Life, a sacrifice

The Isa Vasya captures the ideal way of life an individual should adopt during his tenure in this world and adds that such a person may be content to live a hundred years and attain Brahman. ‘He is indeed blessed when he lives life without attachments and does his duty in earnest without desire and without yearning for its fruits.’ This kind of orientation towards perceiving life as a sacrifice, meaning, living an austere life with the aim to get liberated eventually is central to the teaching in the Upanishads, pointed out Sri R. Krishnamurthy Sastrigal in a discourse. They also teach many powerful mantras that can be meditated with faith and practised with dedication to attain goals, worldly and spiritual.

In the Chandogya Upanishad (III-16), for instance, there is a mantra that prays for one’s own long life when there is a likelihood of it being cut short owing to sudden sickness or disease. This prayer is connected with the Gayatri mantra, a powerful mantra which is capable of protecting everything existing in this universe. “The Gayatri is what the earth is, for, on it everything here that has come to be. is established.” The idea is that the spiritual aspirant wishes to complete the rituals and duties and seeks protection from untimely death that might overtake him. He is engaged in the performance of the morning, midday and evening libations with the Gayatri hymn. The verse says that in the event of any sickness overtaking him during the three periods of his libations, which metaphorically is taken to be his life span of a hundred and sixteen years, he prays to the respective deities to grant him extension of time to complete the rituals successfully. The symbolic implication is that this mantra has the power to ward off premature death and to grant one long life so that he can strive to get liberated.