Isopanisad, translated and analyzed

[Nitaidas]

Greetings Everyone,

It has been a while since I have added to this forum. I hope to improve on that. It has been a busy year. One of the many projects I have been working on is one with one of my friends, a translation of the Isa Upanisad with grammatical analysis and commentaries. My friend Lloyd suggested the idea as a way to teach both the Upanisadic philosophy/worldview and Sanskrit grammar at the same time. I have a sample to share with you. The project is nearly complete. We both thought when we started to work on the project that it would be an easy one: only eighteen mantras. Boy was that foolish. It is amazing where the project led us and what we learned. This short work packs a lot of complexity and history into its slim frame. Even after working on it for over two years we are still discovering new depths and new questions and parts of it still escape us. It has been and continues to be a great way to enter into the world of the ancient Upanisadic sages.

You can grab it here.

[Nitaidas]

Greetings Everyone,

I just want to update this post. The Isopanisad has been out for half a year already. My friend Lloyd Pflueger and I worked together on this and finally finished it earlier this year. It is available on Amazon around the world and at Barnes & Noble. For some reason, Amazon only lists Lloyd's name as the translator, though when you look at the book, both names are present. It's an amazing text, well worth studying carefully, memorizing, and meditating on. I hope at some point to add two more commentaries to it, that of Baladeva Vidyabhusana and that of Syamalala Gosvamin. At present we have only Sankara's and Madhva's. I have a collection of over 51 Sanskrit commentaries on the Upanisad from almost every school and sub-school.

Check it out here.

Nitai das

[Nitaidas]

Hi All,

After completing my review of Steven Rosen's book, I noticed that our translation of the Isopanisad is also featured at the Reading Religion site. It is waiting for a review. Any scholars out there willing to write a review of the book? Lloyd and I would very much appreciate it. One doesn't have to be affiliated with any university. I am not and I just called myself an independent scholar. You will get a free copy of the book. One small warning: it is a tough text with roots that go way back in Vedic tradition. I believe that it was written before the sectarianism of later Hinduism (Vaisnavism, Saivism, and Saktism), but it sets forth some ideas and orientations that profoundly affected those later sects. One cannot trust the commentators, even and especially not Sankara. They wrote a thousand years after the text in a different time and different India. Moreover, the text itself grew over time as the author of one of the essays included in the work, Mislav Jezic, demonstrates. Anyway, fear not, step up and tackle the text. Lloyd and I would love to get some critical feedback on the book. Even though the commentators in my view misinterpret the text, they are valuable because they tell us how the text was understood in the later tradition. Therefore, we have plans of adding more commentaries to it in the future. There is one Sakto commentary, for instance, that presents a view that is extraordinarily close to a Caitanyite interpretation. Probably a Bengali writer applying tantra notions of sakti to the ancient text.

Nd