The unmoving abiding in the moving

4 Each and every living being is the city belonging to
the one lying at rest in the cave, indestructible,
taintless, the unmoving abiding in the moving.
Those who practise realization of it, they are immortal.

the city the city of the body. living being one that has life.

Each and every living being, from the first-born god down to a tuft of grass, is as it were the city. And a city is the place to find its king. To whom does the city belong? To the Self, at rest in the cave. Just as the king is to be seen, surrounded by ministers and others, in his city, so in the bodies is the Self found, associated with buddhi and other faculties. And he sees experiences presented to him by buddhi and the others.

He is said to be the one lying at rest in the cave because he lies in the cave of buddhi which has become a very veil of Ignorance. His is the city. In that buddhi, when the impurity of Ignorance (avidya) and the other doshas is removed, he is seen by the knowers who have given up their feverish desires.

There is a further description of the one lying in the cave. Indestructible: in the body struck down by a cut or thrust, by age or disease, he is not struck down. In the Chandogya Upanishad it is said, ‘By the killing of this, he is not struck dowrn’ (8.10.4). Then he is said to be taintless. There is no taint, no sin, in him. For all action whether it may be called righteous or unrighteous, accompanied by the dosha of Ignorance becomes a taint, and it is denied of him by the word ‘taintless’. The effects of such action, effects like the pains of age, illness and so on, have (already) been denied by the word ‘indestructible’.

Thus every living being is the city, the place where is found the one free from the relations of cause and effect, who is not a samsarin (prisoner in samsara). Nor is there any other to be a samsarin. For the Svetasvatara Upanishad says, ‘One god hidden in all beings’ (6.11), and the Kathaka Upanishad, ‘This Self hidden in all the beings does not shine forth’ (3.12); the Upanishad of the Vajasaneyins says ‘there is no other seer but this’ (Brihad. 3.8.11), and the Chandogya ‘That is the Self; that thou art’ (6.8.7).

In the first part of the verse, Brahman has been spoken of as it really is; the latter half w7ill speak of the result of realization for the one who realizes it. That indestructible and taintless one, of whom each and every living being is the city, must evidently be all-pervading like space, inasmuch as every being is associated with him. And the holy text says ‘Like space, all-pervading and eternal’ (unidentified).

Again, it is evident that something all-pervading will be unmoving. That unmoving abiding in the moving is itself lying

within the moving mind of the living being, and thus is the unmoving abiding in the moving.

Those who practise realization of it, who attain it directly as ‘my own Self’, they are immortal, immortality is their nature. How is that devotion to be done?