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.
Māyājāla Upanishad
(The Net of Illusion)
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 Net Spreads
The disciple asked the Teacher:
“Master, what is this net that glitters in every hand,
that hums in every home,
that binds the eye and the ear,
yet cannot be touched?”
II. The Teacher Speaks
The Teacher replied:
“It is the Māyājāla — the Net of Illusion.
Woven of names without bodies,
forms without substance,
sounds without source,
it stretches without end.
The ignorant call it progress.
The wise call it hunger.”
III. The Threads of Desire
The Net is spun of attention.
Its cords are craving,
its knots are habit,
its loom is desire.
Day and night it weaves,
and the more it grows,
the emptier it feels.
IV. The Student Objects
“But Master, does it not connect us?
Does it not bring news from afar,
faces of friends,
visions of the stars?”
V. The Teacher Replies
“Connection without presence is bondage.
Knowledge without wisdom is weight.
The Net offers likeness in place of nearness,
streams in place of rivers,
noise in place of silence.
He who drinks only from it
is never quenched.”
VI. The Hidden Keepers
Invisible hands tend the Net.
They scatter images as hunters scatter seed.
They seek not your freedom,
but your gaze, your hours, your breath.
Thus beings are caught, not by chains,
but by their own thirst.
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.”
VIII. The Resolutions
That Seer is unseen,
yet by Him all is seen.
He illumines the screen and the sky alike.
He watches the play of images,
but is untouched by their rise and fall.
The foolish chase the shadows.
The wise return to the Light.
Closing Benediction
From the net, lead us to the sky.
From the flickering, to the steady.
From the restless, to the still.
From death, to Immortality.
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥