Maitri Upanishad — The Six-Limbed Yoga and the Knower of the Field

N=1 distillation. Source: Robert Ernest Hume, The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Oxford University Press, 1921, Internet Archive. Quotes pending Phase 7. Tags: ../00-methodology.md. Citation Maitri <prapāṭhaka>.<n> (Hume's numbering: seven prapāṭhakas, each with numbered sentences).

Upanishad role

The Maitri (or Maitrāyaṇīya) is the latest of the principal Upanishads in Hume's set — late enough that it cites the Bhagavad Gītā by analogy, names the three guṇas as a developed psychological scheme, and gives the earliest extant scriptural listing of the six-limbed yoga. It is a transitional and syncretic text, knitting Upanishadic Vedānta with proto-Sāṃkhya (the bhūtātman / kṣetra-jña distinction, the five subtle elements, the doctrine of the four sheaths) and with proto-Yoga (the six-limbed practice, the Suṣumnā channel, the Om-mediated ascent through sound to non-sound Brahma). Its narrative frame is itself distinctive: King Bṛhadratha, having installed his son on the throne and gone to the forest, performs a thousand-day austerity standing with arms erect; the sage Śākāyanya appears and offers a boon; Bṛhadratha asks not for power or pleasure but for the knowledge of the Self — and prefaces his request with a sustained lament for the vanity of embodied life ("in this ill-smelling, unsubstantial body, which is a conglomerate of bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears…") and for the dissolution of all that seems great (great kings, great races of demigods, even oceans, mountains, and the pole-star all pass away) — "in this cycle of existence (saṃsāra) what is the good of enjoyment of desires?" This Bṛhadratha-frame supplies the strongest pessimistic-of-life opening in the principal corpus and converges sharply with the Buddha's first noble truth in claim-level vocabulary. Four load-bearing teachings follow: (1) the body as a chariot driven by an unqualified, non-acting Self distinct from the active embodied soul; (2) the bhūtātman / kṣetra-jña / inner Person distinction (Maitri 2.5 contains the earliest extant occurrence of kṣetra-jña in this technical sense, predating the Gītā's appropriation in chapter 13); (3) the dharma-antidote — svādhyāya (Veda-study) and svadharma under the four guṇa-marked stages of life, with tapas as the chain "goodness from austerity, mind from goodness, the Self from mind"; (4) the six-limbed yoga — prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhyāna, dhāraṇā, tarka, samādhi — and the meditation on OM as the bridge between sound-Brahma and the non-sound Brahma above. The Maitri's syncretism is the textual seam at which Vedānta and Yoga become available to one another, and where the Gītā's three-yogas architecture (knowledge, action, devotion + the underlying dhyāna) finds an Upanishadic kin in narrative form.

Atomic statements

Maitri-C1: King Bṛhadratha's renunciation and lament — "in this ill-smelling, unsubstantial body… afflicted with desire, anger, covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility, death, disease, sorrow… what is the good of enjoyment of desires?" "In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well." (OPERATIONAL / MOKSHA)

• Maitri 1.3, 1.4: "Sir, in this ill-smelling, unsubstantial body, which is a conglomerate of bone, skin, muscle, marrow, flesh, semen, blood, mucus, tears, rheum, feces, urine, wind, bile, and phlegm, what is the good of enjoyment of desires? In this body, which is afflicted with desire, anger, covetousness, delusion, fear, despondency, envy, separation from the desirable, union with the undesirable, hunger, thirst, senility, death, disease, sorrow, and the like, what is the good of enjoyment of desires? And we see that this whole world is decaying… In this sort of cycle of existence (saṃsāra) what is the good of enjoyment of desires, when after a man has fed on them there is seen repeatedly his return here to earth? Be pleased to deliver me. In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well. Sir, you are our way of escape — yea, you are our way of escape!"
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: saṃsāra · Note: the strongest pessimistic-of-life opening in the principal corpus — claim-level convergence with the Buddha's first noble truth (dukkha) and with the Kaṭha's frame of "the good vs. the pleasant," sharpened here into a cosmic-pessimist key.

Maitri-C2: The body is the chariot, the senses are the reins, the mind is the charioteer, the whip is one's character — and the unqualified Self is the driver, who acts only "as it seems" and "in the unreal." (OPERATIONAL+FOUNDATIONAL / YOGA-PATHS+ATMAN-BRAHMAN)

• Maitri 2.6 [d], 2.7: "'Let me enjoy objects.' Thence, having pierced these openings, He goes forth and 'enjoys objects with five reins.' These reins of his are the organs of perception. His steeds are the organs of action. The body is the chariot. The charioteer is the mind. The whip is made of one's character (prakṛti-maya). By Him forsooth driven, this body goes around and around, like the wheel [driven] by the potter. … Verily, this Soul (Ātman) — poets declare — wanders here on earth from body to body, unovercome, as it seems, by the bright or the dark fruits of action. He who on account of his unmanifestness, subtilty, imperceptibility, incomprehensibility, and selflessness is [apparently] unabiding and a doer in the unreal — he, truly, is not a doer, and he is abiding. Verily, he is pure, steadfast and unswerving, stainless, unagitated, desireless, fixed like a spectator, and self-abiding."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: prakṛti, ātman · Note: the chariot image echoes Kaṭha 3.III–IX but inverts the soteriology: in Kaṭha discipline of the chariot reaches the goal; in Maitri the driver is already non-acting, and the discipline is to see this. The "fixed like a spectator" recalls Muṇḍaka 3.1.1 (the silent witness bird) — strong internal-D=2 with the Gītā's kṣetra-jña (G13).

Maitri-C3: The kṣetra-jña doctrine — "that part of Him is what the intelligence-mass here in every person is — the spirit (kṣetra-jña, 'knower-of-the-body') which has the marks of conception, determination, and self-conceit (abhimāna), Prajāpati under the name of individuality." (FOUNDATIONAL / ATMAN-BRAHMAN)

• Maitri 2.5: "Verily, that subtile, ungraspable, invisible one, called the Person, turns in here [in the body] with a part [of himself] without there being any previous awareness, even as the awakening of a sleeper takes place without there being any previous awareness. Now, assuredly, indeed, that part of Him is what the intelligence-mass here in every person is — the spirit (kṣetra-jña, 'knower-of-the-body') which has the marks of conception, determination, and self-conceit (abhimāna), Prajāpati (Lord of Creation) under the name of individuality."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: kṣetra-jña, abhimāna · Note: this is, by Hume's note (foot of p. 418), the earliest extant occurrence of tan-mātra (the subtle element) in Sanskrit literature; and kṣetra-jña here in its technical Sāṃkhya/Vedānta sense prefigures the Gītā's chapter 13 doctrine that the body is the field and the Self the knower of the field. A direct textual bridge between the Upanishadic corpus and the Gītā's kṣetra/kṣetra-jña distinction.

Maitri-C4: The elemental soul (bhūtātman) is bound by the guṇas — confused, "in thinking 'This is I' and 'That is mine,' he binds himself with his self, as does a bird with a snare" — while the inner Person is fire to the iron of the elemental soul, unovercome by the hammering. (FOUNDATIONAL / ATMAN-BRAHMAN+MOKSHA)

• Maitri 3.2, 3.3: "This [elemental soul], verily, is overcome by Nature's (prakṛti) qualities (guṇa). Now, because of being overcome, he goes on to confusedness; because of confusedness, he sees not the blessed Lord (prabhu), the causer of action, who stands within oneself (ātma-stha). Borne along and defiled by the stream of Qualities (guṇa), unsteady, wavering, bewildered, full of desire, distracted, this one goes on to the state of self-conceit (abhimānatva). In thinking 'This is I' and 'That is mine,' he binds himself with his self, as does a bird with a snare. … Now, verily, as a lump of iron, overcome by fire and beaten by workmen, passes over into a different form — so, assuredly, indeed, the elemental soul, overcome by the inner Person and beaten by Qualities, passes over into a different form. … Now, as, when a lump of iron is being hammered, the fire [in it] is not overcome, so that Person is not overcome."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: bhūtātman, guṇa, prakṛti, abhimāna · Note: the clearest two-self analysis in the principal corpus — converges with Śvet-P2 (Prakṛti = māyā; the Lord = māyin) and with the Sāṃkhya purusha/prakṛti distinction; the iron-and-fire image converges sharply with the jīvātman/paramātman distinction of later Vedānta.

Maitri-C5: The antidote is svādhyāya (Veda-study) and svadharma — "Pursuit of one's regular duty, in one's own stage of the religious life — that, verily, is the rule!" — and the ladder "goodness from austerity, mind from goodness, the Self from mind; on winning whom, no one returns." (OPERATIONAL / KNOWLEDGE+MOKSHA)

• Maitri 4.3: "The antidote, assuredly, indeed, for this elemental soul (bhūtātman) is this: study of the knowledge of the Veda, and pursuit of one's regular duty. Pursuit of one's regular duty, in one's own stage of the religious life — that, verily, is the rule! Other rules are like a bunch of grass. With this, one tends upwards; otherwise, downwards. … 'Tis goodness (sattva) from austerity (tapas), / And mind from goodness, that is won; / And from the mind the Soul is won; / On winning whom, no one returns."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: svādhyāya, svadharma, tapas, sattva · Note: the concise pedagogical ladder tapas → sattva → mind → Self is a distinctive Maitri formulation; the explicit endorsement of svadharma under the āśrama (stage-of-life) scheme is one of the clearer Upanishadic anchors for the Gītā's sva-dharma doctrine, sharing claim (fidelity to one's prescribed life-stage duty) but framing it as means rather than end.

Maitri-C6: The infinite Brahma — "Incomprehensible is that supreme Soul (Ātman), unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, unthinkable — He whose soul is space (ākāśātman)! In the dissolution of the world He alone remains awake. From that space He, assuredly, awakes this world, which is a mass of thought. It is thought by Him, and in Him it disappears." "He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun — he is one." (FOUNDATIONAL / ATMAN-BRAHMAN)

• Maitri 6.17: "Verily, in the beginning this world was Brahma, the limitless One — limitless to the east, limitless to the south, limitless to the west, limitless to the north, and above and below, limitless in every direction. … Incomprehensible is that supreme Soul (Ātman), unlimited, unborn, not to be reasoned about, unthinkable — He whose soul is space (ākāśātman)! In the dissolution of the world He alone remains awake. From that space He, assuredly, awakes this world, which is a mass of thought. It is thought by Him, and in Him it disappears. His is that shining form which gives heat in yonder sun and which is the brilliant light in a smokeless fire, as also the fire in the stomach which cooks food. For thus has it been said: 'He who is in the fire, and he who is here in the heart, and he who is yonder in the sun — he is one.' To the unity of the One goes he who knows this."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: ākāśātman, ātman, brahman

Maitri-C7: The six-limbed yoga — "restraint of the breath (prāṇāyāma), withdrawal of the senses (pratyāhāra), meditation (dhyāna), concentration (dhāraṇā), contemplation (tarka), absorption (samādhi). Such is said to be the sixfold Yoga." Followed by the Suṣumnā ascent, the spider-and-thread, and the bow-and-arrow meditation. (OPERATIONAL / YOGA-PATHS)

• Maitri 6.18, 6.22, 6.24: "The precept for effecting this [unity] is this: restraint of the breath (prāṇāyāma), withdrawal of the senses (pratyāhāra), meditation (dhyāna), concentration (dhāraṇā), contemplation (tarka), absorption (samādhi). Such is said to be the sixfold Yoga. By this means / When a seer sees the brilliant / Maker, Lord, Person, the Brahma-source, / Then, being a knower, shaking off good and evil, / He reduces everything to unity in the supreme Imperishable. … Now, as a spider mounting up by means of his thread (tantu) obtains free space, thus, assuredly, indeed, does that meditator, mounting up by means of Om, obtain independence (sva-tantrya). … The body is a bow. The arrow is Om. The mind is its point. Darkness is the mark. Having pierced through the darkness, one goes to what is not enveloped in darkness."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhyāna, dhāraṇā, tarka, samādhi, Om · Note: this is the earliest extant scriptural listing of a six-limbed yoga path — predating Patañjali's eight-limbed aṣṭāṅga but already containing five of its eight limbs (prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhāraṇā, dhyāna, samādhi) plus tarka (which Patañjali drops); the bow-arrow-darkness image is a direct echo of Muṇḍaka 2.2.3–4 (Om the bow, ātman the arrow, brahman the mark) — Hume notes the parallel.

Maitri-C8: The two Brahmas — sound (the syllable Om) and non-sound — and the ascent from one to the other: "There are two Brahmas to be meditated upon: sound and non-sound. Now, non-sound is revealed only by sound." (OPERATIONAL / YOGA-PATHS+ATMAN-BRAHMAN)

• Maitri 6.22, 6.23: "Verily, there are two Brahmas to be meditated upon: sound and non-sound. Now, non-sound is revealed only by sound. Now, in this case the sound-Brahma is Om. Ascending by it, one comes to an end in the non-sound. So one says: 'This, indeed, is the way. This is immortality. This is complete union (sāyujyatva) and also peacefulness (nirvṛtatva).' … There are two Brahmas to be known: / Sound-Brahma, and what higher is. / Those people who sound-Brahma know, / Unto the higher Brahma go. … The sound-Brahma is the syllable Om. That which is its acme is tranquil, sound-less, fearless, sorrowless, blissful, satisfied, steadfast, immovable, immortal, unshaken, enduring, named Vishnu (the Pervader)."
• Stance: assert · Importance: core · Untranslatable: Om/AUM, sāyujya, nirvṛti · Note: the ascent through sound to silence is a strong cross-tradition convergence with apophatic mysticism (Eastern Christian hesychasm, the via negativa) at the claim level; the warrant (sound-Brahma as the meditative ladder to non-sound Brahma) is frame-specific and a structural cousin to Māṇḍūkya's mapping of AUM to waking/dream/deep-sleep with the silent turīya beyond.

Step 4 — Clusters

Cluster	Atomic statements	Intent
The pessimist frame	C1	The vanity of embodied life as the prompt for knowledge
The two selves	C2, C3, C4	Body-chariot / bhūtātman / kṣetra-jña / inner Person — the Sāṃkhya-Vedānta seam
The antidote: discipline and dharma	C5	Svādhyāya, svadharma, tapas, the ladder to the Self
The infinite Brahma	C6	The apophatic supreme; the one in fire, heart, sun
The yoga path	C7, C8	The six-limbed yoga; OM as ladder; the two Brahmas (sound / non-sound)

Step 5 — Internal tensions

The Maitri is the most internally tense of the principal Upanishads in Hume's set — and it explicitly notes the tension at 4.5–6, where Sākāyanya is asked which god (Agni, Vāyu, Aditya; or breath, time, food; or Brahma, Rudra, Viṣṇu) is "best," and replies: "These are, assuredly, the foremost forms of the supreme, the immortal, the bodiless Brahma. To whichever one each man is attached here, in its world he rejoices indeed… one should meditate upon, and praise, but then deny." The principle is a structured pluralism: many forms are reverenced, none is final. The deeper tension is C2 (non-acting unqualified Self) vs. C5 (Veda-study and svadharma as the antidote): if the Self is "fixed like a spectator," what is the work the disciplines do? The Maitri's resolution is staged: the disciplines purify the bhūtātman (C5's "tapas → sattva → mind → Self"); the realization is that the inner Person was never the doer (C2, C4). The disciplines do not change the Self; they remove the misidentification of the Self with the doer. This is the same effort-and-grace dialectic seen in Kaṭha and Muṇḍaka, sharpened here by the explicit two-self anthropology.

Step 6 — Synthesized chapter principles

Maitri-P1: The vanity of embodied life is the prompt to seek the Self

The body's corruption, the world's decay, the death of even great kings and races, the dissolution of mountains and oceans — all this names a saṃsāra in which "enjoyment of desires" is futile. The proper response is renunciation and the search for what does not pass away.

• Tier: OPERATIONAL · Domain: MOKSHA · Covers: C1 · Evidence: Maitri 1.3, 1.4 · Untranslatable: saṃsāra

Maitri-P2: The body is a chariot; the Self is the driver who, truly, is not a doer

The chariot-image of Kaṭha is taken up but inverted: the Self is "fixed like a spectator," "pure, steadfast, unagitated, desireless," and "is not a doer." The discipline is to see this, not to make it true.

• Tier: FOUNDATIONAL+OPERATIONAL · Domain: ATMAN-BRAHMAN+YOGA-PATHS · Covers: C2 · Evidence: Maitri 2.6, 2.7

Maitri-P3: The kṣetra-jña — the knower-of-the-body is the inner Person's part embedded in each individual

Each person is a partial individuation of the supreme Person; what within us has "the marks of conception, determination, and self-conceit" is the kṣetra-jña — Prajāpati under the name of individuality.

• Tier: FOUNDATIONAL · Domain: ATMAN-BRAHMAN · Covers: C3 · Evidence: Maitri 2.5 · Untranslatable: kṣetra-jña, abhimāna

Maitri-P4: The elemental soul (bhūtātman) is bound by the guṇas; the inner Person remains as fire in the iron — unovercome by the hammering

The same Self appears as bound bhūtātman (confused, self-conceited, doer in the unreal) and as the inner Person (the fire in the iron). The two-self analysis is the diagnostic for the entire Maitri path.

• Tier: FOUNDATIONAL · Domain: ATMAN-BRAHMAN+MOKSHA · Covers: C4 · Evidence: Maitri 3.2, 3.3 · Untranslatable: bhūtātman, guṇa, prakṛti

Maitri-P5: The antidote is svādhyāya and svadharma — and a ladder from austerity to sattva to mind to Self

Veda-study and the pursuit of one's prescribed duty in one's life-stage are the rule. "Goodness from austerity, mind from goodness, the Self from mind; on winning whom, no one returns."

• Tier: OPERATIONAL · Domain: KNOWLEDGE+MOKSHA · Covers: C5 · Evidence: Maitri 4.3 · Untranslatable: svādhyāya, svadharma, tapas, sattva

Maitri-P6: The supreme is space-souled, awake when all dissolves, and one with the fire in the heart and the sun

"He whose soul is space (ākāśātman)" remains awake in the world-dissolution; the one in fire, heart, and sun is one. The supreme is unthinkable, not-to-be-reasoned-about — and yet the immanent ground of inner and outer light.

• Tier: FOUNDATIONAL · Domain: ATMAN-BRAHMAN · Covers: C6 · Evidence: Maitri 6.17 · Untranslatable: ākāśātman

Maitri-P7: The six-limbed yoga reaches the Brahma-source — and the ascent moves through sound-Brahma (Om) to non-sound Brahma

Prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhyāna, dhāraṇā, tarka, samādhi — "such is said to be the sixfold Yoga." The seeker mounts up by Om as a spider by its thread; the body is the bow, Om the arrow, darkness the mark. The sound-Brahma is the ladder; the non-sound is the goal — "complete union and also peacefulness."

• Tier: OPERATIONAL · Domain: YOGA-PATHS+ATMAN-BRAHMAN · Covers: C7, C8 · Evidence: Maitri 6.18, 6.22, 6.23, 6.24 · Untranslatable: prāṇāyāma, pratyāhāra, dhyāna, dhāraṇā, tarka, samādhi, Om/AUM, sāyujya, nirvṛti

Step 7 — Traceability

Principle	Atomic statements	Citation
Maitri-P1	C1	Maitri 1.3, 1.4
Maitri-P2	C2	Maitri 2.6, 2.7
Maitri-P3	C3	Maitri 2.5
Maitri-P4	C4	Maitri 3.2, 3.3
Maitri-P5	C5	Maitri 4.3
Maitri-P6	C6	Maitri 6.17
Maitri-P7	C7, C8	Maitri 6.18, 6.22, 6.23, 6.24

Step 8 — Quality

• Coverage: high for prapāṭhakas 1–4 and the load-bearing portions of 6; deliberately partial for prapāṭhaka 5 (a hymn-and-cosmogony cluster that recapitulates 2.5–2.6) and for prapāṭhaka 7 (a tail of supplements that Hume's commentator already flags as "without a doubt . . . several supplements") plus the long etymological-and-Gāyatrī material at 6.6–16 (ritual-pedagogical, folding under C6 and C8). Orphaned: ~30% (the most of any Upanishad file in this corpus — Maitri is the latest and most encrusted). Principles: 7. Traceability: 100%.

Step 9 — Validation

• Claim-vs-warrant: Maitri-P1 (the vanity of embodied life) is the strongest pessimistic-of-life opening in the principal corpus — at the claim level a sharp convergence with the Buddha's first noble truth (dukkha), with Ecclesiastes ("vanity of vanities"), and with Stoic and Cynic ascetic frames. The warrant — the saṃsāra mechanism (rebirth driven by deeds, the frog in the waterless well) — is distinctively dharmic. Maitri-P3 (the kṣetra-jña) is the earliest extant occurrence of the technical kṣetra-jña doctrine and gives the direct Upanishadic anchor for the Gītā's chapter 13 — an internal-D=2 convergence-node within Vedānta between Maitri and the Gītā; the kṣetra-jña also converges with Kauṣītaki's prajñātman (Kau-P4–5) and Kena's "ear of the ear" (Kena-P2) at the level of the seer-not-the-seen rule. Maitri-P5 (svādhyāya + svadharma) strengthens the N=2 layer's revision of svadharma from Gītā-distinctive to internal-D=2 within Vedānta: the explicit endorsement of duty in one's stage of life as "the rule" is a clearer Upanishadic anchor for the Gītā's sva-dharma than the Taittirīya's hospitality-ethics, though it remains different in warrant (here as an antidote to bhūtātman-confusion; in the Gītā as a yoga). Maitri-P7 (the six-limbed yoga) is the earliest extant scriptural listing of a multi-limbed yoga path — it is the textual bridge between Upanishadic Vedānta and what becomes Patañjali's aṣṭāṅga-yoga, and it brings the AUM-meditation tradition (Mund-P4, Mand-P4, Praśna-P4) to its most procedurally developed form in the principal corpus. The tarka limb (contemplation/discursive reasoning) is distinctive and was dropped by Patañjali — a structural fingerprint of Maitri's older, less-codified Upanishadic yoga. Maitri-P2 and -P4 (the two-self analysis) prefigure Sāṃkhya's purusha/prakṛti distinction, with the inner Person as the unmoved fire and the bhūtātman as the iron transformed by the hammering — a structural twin of the Gītā's chapter 13. The Maitri's general orientation is transitional and synthetic rather than originary: most of its load-bearing claims are paralleled in earlier Upanishads (Kaṭha's chariot, Muṇḍaka's bow, Chāndogya's "He who is in fire, heart, sun is one"), and the Upanishad's distinctive contribution is the systematic synthesis itself — Vedānta giving birth to Yoga and to Sāṃkhya in narrative form.