History,ANCIENT

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Explain, in your own words, what the Upanishads means by the doctrine “Atman is Braham”. What implications does this doctrine have for philosophical questions concerning metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics? In your answer be sure to include stating the implications the doctrine has for traditional problems in personal identity theory.

1. Describe the details of the chariot analogy put forth in the Katha Upanishad (p. 51). Specifically, state what each part of the chariot is said to represent in human existence. Summarize Nachiketa’s answer to Yama regarding why the life of sense pleasures is not preferable to the life of being a true seeker of knowledge. What is it about this answer that leads Elizabeth Schlitz’s article (Two Chariots: The Justificaation of the Best Life in The KATHA UPANISHAD AND PLATO’S PHAEDRUS) to call it an “internalist” (chiefly Philosophy)account?

Pg 51

The sacred fire in the name of the lord.

May we light the fire of Nachiketa

That burns out the ego and enables us

To pass from fearful fragmentation

To fearless fullfillness in the changeable whole.

Know the Self as Lord of the Chariot.

The body as the chariot itself,

The discriminating intellect as charioteer,’

And the mind as reins.

The senses, say the wise, are the horses:

Selfish desires ae the roads they travel

When the Self is confused with the body,

Mind and senses, the point out, he seems

To enjoy pleasure and suffer sorrow.

When one lacks discrimination

And his mind is undisciplined, the senses

Run hither and thither like wild horses.

But they obey the rein like trained horses

When one has discrimination and has made

The mind one-pointed. Those who lack

Discrimination, with little control

Over their thoughts and far from pure,

Reach not the pure state of immortality

But wander from death to death: but those

Who have discriminations, with a still mind

And a pure heart: reach journey’s end.

Never Again to fall into the jaws of death.

With a discriminating intellect

As charioteer and a trained mind as reins,

They attain the supreme goal of life

To be united with the Lord Of Love.

The senses derive from objects of sense-perception,

Sense objects from mind, mind from intellect,

And intellect from ego:

Ego from undifferentiated consciousness,

And consciousness from Brahman.

Brahman is the first cause and last refuge.

Brahman, the hidden Self in everyone

Does not shine forth. He is revealed only

To those who keep their mind one-pointed

On the Lord Of Love and thus develop

A superconscious manner of knowing.

Meditation enables them to go

Deep and deeper into consciousness,

From the world of words to the world of thoughts,

Then beyond thoughts to Wisdom in the Self.

Get up! Wake up! Seek the guidance of an

Illuminated teacher and realize the Self.

Sharp like a razor’s edge, the sages say,

Is the path difficult to traverse.

Those who realize the self

Are forever free from death.

The wise who gain experiential knowledge

Of this timeless tale of Nachiketa

They are indeed fit for eternal life.

FIN