ALBERT CAMUS AND THE ISHA UPANISHAD

                                                                               

ALBERT CAMUS AND THE ISHA UPANISHAD 

Gandhi Ji famously declared the Isha Upanishad to be the summit of human wisdom. He said if all the scriptures in the world were lost, as long as the first verse of the Isha Upanishad remained, then Hinduism would last forever. In the Book “ Notebooks 1935-1942”, translated by Philip Thody (Ivan R. Dee, 1963), on page 162, Albert Camus condenses the Upanishadic doctrine of Maya into a secular ethic:

"It is legitimate to glory in the diversity and quantity of experience, only if one is completely disinterested in the object of one's desires. There is also the leap into material things; and men who glory in the senses do so only because they are slaves to them. Here, too, they embrace the vulture that is eating them away."

The source is the Isha Upanishad Mantra,” Ishavasyam idam sarvam, tena tyaktena bhunjitha.” "All this world is enveloped by the Lord; enjoy through renunciation," later named as Maya in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad 4.10 and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. What is striking is that Camus retains the structure but removes the Lord. The theistic frame, Ishavasyamis excised and  the message is secularised.  Disinterestedness no longer derives from devotion to Brahman but from lucid indifference to possession. For Vedanta, detachment frees one for the Self; for Camus, it frees one for the world itself. To cling to sensory experience as an absolute is thus to remain a slave, embracing the vulture that devours us, mistaking Maya for fulfilment.

Few comparisons in modern comparative philosophy appear as improbable—and yet as intellectually rewarding—as that between the thought of Albert Camus and the philosophical vision of the Upanishads. Separated by more than two millennia, formed within entirely different civilisations, and speaking in radically different philosophical idioms, they nevertheless converge upon some of the most enduring questions of human existence: What is the nature of reality? How should one confront death? Can life possess dignity in the face of suffering? What constitutes authentic knowledge? Above all, how should one live without illusion?

Camus’s return to the Upanishads in 1959 is especially significant because it reveals the persistence, rather than the passing novelty, of his engagement with Indian thought. He had encountered the Upanishads decades earlier, reflected upon them critically in his notebooks, and continued to revisit their philosophical vision throughout his intellectual life. In Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951–1959, translated by Ryan Bloom, he records with striking simplicity: “Rereading the Upanishads. A strange peace.” The sentence is important precisely because it contains neither polemic nor philosophical judgement. The younger Camus had often examined Indian wisdom through the categories of negation, absurdity and escape. The mature Camus records an experience of inward stillness instead. His repeated return to the Upanishads deserves emphasis. They were not a casual Oriental reference, but part of a sustained philosophical engagement spanning decades and reaching into the final year of his life, touching on questions of consciousness, mortality, detachment, and peace.

( Avtar Mota )

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