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Teacher of the Upanishads
श्वेताश्वतर
The sage who knew Brahman 'by the power of tapas and the grace of God' — the teacher of the Upanishad of the Lord, of yoga and of devotion.
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad carries a teacher's name in its title, and the teacher steps into view only near its end. In the last chapter the text says of him that by the power of tapas and by the grace of God the wise Shvetashvatara knew Brahman, and proclaimed it to the atyashramins — ascetics of the highest stage, gone beyond the ordinary stages of life — as the supreme and purifying teaching, cherished by the company of seers. That sentence is almost all the biography there is. The name is usually read as "one who has a white mule", from shveta, white, and ashvatara, mule. It is a plain name, and the text adds nothing to it.
What the sentence does give is his manner of knowing, and it is unusual. Many Upanishadic teachers reach Brahman by inquiry: they ask, test, and are sent back to look again. Shvetashvatara's knowing has two sources, named side by side. One is tapas, his own disciplined effort. The other is devaprasada, the grace of God, something given rather than won. The Upanishad that bears his name holds both together, and that pairing is the key to its whole character.
It is the Upanishad of the personal God. It opens with a circle of those who speak of Brahman asking what the cause of all this is — time, nature, necessity, chance, the elements — and finding the answer in meditation, in the power of God hidden in its own qualities. That God has a face and names. He is Rudra, who stands alone without a second; he is Shiva, the kindly one; he is deva, God, and the great Lord, Ishvara, who wields maya and casts the world as its master. Brahman here is not only a principle to be understood but a Lord to be approached.
It is also a teacher of yoga, and a practical one. The second chapter tells the student to hold the body steady, with chest, neck and head upright, to draw the senses with the mind into the heart, and to govern the breath gently. It asks for a clean, level place, free of pebbles and gravel, pleasant with the sound of water and sheltered from the wind. It lists the forms that come before the vision of Brahman — mist, smoke, sun, wind, fire, fireflies, lightning, crystal, moon — and the first signs of progress: lightness, health, freedom from craving, a clear complexion, a pleasant voice. Few early texts speak of the practice so concretely.
The last verse joins all of this to the heart. The things declared here, it says, shine forth for the great-souled one who has the highest bhakti, devotion, for God, and for the teacher as for God. That verse is commonly cited as the first appearance of the word bhakti in the Upanishads, and the path it opens runs a long way into later Hindu devotion. Shvetashvatara stands at its start: a sage known by one sentence, who taught that the seeker's effort, the Lord's grace and the pupil's love meet in the same knowledge.
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