एको बहूनां यो विदधाति कामान् ।
तमात्मस्थं येऽनुपश्यन्ति धीराः
तेषां शान्तिः शाश्वती नेतरेषाम् ॥ १३॥
eko bahūnāṃ yo vidadhāti kāmān .
tamātmasthaṃ ye’nupaśyanti dhīrāḥ
teṣāṃ śāntiḥ śāśvatī netareṣām .. 13..
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Commentary by Swami Krishnananda of the great Divine Life Society
Nityo’nityānāṁ cetanaś cetanānām eko bahūnām yo vidadhāti kāmān, tam ātmastham yenupaśyanti dhīrāḥ; teṣāṁ śāntiḥ śasvatī, netareṣāṁ (2.2.13). Peace is like happiness. Peace cannot be had as long as we do not know the way. Silence, or peace, is not absence of outward noise or tumult. Even if all people keep silent, there cannot be real peace, for there will be a burning within. Peace is another name for happiness. It is not a dead substance; it is vitality. It is not sleep. Peace is attended by consciousness; it is connected with an awareness of it. Then only has it meaning. If we are wealthy but not aware of it, the fact has no meaning for us. It is awareness that gives meaning to life. Maya is nothing but the net spread out by the senses who deceive us. We mistake one thing for the other. This is adhyasa, this is maya. Under such circumstances, there cannot be peace.
Peace is the nature of the Atman, as is bliss. The more we manifest the Atman in our life, the more do we become blissful, powerful. Our face glows with radiance. Not only have we peace within, but we can also radiate it outward, like the sun. It is eternal among all the so-called imperishable things of the world. Parinama nitya is the temporarily permanent, not the eternally permanent. A building is permanent, but not eternal. While the objects of the world can be called permanent, they are not eternal; but within them is a permanent substance, the Atman.
There is a consciousness behind all things. Intelligence is immanent in human beings, in animals, in the vegetable kingdom. In the subtler realms, such as svarga, etc., where we are in a spiritual world, not in an intellectual world like ours, we are closer to Reality, and the senses become more and more ethereal and less and less useful, so that when we reach the highest, Brahmaloka, we do not need the senses at all, and one mirrors the other, one reflects the other. This is the experience where one transcends the world of senses, and so it is the purified intelligence transcending the rationality of the world.
Even heavenly satisfactions of the world are only forms of that one Supreme Satisfaction. The ocean can be diverted through various channels, and it can run through them with greater or lesser intensity, but the content of water is the same irrespective of its force through the various outlets. Similarly, the Atman is in the same intensity in all beings. If a mirror is clean, it will reflect well. If it is painted with tar or any other colour, it will reflect accordingly. Higher forms of life reveal greater and greater manifestations of the Atman, until we come to the human level and even higher ones. When a creeper moves towards the light of the sun, it is seeking the Atman in its own blind manner. When trees strike their roots deep inside the earth, it is for the sake of the Atman. When birds fly hither and thither in search of food, when animals graze in the field, they are seeking the Atman. When we, human beings, work hard, it is not for any other reason but for that Atman which we have not yet found. We have been creeping like plants, grazing like animals, and we have not found the Atman, because it is not to be found by these means. These variegated forms are the great drama of the Atman; but we are involved in it, and so we do not enjoy it. Enjoyment is for the spectator, not for the dramatist. Such is the degeneration into which consciousness has descended. The one experience of the Atman appears to have taken the manifold forms of this world. Suppose our different limbs became self-conscious, what would our condition be? They would fight among themselves. War taking place in one’s own body is insanity. The wars in the world are only a kind of insanity, a tension between forms which are of a single Being.
“My dear Nachiketas, never can you find peace in this world which is torn asunder,” says Yama. “Peace is to those who recognise the one Atman as present in their own self, as the supreme Enjoyer, and not as the object of enjoyment.”
“Know the Knower, see the Seer, understand the Understander,” says the Upanishad. Who is to understand the Understander? There is a strange way of knowing the Knower. It is called atma sakshatkara, or Self-realisation. To them who have attained this belongs real peace.
Kathopanishad – Verse 13 – kathopanishad-2-2-13-nityo’nityānāṃ – In Sanskrit with English Transliteration, Meaning and Commentary by Adi Shankaracharya (Sankara Bhashya) – Katha-2-2-13
Sri Shankara’s Commentary (Bhashya) translated by S. Sitarama Sastri
Again, deathless among mortal things, conscious among the conscious, such as Brahma and other living beings. As the power of burning in water and the rest, which are not fire in themselves, is due to fire, so, the intelligence of others is due to the intelligence of the âtman; again, he, omniscient and lord over all, dispenses to those having desire, i.e., to those in samsâra, according to their respective karma, the fruits of karma and desired objects, according to his grace, himself one, to many, without effort. To such intelligent men as see him seated in their selves, eternal peace accrues, not to others, i.e., to those who do not see so.