The Upanishads (Penguin Classics)

The Upanishads are beautiful, timeless, and powerful. This translation seems to do them justice, and I have nothing critical to say about that. The included verses have been thoughtfully chosen and are truly classic treasures.

The introduction, however, is a complete waste of time. I really wanted to read and enjoy this book from cover to cover, but simply could not finish the introduction. It is 45 pages (a third of the entire book) of self-indulgent rambling with no apparent direction. There are many apt quotes included here from several interesting sources, but they feel disconnected and random. I can't say what the author's intention was, but if there was any point to be made here, it is made far better by the Upanishads, themselves.

The lingering introduction only distracts from the sublime beauty of the Upanishads. Skip it and you have a book worthy of four stars, one star deducted simply due to the relatively small sampling of Upanishads offered.

For most Scriptures, I've found a translation that "does it" for me, that seems to blend together perfectly the needs of faithfulness, beauty, and understandable language. Some examples would be Andy Gaus' Unvarnished New Testament, Thanissaro Bhikkhu's Dhammapada, The Leloup/Rowe Gospel of Thomas, Stephen Mitchell's Bhagavad Gita.

With the Upanishads, I always feel "almost, not quite" with even the best translations I've seen so far... And Mascaró's leads the pack, though not by much. My main gripe is its horrendous formatting. Most of the major Upanishads, like the Psalms and the Prophets, are poetry, and Mascaro translates the verses beautifully. However, they're printed in a disjointed prose format, one slightly-indented paragraph per verse, like old, non-user-friendly Bible translations.

Consider Mascaró's rendition of Isa, verse 1:

Behold the universe in the glory of God: and all that lives and moves on earth. Leaving the transient, find joy in the Eternal: set not your heart on another's possession.

Compare how it would feel if the formatting and punctuation were given a little more thought...

Behold!

The universe in the glory of God

and all that lives and moves on earth!

Leaving the transient,

find joy in the Eternal!

Set not your heart

on another's possession.

Another problem is the lack of verse numbers. Mascaró obviously felt they would distract from the text, but if it had been printed as poetry, verse numbers could've been put to the side, unobtrusively.

Lastly, the 'Shads (as I like to call them) do address numerous points that often need clarification, from difficult concepts, historical notes, plays on words, and puns, to alternate readings. Although Mascaró touches on the major ideas of the 'Shads (Brahman, non-duality, mysticism) in the introduction, some footnotes would be extremely welcome, as would overviews/introductions to the individual writings.

Nevertheless, this is a lovely translation, very good for devotional reading, and for non-scholars, probably the best available, though I feel we need one that's still better.

I read this book (first) near the end of 1997. It is still dear to me; it helped to bring about a breakthrough. I was just getting acquainted with Hindu tradition, its mythology, philosophy, mysticism.
I had felt existentially out of tune, depraved, and basically alienated for quite some years, and with this book I finally felt `they (the Hindus) know how to face and handle my deeper existential needs (which to me are not quite clear)'.
I felt `now I am about to get to know who or what I really am'. I was 24 then. I was quite grateful.

This book offers a very useful introduction, providing context and understanding, and a selection of the main Upanishads.
It is a good introduction.
For further study, of the complete translations I recommend `The principal Upanishads' translated by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.

greetings,

The Juan Mascaro translation is great: five stars.. I bought the kindle version thinkingit was his version. It isn't. Low rating only for the kindle version.

Whether or not you can pronounce "Brihadaranyaka" is irrelevant. These sacred Hindu scriptures will allow you to reach Moksha and avoid the endless cycle of death and rebirth, which gets old after a while. The associations with western philosophy suggest either that the teachings were transmitted, or that they are universal. I prefer the latter.

The introduction is also very good

I lost my copy years ago, so recently ordered a new one. This is a nice version of the text with a lengthy introduction by Juan Mascaro.

Needed it for class.

Adequate translation but it did not resonate with me. I found another translation that did.

nice