Him I call indeed a Brahmana who in this world has risen above both ties, good and evil, who is free from grief, from sin, and from impurity.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who is bright like the moon, pure, serene, undisturbed, and in whom all gayety is extinct.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who has traversed this miry road, the impassable world, difficult to pass, and its vanity, who has gone through, and reached the other shore, is thoughtful, steadfast, free from doubts, free from attachment, and content.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who in this world, having abandoned all desires, travels about without a home, and in whom all concupiscence is extinct.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who, having abandoned all longings, travels about without a home, and in whom all covetousness is extinct.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who, after leaving all bondage to men, has risen above all bondage to the gods, and is free from all and every bondage.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who has left what gives pleasure and what gives pain, who is cold, and free from all germs of renewed life:  the hero who has conquered all the worlds.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who knows the destruction and the return of beings everywhere, who is free from bondage, welfaring (Sugata), and awakened (Buddha).

Him I call indeed a Brahmana whose path the gods do not know, nor spirits (Gandharvas), nor men, whose passions are extinct, and who is an Arhat.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who calls nothing his own, whether it be before, behind, or between; who is poor, and free from the love of the world.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana, the manly, the noble, the hero, the great sage, the conqueror, the indifferent, the accomplished, the awakened.

Him I call indeed a Brahmana who knows his former abodes, who sees heaven and hell, has reached the end of births, is perfect in knowledge, a sage, and whose perfections are all perfect.

THE UPANISHADS

Translation by F. Max Mueller

INTRODUCTION

The “Upanishads” are reckoned to be from a hundred and fifty to a hundred and seventy in number.  The date of the earliest of them is about B.C. 600; that is an age anterior to the rise of Buddha.  They consist of various disquisitions on the nature of man, the Supreme Being, the human soul, and immortality.  They are part of Sanscrit Brahmanic literature, and have the authority of revealed, in contradistinction to traditional truth.  We see in these books the struggle of the human mind to attain to a knowledge of God and the destiny of man.  The result is the formulation of a definite theosophy, in which we find the Brahman in his meditation trusting to the intuitions of his own spirit, the promptings of his own reason, or the combinations of his own fancy, for a revelation