- Lived:
- unknowable — a sage of the eastern Gangetic plain, active at the court of Videha (Mithilā, on today's Bihar–Nepal border); everything about him comes from texts composed around 700 BCE
- Field:
- philosophy — the dominant voice of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, the oldest Upaniṣad, and by tradition the compiler of the White (Śukla) Yajurveda
- The Big Idea:
- The self that knows can never be a thing that is known — you cannot see the seer of seeing — so it can only be described by negation: neti, neti, "not this, not this." And what that self becomes is made by what it does: good by good action, bad by bad.
- In their words:
- "I bow before the wisest (the best knower of Brahman), but I wish indeed to have these cows." (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.1, Max Müller's translation)
- If you remember one thing:
- The greatest debater of the ancient world answered every question anyone dared ask, took the prize before he had proven anything, watched an opponent die of a question, taught karma as a secret and the self as "not this, not this" — and then gave it all away and walked into the forest.