On Mundaka Upanishad: Facts and figures

Acharya Prashant
7 min readFeb 16, 2022

Following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

अग्नीर्मूर्धा चक्षुषी चन्द्रसूर्यौ दिशः श्रोत्रे वाग्विवृताश्च वेदाः ।
वायुः प्रणो हृदयं विश्वमस्य पद्भ्यां पृथिवी ह्येष सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा ॥

agnīrmūrdhā cakṣuṣī candrasūryau diśaḥ śrotre vāgvivṛtāśca vedāḥ
vāyuḥ praṇo hṛdayaṃ viśvamasya padbhyāṃ pṛthivī hyeṣa sarvabhūtāntarātmā

Fire is the head of Him and His eyes are the sun and moon, the quarters His organs of hearing and the revealed Vedas are His voice, air is His breath, the universe is His heart, earth lies at His feet. He is the inner Self in all beings.

~ Verse 2.1.4

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Acharya Prashant (AP): “Fire is the head of Him and His eyes are the sun and moon, the quarters His organs of hearing,” by ‘quarters’ it means the directions, “and the revealed Vedas are His voice, air is His breath, the universe is His heart, earth lies at His feet. He is the inner self in all beings.”

Very tempting. What do you want to do with this? We want to sketch this thing out, don’t we? And that will make it so convenient for us. We will say, “This is the Upanishad in picture. What have I done? I have picturized the Rishi’s vision!”

Listen to the picture. “Fire is the head of Him.” Do you visualize fire at the head, flames and all? And flames as the hair, bunch of hair rising up as the flames, golden hair? “Fire is the head of Him and the eyes are the sun and moon.” Do you see that? I suppose you have already seen that in some very fancy…that is what artists are paid to do, no?

“And His eyes are the sun and moon, the directions His organs of hearing.” From all directions, stuff is coming to him and he is hearing everything, nothing is hidden. That is how it is in the picture. “And the revealed Vedas are His voice.” And the fellow is speaking out, and what you have flowing out is a stream of…

Acharya Prashant