The story

The first half of the Kena Upanishad teaches in paradoxes: Brahman is the eye of the eye, known to the one to whom it is unknown. The third part tells a story instead, in plain prose, and makes the same point in a way a child could follow.

Brahman, it begins, won a victory for the gods. In that victory of Brahman the gods grew great. And they thought: this victory is ours, this greatness is ours.

That is the whole fault. Nothing has been stolen and no one has been harmed. The gods have simply taken credit for a power that was never theirs.

Brahman knew their thought and appeared before them. They did not know what it was. The text calls it a yaksha, a wondrous being, a presence that commands awe.

So the gods turned to Agni and called him by his epithet, Jatavedas. Find out what this wonder is, they said. He agreed and ran toward it. It spoke to him first and asked who he was. I am Agni, he said; I am Jatavedas. And what power is in you, it asked. I can burn all this, whatever is on the earth. The being set a single blade of grass before him and told him to burn it. Agni went at it with all his speed and could not burn it. He turned back and told the gods that he could not learn what the wonder was.

The gods sent Vayu, the wind, next, and the same exchange took place. Who are you? I am Vayu, he said; I am Matarishvan. What power is in you? I can carry off all this, whatever is on the earth. The blade of grass was set before him, and he was told to carry it off. He went at it with all his speed and could not move it. He too came back with nothing.

The story does not mock Agni or Vayu. Their boasts are true in the ordinary course of things: fire does burn, and wind does carry. What the yaksha takes away is only the belief that the power was theirs. Set before the source of their power, the strongest of the gods cannot stir a single stalk.

Then the gods turned to Indra, Maghavan, the bountiful one, and asked him to find out. He ran toward it, and it vanished from him. In that very space, where it had been, Indra came upon a woman of great beauty, richly adorned: Uma Haimavati. He asked her what that wonder was.

The Upanishad gives her no introduction, only her name. Later tradition reads her as Parvati, daughter of Himavat, the mountain; the text itself says only Uma Haimavati, and lets her answer. It was Brahman, she said. In Brahman's victory you grew great. And from her words, the text says, Indra knew that it was Brahman.

Then the text explains an order among the gods. Agni, Vayu and Indra stand, as it were, above the others, because they came nearest to it and were the first to know that it was Brahman. And Indra stands above even those two, because he came nearest of all and knew it first.

The fourth part goes on to draw the teaching out of the story. Here is its instruction about Brahman: it is that which flashes out in the lightning, ah, and that which makes the eye blink, ah. That is the teaching with regard to the powers of nature. The yaksha came and went like that: known in the instant, never held.

With regard to the self, the text goes on, it is that toward which the mind seems to move, the thing by which the mind remembers it again and again.

Its name, the text says, is tadvanam, the beloved, the one to be longed for. As the beloved it is to be worshipped. Whoever knows it in that way, all beings long for that person in turn.

At this point a pupil speaks and asks to be taught the secret teaching, the upanishad. The teacher answers that it has already been told: we have told you the secret teaching about Brahman. Then the teacher names what holds it up. Its foundations are austerity, self-restraint and action. The Vedas are all its limbs. Truth is its home. Whoever knows it thus, the text ends, strikes away evil and stands firm in the endless, highest world of heaven.

That last list changes the feeling of the whole. The first half of the Kena could sound as if Brahman were only a matter of insight. The closing teaching sets that insight inside a life that is disciplined, active, rooted in the Veda and housed in truth. The gods' fault was pride in a borrowed power. The cure the text offers is not a new power but a way of living in which nothing is taken as one's own.

Figures and teachings in this dialogue

• Indra
• Uma Haimavati
• Teaching: All This Is Brahman

Questions to explore

• Agni and Vayu fail at a blade of grass. What was the test really testing?
• Why does the Spirit vanish as Indra approaches, and why is a teacher waiting in that same space?
• Why do Agni, Vayu and Indra stand above the other gods — and Indra above all?