Mundaka Upanishad
Mundaka Upanisad
Ritual knowledge, the 'lower knowledge' of the Vedas, cannot deliver liberation, and only the 'higher knowledge' of brahman, grasped directly, ferries a person across ignorance the way a raft crosses a river.
- lower ritual knowledge versus higher knowledge of brahman
- sacrifice as an unseaworthy boat for liberation
- the two birds on one tree (entangled self and witness)
- source of the motto 'satyameva jayate'
Attached to the Atharvaveda, it opens by sharply dividing knowledge into a lower kind, the Vedas, grammar, ritual, and the sciences, and a higher kind, direct knowledge of brahman, arguing sacrifice is a leaky boat that cannot carry anyone to liberation. It contains the tradition's best-known restatement of the image of two birds on one tree, one eating the fruit and one merely watching, symbolizing the entangled self and the detached witness, an image that originates earlier in Rigveda 1.164.20 and is echoed again in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad. Its phrase 'satyameva jayate,' truth alone triumphs, became independent India's national motto.
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