/lit/ - Literature

posting random pictures now
As presented in the Vedas, this idea is thickly overgrown with references to bizarre Brahmanic sacrificial rites and foolish superstitions, as anyone can see who has recourse to what are the best sources available in German, P. Deussen’s Sechzig Upanishads des Veda, aus dem Sanskrit ubersetzt (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1921) and Die Geheimlehre des Veda. Ausgewählte Texte (5th ed., ibid. 1919). We do not wish to give any account of such things here. But setting them aside, it seems to me that the really serious conclusions drawn by the Indian thinkers from this ‘doctrine of identity’ are two, one ethical, to which we should be glad to subscribe, and one eschatological, which we must, I suppose, reject. The ethical conclusion is contained in the following metrical translation into German which occurs somewhere in Schopenhauer’s writings, though I am not sure whether it comes from the Vedanta or the Bhagavadgita, which is inspired by the same spirit:

Die eine höchste Gottheit

In allen Wesen stehend

Und lebend, wenn sie sterben,

Wer diese sieht, ist sehend.

Denn welcher allerorts den höchsten Gott gefunden,

Der Mann wird durch sich selbst sich selber nicht verwunden.

The one all-highest Godhead

Subsisting in each being

And living when they perish—

Who this has seen, is seeing.

For he who has that highest God in all things found,

That man will of himself upon himself inflict no wound.

Or in Latin:

Qui videt ut cunctis animantibus insidet idem

Rex et dum pereunt, hand perit, ille videt.

Nolet enim sese dum cernit in omnibus ipsum

Ipse nocere sibi. Qua via summa patet.