and likewise the wife, the sons, wealth, the gods and all beings (2.4.5). All love has the ātman as its ultimate object, and that is why it is the ātman that must be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated upon. Love, then, is not rejected: one discovers what it was always seeking. Beneath every bond lies a longing for the one thing that is not lost, and wisdom consists in recognising it.

Sommes-nous libres ou tout est-il déterminé ?

As is one's desire, so is one's will; as one's action, so one becomes

Le karma et le choixIl le dit expressément

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka ascribes to Yājñavalkya an early and precise formulation of the relation between action and destiny. Before Janaka he explains that a person is made of desire: as is his desire, so is his will; as his will, so his action; and according to the action he performs, so he becomes (4.4.5). As one acts and behaves, so one becomes: the one who does good becomes good; the one who does evil, evil. The past conditions, because at death the ātman departs accompanied by its deeds and experience; but the chain begins in desire, and that is why it can be broken. One who desires nothing, whose only desire is the ātman, leaves it. Responsibility thus rests on what each person desires and does.

Pourquoi méditer ou prier ?

It is the ātman that must be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated upon

Revenir à la source du jeIl le dit expressément

The phrase Yājñavalkya addresses to Maitreyī —it is the ātman, my dear, that must be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated upon (2.4.5)— became the programme of Vedāntic practice: hearing the teaching (śravaṇa), reflecting on it (manana) and meditating on it until it becomes evident (nididhyāsana). What is meditated on is not an image or an external god, but the subject itself: the one who sees without being seen and knows without being known. His dialogues with Janaka traverse the states of waking, dream and deep sleep to show what remains in all three, and ask the knower to become calm, restrained, withdrawn, patient and collected, and to see the ātman in himself (4.4.23).

La raison peut-elle connaître l'ultime ?

By what could one know the knower?

L'ultime est au-delà du mentalIl le dit expressément

Yājñavalkya is a master of debate: at Janaka's court he answers eight opponents and wins the king's thousand cows. And yet what he defends with arguments is that the ultimate cannot be reached by them. To Uṣasta, who asks him to show the ātman as one points to a cow, he replies that one cannot see the seer of seeing or think the thinker of thought (3.4.2). He asks Maitreyī by what one could know the knower (2.4.14). To Gārgī, who insists on asking on what brahman is woven, he warns her not to ask too much, or her head will fall off (3.6.1). Reasoning can clear away errors and point towards the subject, but the subject never becomes an object of thought.

Se retirer du monde ou le transformer ?

Those who know the ātman leave sons, wealth and worlds, and beg

Se retirer pour trouverIl le dit expressément

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka presents Yājñavalkya on the point of «going forth» from his home to lead a wandering life: before leaving he wishes to divide his goods between his two wives, and Maitreyī asks for his teaching instead (2.4.1; 4.5.2). In Janaka's debate he describes the knowers of the ātman as those who, giving up the desire for sons, wealth and worlds, live on alms (3.5.1). Knowledge of the ātman leads to detachment from everything else, and detachment is expressed in a way of life. Michael Witzel regards him as the first textual case of a «proto-renouncer», prior to the systematisation of the stages of life. The late Upaniṣads of renunciation made him the teacher par excellence of saṃnyāsa.