Last year, I listened to the library’s copy of the Upanishads during a 3-hour 10K hike in the hills behind our house.
It may have been appropriate to experience this work as an audiobook because these were originally oral texts, but it was a slog. Unlike the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads are fourteen separate documents and it was difficult to keep attention without the structure of a story.
Given their canonical status, it’s my fault for not properly appreciating this experience. Then again, maybe the translator shares some of the blame (I found the introduction to the book incredibly dry).
Or possibly, these teachings should be sampled one line at a time, slowly pondered in a deliberate fashion.
The audiobook format is great for lighter works that wash past the consciousness, often at 1.5x speed. Self-help books flitter into the consciousness to create an illusion of learning that will be forgotten in a month.
The Upanishads are definitely not fluffy self-help fodder. These texts were orally transmitted from father to son. Something that required this much effort must have embodied deep value to survive the attrition of millennia.
It was too much to digest in an endless stream, even at 1.0x speed.
In all, I don’t regret the listen. But this was the barest of introductions. If I want to get anything substantive out of the Upanishads, I’ll have to sit down and read it slowly.
But if the past year of inaction is any indication, I doubt will ever happen.