Yajnavalkya

Yajnavalkya, sage and teacher who figures prominently in the earliest of the Hindu philosophical and metaphysical texts known as the Upanishads, the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

The teachings attributed to Yajnavalkya include many that are representative of the break with earlier Vedic ritualism and are distinctive to the new worldview of the Upanishads. They include the first exposition in Sanskrit literature of the doctrine of karma and rebirth, which contends that the individual’s future destiny is determined in accordance with one’s past “knowledge and action”: “According as one acts, according as one behaves, so does one become. The doer of good becomes good, the doer of evil becomes evil.” Yajnavalkya also analyzes the nature and process of karma and identifies desire as the ultimate cause of all action and the source of continued rebirth.

Yajnavalkya is quoted as saying that the true self, or atman, is distinct from the individual ego and therefore not subject to karma and rebirth; the atman is eternal, unchanging, and identified with the monistic principle underlying the universe, the brahman. Release (moksha) from rebirth and the attainment of bliss comes from knowledge of this identity between the true self and the brahman and is procured by “the one who does not desire, who is without desire, whose desire is satisfied, whose desire is the self.”

Yajnavalkya is also the name of the author of one of the principal texts of dharma or religious duty, the Yajnavalkya-smriti. This is an entirely different figure, however, since the Yajnavalkya-smriti was written more than five centuries later than the Upanishads.