Kena Upanishad

Kenopanisad

Anonymous / tradition · c. 600-400 BC · North India (exact location uncertain) (India) · philosophy

Kena Upanishad asks what impels mind, speech, breath, and the senses to act at all, and answers through a myth in which Agni and Vayu each fail a test set by a mysterious yaksha that vanishes before Indra can question it, leaving the goddess Uma Haimavati to reveal that the yaksha was Brahman, so Brahman cannot itself become an ordinary object of knowledge.