FREE LEARNING SERIES
Four Upanishadic dialogues: questions, examples and insight
Study Nachiketa, Shvetaketu, Maitreyi and Gargi through the course of their dialogues, with worked reasoning and answers.
4 lessons · Learn at your own pace
Begin the first lesson →
Learn, practise, explain
Try the exercise before reading its explanation. Answer the self-check questions in your own words, then compare your reasoning with the answers. Revisit any difficult section before moving on. No account or payment is needed.
- 01
Nachiketa and Yama Deva: three boons, a difficult choice, and the chariot
Follow Katha Upanishad 1.1–1.3 from a troubled gift to Yama Deva’s teaching about the deathless Self. The three boons, the choice between the good and the pleasant, and the chariot form one developing inquiry.
Learning outcome: Explain every boon, reconstruct Nachiketa’s refusal of substitutes, and map the chariot accurately while relating it to Yama Deva’s larger teaching.
Open lesson → - 02
Uddalaka and Shvetaketu: clay, the seed, salt, and tat tvam asi
Study the connected argument of Chandogya Upanishad 6: what a learned student still needs to know, how effects depend on their source, and why an unseen ground can be present throughout life.
Learning outcome: Reconstruct the dialogue, locate clay at 6.1.4, the seed at 6.12 and salt at 6.13, and explain both the force and limits of each analogy.
Open lesson → - 03
Yajnavalkya and Maitreyi: wealth, love, and knowing the knower
Follow the inquiry in Brihadaranyaka 2.4 alongside its fuller telling in 4.5. Maitreyi’s questions carry the conversation from property to immortality, from what we love to the Self through which anything is known.
Learning outcome: Distinguish the two tellings, explain Maitreyi’s objection about consciousness, and reconstruct the argument without turning self-knowledge into selfishness or annihilation.
Open lesson → - 04
Gargi and Yajnavalkya: the woven world and the Imperishable
Follow Gargi Vachaknavi’s two interventions in Brihadaranyaka 3.6 and 3.8. Her questions move through the world’s supports to akasha, then press beyond that answer towards akshara, the Imperishable.
Learning outcome: Separate the two interventions, explain the change in Gargi’s questioning, and distinguish akasha from akshara while following the negative and positive descriptions of the Imperishable.
Open lesson →