The verse and its meaning · Upanishads · Isha · The Whole of It

Two Kinds of Darkness

Isha Upanishad 1.9

अन्धं तमः प्रविशन्ति येऽविद्यामुपासते । ततो भूय इव ते तमो य उ विद्यायाँ रताः

Meaning · English

Into blind darkness go those who devote themselves to not-knowing. Into a darkness that is greater still, so it seems, go those who take their delight in knowledge.

Three words carry the verse. Avidya is a-vidya, not-knowing. It is the working knowledge of daily life and ritual, the doing side of things. Vidya, from the root vid, to know, is knowing as study and understanding. Upasate means to sit close beside, to attend on, to give oneself to. So the Isha is speaking of devotion, not casual interest. Andham tamas is blind darkness, a dark in which one cannot even see that it is dark. The Isha says two things. Those who give themselves wholly to not-knowing, to action and routine, walk into that dark. Those who give themselves wholly to knowing walk into a greater one. The reason is quiet. Each path, taken as the whole of life, leaves out half of what a person needs, and the person cannot see what is missing. Knowing that has become a pleasure in itself can feel like light while it keeps one standing still. The next two verses say that the wise taught these as two different things, to be held together. Shankara reads avidya here as ritual works, and vidya as knowledge of the deities, a devotional understanding. He does not read vidya as the final knowledge of the Self.

Two cooks. One repeats his mother's motions every morning and never asks why the dough rises. The other has read every book on bread and has never touched flour. Both stand in a kitchen and neither can feed anyone well. The first has practice without understanding, the second understanding without practice.

1. Choose one thing you do from habit, such as making tea, a walk, or a daily prayer. Next time, do it slowly and ask once why you do it this way. 2. Choose one thing you only know from reading or hearing. Spend ten minutes today doing it with your hands, however badly. 3. In the evening, write one line on which of the two felt more like going through the dark.

A woman sits by her father's bed at three in the morning. She has read a shelf of books on caring for the elderly. The nurse asks her to help turn him, and she realises she knows the reasons for everything and has never done it. Across the corridor, an aide who has done it ten thousand times turns patients without looking at their faces. The Isha's saying shows both. The daughter knows and has not practised. The aide practises and has stopped noticing. Each is a little blind, in a different way. In that moment the daughter lets the nurse's hands show her. The aide, asked a simple question by the daughter, has to say why he does it that way. Each fills in the half they lacked. The verse does not say how to get through the night, and it does not ease the grief of watching a parent weaken. It is no substitute for the doctor's judgement about his care. Ordinary experience confirms only that doing without understanding and understanding without doing both go stale.

अर्थ · हिन्दी

In this book

• Before: The Bodiless Orderer of Things · Isha Upanishad 1.8
• Next: Each Path Bears Its Own Fruit · Isha Upanishad 1.10
• All of Upanishads · Ask Krishna about it

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