Śvetāśvatara Upanishad

The opening debate on the first cause; the wheel of Brahman (brahma-cakra); the three: enjoyer, enjoyed, mover.

Yoga practice: posture, breath, place; signs of progress; 'as a mirror cleansed of dust' — the vision of the Self.

Rudra, the one God without a second, wielding the noose; the cosmic Person of a thousand heads.

'Thou art the woman, thou art the man…'; the two birds; māyā as prakṛti, the Lord as māyin.

Knowledge and ignorance in the one Brahman; the jīva of the size of an awl-point, yet infinite in essence.

The one God hidden in all beings; grace (deva-prasāda); the closing bhakti verse and the transmission rule.

मायां तु प्रकृतिं विद्यान्मायिनं तु महेश्वरम् ।
तस्यावयवभूतैस्तु व्याप्तं सर्वमिदं जगत् ॥

māyāṁ tu prakṛtiṁ vidyān māyinaṁ tu maheśvaram |
tasyāvayava-bhūtais tu vyāptaṁ sarvam idaṁ jagat ||

Know māyā to be prakṛti, and the wielder of māyā to be the great Lord. This whole world is pervaded by beings that are, as it were, his limbs.

The verse that gave Vedānta its settled vocabulary: Sāṅkhya's independent prakṛti is here demoted to māyā — a power owned and wielded, not a co-eternal principle. The Lord is māyin, never māyā's subject; the jīva alone is bound by it. Śaṅkara's whole doctrine of Īśvara as Brahman-associated-with-māyā is an unpacking of this half-verse.Source: Śaṅkara(-attributed) bhāṣya on Śvetāśvatara 4.10; cf. Gītā 4.6 ('ātma-māyayā')

एको देवः सर्वभूतेषु गूढः सर्वव्यापी सर्वभूतान्तरात्मा ।
कर्माध्यक्षः सर्वभूताधिवासः साक्षी चेता केवलो निर्गुणश्च ॥

eko devaḥ sarva-bhūteṣu gūḍhaḥ sarva-vyāpī sarva-bhūtāntarātmā |
karmādhyakṣaḥ sarva-bhūtādhivāsaḥ sākṣī cetā kevalo nirguṇaś ca ||

The one God, hidden in all beings, all-pervading, the inner Self of all beings, the overseer of actions, dwelling in all beings, the witness, pure consciousness, alone, and free of qualities.

Theism and non-dualism in a single verse — read it forward and it is a hymn to the personal overseer of karma; read it to its final words (sākṣī… kevalo nirguṇaḥ) and the person resolves into the attributeless witness. The Śvetāśvatara refuses to choose, which is precisely its teaching: saguṇa and nirguṇa are two distances from the same truth.Source: Śvetāśvatara 6.11 with the traditional bhāṣya; cf. Gītā 13.22

यस्य देवे परा भक्तिर्यथा देवे तथा गुरौ ।
तस्यैते कथिता ह्यर्थाः प्रकाशन्ते महात्मनः ॥

yasya deve parā bhaktir yathā deve tathā gurau |
tasyaite kathitā hy arthāḥ prakāśante mahātmanaḥ ||

He who has supreme devotion to God, and to the guru as to God — for that great soul these declared truths shine forth.

The Upaniṣad's penultimate verse and the charter of the bhakti-jñāna synthesis: devotion is stated not as an alternative path but as the condition under which the taught truths 'light up' (prakāśante) — the difference between information possessed and truth realized. That guru-bhakti is set parallel to deva-bhakti seals the transmission-theology the whole corpus assumes.Source: Śvetāśvatara 6.21–23 with the traditional bhāṣya

यथैव बिम्बं मृदयोपलिप्तं तेजोमयं भ्राजते तत् सुधान्तम् ।
तद्वात्मतत्त्वं प्रसमीक्ष्य देही एकः कृतार्थो भवते वीतशोकः ॥

yathaiva bimbaṁ mṛdayopaliptaṁ tejomayaṁ bhrājate tat sudhāntam |
tad vātma-tattvaṁ prasamīkṣya dehī ekaḥ kṛtārtho bhavate vīta-śokaḥ ||

Just as a metal disc smeared with dust shines brilliantly when well cleansed, so the embodied one, clearly beholding the truth of the Self, becomes one, fulfilled, and freed from sorrow.

From the corpus's first yoga-manual (2.8–15: posture, breath-restraint, choice of place, the preliminary visions). The mirror image fixes the logic of all sādhanā in Advaita: practice does not create the light, it removes the obscuration — the Self was never actually tarnished. 'Kṛtārthaḥ' — one whose purpose is accomplished: nothing further remains to be done.Source: Śvetāśvatara 2.8–15 with the traditional bhāṣya