Seeing Through the Lens of Vedanta
NEW Vedanta in Plain English, Book 1: Who Am I, Really. Now available in paperback and eBook
Future Unwritten Upanishads
The Sacred Texts We Haven't Written Yet
What if the sages were alive today? What would they say about presidents tweeting, influencers selling salvation, or a marketplace that consumes our very attention? Future Unwritten Upanishads offers glimpses of those conversations—sometimes serious, sometimes satirical, always pointing toward the eternal behind the absurd. View the collection.
Ātmā-Bāzār Upanishad
(The Marketplace of Selves)
Invocation
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात् पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
Om. That is whole, this is whole. From the Whole, the whole arises.
Taking away the whole from the Whole, the Whole alone remains.
I. The Market Opens
There is a bazaar where selves are sold.
At dawn the stalls are raised; by noon the shouting begins.
Here one may purchase a smile, there a following,
here a brand, there an avatar.
All are polished, all are packaged.
The sellers cry: “Buy a self, buy a self!”
II. The Stalls
At one stall, the influencer sells faces.
At another, the politician sells promises.
At another, the guru-for-hire sells enlightenment by subscription.
At another, Wall Street sells futures without futures.
All are busy. All are loud. All are empty.
III. The Buyers
The buyers arrive with carts of attention.
Some pay with coins, others with years, others with their children’s hours.
Each goes home with a mask.
Each says: “Now I am complete.”
But the mask itches, and cracks, and slips away.
Tomorrow they return, hungrier than before.
IV. The Teacher's Voice
A voice was heard, though none knew from where:
“O fools, the self you sell was never yours.
The self you buy will never fit.
The market is endless,
but the buyer and the seller are the same.
What you trade is what you lose.”
V. The Paradox
He who buys many selves has none.
He who sells his self is not free, but chained.
He who refuses the market keeps what cannot be sold.
That which is not for sale is the true Self,
hidden in the crowd, silent behind the stalls.
VI. The Resolution
The market roars, yet the Self is still.
The masks crack, yet the Seer remains.
He who turns inward leaves the bazaar empty-handed,
but richer than all.
VII. The Way Beyond
Not by fleeing the Net,
for it covers the earth.
Not by smashing it,
for thought cannot shatter thought.
Only by knowing:
“I am not the woven.
I am not the weaving.
I am the Seer of the net,
the witness of all cords.”
Closing Benediction
From the market, lead us to the home.
From the masks, to the face.
From the false, to the true.
From death, to the Deathless.
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥