A story · Upanishads · Brihadaranyaka · What the Thunder Says

Da, Da, Da: What the Thunder Says

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 5.2

The story · English

Prajapati, the lord of all creatures, had three kinds of children. There were the gods, there were men, and there were the devils. All three came to live with their father, not as children at home but as his students, the way someone in those days would go and live with a teacher to learn what is sacred. They kept to that life the whole way through. They lived near him, they learned from him, and they waited until their time as students was complete. Nothing in this story is rushed, and Prajapati was not a teacher who rushed. When the long stretch of learning was over, the gods were the first to come forward. They stood before their father and teacher and asked him, simply, 'Speak to us, sir.'

Prajapati did not give the gods a long speech. He did not even give them a sentence. He spoke one syllable to them, and only one. 'Da.' Then he waited a moment and asked, 'Did you understand?' This was the test. A teacher can say a great deal, but here he had said almost nothing, and the gods had to find the meaning on their own. They answered him, 'We understood.' 'Then tell me what I said,' is what the question meant, and they told him. 'You said to us, Restrain yourselves.' Prajapati looked at them and said, 'Yes. You did understand.' That was the whole lesson for the gods. One sound, heard as a word about holding back. They had their answer, and they stepped aside.

Then it was the turn of men. They came to Prajapati the same way the gods had, at the end of the same long time of study, and they asked him in the same words. 'Speak to us, sir.' He gave them exactly what he had given the gods. Not more, not something new for a new set of students. The same single syllable. 'Da.' And he asked them the same question. 'Did you understand?' Men answered, 'We understood.' But what they had heard was not what the gods had heard. They said, 'You said to us, Give.' Prajapati did not correct them. He did not tell them they had got it wrong, or that the gods had found the true meaning. He said, 'Yes. You did understand.'

Last of all came the devils. They too had lived the life of students with their father, and they too came at the end of it and asked, 'Speak to us, sir.' By now you know what he did. Prajapati spoke the one syllable a third time, unchanged. 'Da.' And for the third time he asked, 'Did you understand?' The devils said, 'We understood.' And what they had heard was different again. 'You said to us, Be compassionate.' So the same sound, from the same teacher, had reached three kinds of students and come out as three different instructions. Prajapati answered the devils just as he had answered the others, with the same patience. 'Yes,' he said. 'You did understand.' Each of them had heard what was meant for them.

And the story does not end in Prajapati's house. It ends in the sky. The Upanishad says that this same teaching is still being repeated, by a divine voice that everyone has heard, whether or not they have ever studied anything. That voice is thunder. When it rolls across the sky, listen to it: Da, Da, Da. Three times over, the way Prajapati said it to his three kinds of children. Restrain yourselves. Give. Be compassionate. The gods heard the first, men heard the second, the devils heard the third, but the thunder says all three to everyone at once. That is how the chapter closes, with the storm carrying the lesson on. So one should practise these three together: self-restraint, giving, and compassion.

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