Arrow sharpened by devotion, and the mighty weapon of the Upanishad || On Mundaka Upanishad (2021)

Acharya Prashant
8 min readApr 18, 2024

धनुर्गृहीत्वौपनिषदं महास्त्रं शरं ह्युपासानिशितं संधयीत । आयम्य तद्भावगतेन चेतसा लक्ष्यं तदेवाक्षरं सोम्य विद्धि ॥

dhanurgṛhītvaupaniṣadaṃ mahāstraṃ śaraṃ hyupāsāniśitaṃ saṃdhayīta āyamya tadbhāvagatena cetasā lakṣyaṃ tadevākṣaraṃ somya viddhi

Take up the bow of the Upanishad, that mighty weapon, set to it an arrow sharpened by adoration, draw the bow with a heart wholly devoted to the contemplation of That, and O fair son, penetrate into That as thy target, even into the Immutable.

~ Verse 2.2.3

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Acharya Prashant (AP): “Take up the bow of the Upanishad, that mighty weapon, set to it an arrow sharpened by adoration, draw the bow with a heart wholly devoted to the contemplation of That, and O fair son, penetrate into That as thy target, even into the Immutable.”

The Upanishad is the mighty weapon, the bow, and you have to shoot into the Immutable, that one Truth that the Upanishads worship. So, the Upanishad is the bow, the Truth is the target, but the verse does not explicitly state what is to be shot into the Truth. What is it? I will re-read the verse for you.

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