2. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi Samvada: Introduction continued...
Vedanta Talks - Swami Sarvapriyananda
Vedanta Society of New York
4.8 • 714 Ratings
🗓️ 21 January 2026
⏱️ 74 minutes
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Summary
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (Sanskrit: बृहदारण्यकोपनिषद्, IAST: Bṛhadāraṇyakopaniṣad) is one of the Principal Upanishads and one of the first Upanishadic scriptures of Hinduism. A key scripture to various schools of Hinduism, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is tenth in the Muktikā or "canon of 108 Upanishads".
Brihadaranyaka literally means "great wilderness or forest". The Upanishad forms the last part, that is the fourteenth kānda of Śatapatha Brāhmana of "Śhukla Yajurveda". The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has six adhyayas (chapters) in total. It includes three sections: Madhu kānda (the 4th and 5th chapter of the fourteenth kānda of Satapatha Brahmana), Muni kānda (or Yajnavalkya Kanda, the 6th and 7th chapter of 14th kānda of Satapatha Brahmana) and Khila kānda (the 8th and 9th chapter of the fourteenth kānda of Satapatha Brahmana).
The first and second chapters of the Upanishad's Madhu kānda consists of six brahmanas each, with varying number of hymns per brahmana. The first chapter of the Upanishad's Yajnavalkya kānda consists of nine brahmanams, while the second has six brahmanas. The Khila kānda of the Upanishad has fifteen brahmanas in its first chapter, and five brahmanas in the second chapter.
In the fourth brahmana of the Second chapter of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajnavalkya and his wife Maitreyi engage in a dialogue about love and spirituality. Yajnavalkya states that one doesn't connect with and love forms, nor does one connect or love mind, rather one connects with the Self, the Self of one's own and one's beloved. All love is for the sake of one's Self, and the Oneness one realizes in the Self of the beloved. He then asserts that this knowledge of the Self, the Self, and Brahman is what makes one immortal, and the connection is also immortal. All longing is the longing for the Self, as the Self represents the true, the immortal, the real, and infinite bliss.
Reference material:
- Book:
- PDF of the entire Upanishad can be found https://dn790002.ca.archive.org/0/ite....
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | O Om Purnam, Dham, Daph, Purnamidam, Purnat, Purnat, Purnamadjjata, |
| 0:13.0 | Purnasya, Purnam Adaya, Purnam, Vhishi. |
| 0:20.0 | Om, Shanty, shanty, shanty. |
| 0:24.6 | Shanty. |
| 0:25.6 | Om, that Brahman is infinite and this universe is infinite. |
| 0:33.6 | The infinite proceeds from the infinite. |
| 0:36.6 | Then taking the infinitude of the infinite, it remains as the infinite Brahman alone. |
| 0:42.3 | Ome, peace, peace, peace. |
| 0:46.3 | Now, then, welcome back to the Priyadhyrnaaka class. |
| 0:52.3 | At the beginning of this Upanishad, we have the customary Shanti Mantra, the peace invocation. |
| 1:00.9 | And for this Upanishad, it is the Purnamadha of Purnamidam. |
| 1:05.8 | Now we have come across this peace invocation earlier also. |
| 1:09.0 | The last Upanishad which we were doing, the Isha Upanishad, |
| 1:11.6 | also has the same Purnamadha of Purnamidam. The reason being that this Purnamadha |
| 1:17.6 | Purnamidam is the Shanty Mantra associated with the Shukla-Jjurveda. So all the Upanishads which come in the Shukla-Jurveda, |
| 1:25.6 | like the Brihadarniaka, like the Isha-Wasya |
| 1:30.5 | Upanishadish, they will all have Purnamadha as their Shanty Mantra. |
| 1:36.2 | As I said, I will dwell a little bit more on this mantra. |
| 1:40.5 | Last time what we did was that we looked at the traditional Advaitic interpretation of this mantra, Purnavpurnavpudhavpurnavidam. |
| 1:49.0 | Based on the bhaasya, the commentary of Adi Shankaracharya, we saw what it means. |
| 1:55.0 | What does it mean according to the traditional interpretation? |
| 2:00.0 | It means that |
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