
The three points of departure
Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad
Two kinds of knowing — information and the knowledge that ends seeking — and the two birds on one tree.
c. 500–300 BCE
- When
- c. 500–300 BCE
- Where it sits
- The three points of departure
Source of India's national motto, and of the sharpest distinction in the tradition between what you can accumulate and what you can only realise.
The full-length study of this text is still being written. The summary above is complete, and the originals below are the whole thing rather than a description of it.
The text itself
Complete originals, in free copies wherever one exists.
Commentaries worth trusting
Read by teachers within the tradition, not summaries of it.
- Muṇḍakopaniṣad, Chinmaya commentary — Swami Chinmayananda The two birds on one tree, and the difference between the eater and the watcher.
This text sits inside a shelf with a shape. See how the whole corpus is organised, or start from today's message.