प्राणः वाव आशाया भूयान् यथा वा अराः नाभौ समर्पिताः एवम् अस्मिन् प्राणे सर्वम् समर्पितम् प्राणः प्राणेन याति प्राणः प्राणं ददाति प्राणाय ददाति प्राणः ह पिता प्राणः माता प्राणः भ्राता प्राणः स्वसा प्राणः आचार्यः प्राणः ब्राह्मणः
prāṇaḥ vāva āśāyā bhūyān yathā vā arāḥ nābhau samarpitāḥ evam asmin prāṇe sarvam samarpitam prāṇaḥ prāṇena yāti prāṇaḥ prāṇaṃ dadāti prāṇāya dadāti prāṇaḥ ha pitā prāṇaḥ mātā prāṇaḥ bhrātā prāṇaḥ svasā prāṇaḥ ācāryaḥ prāṇaḥ brāhmaṇaḥ
"The breath of life is greater than hope. As spokes are set into a nave, so is everything set into this breath. Breath moves by breath; breath gives breath, and gives it to breath. Breath is father, breath is mother, breath is brother, breath is sister, breath is teacher, breath is brāhmaṇa."
23af5df1d8ea · published Jul 26, 2026, 11:46:46 PM UTC
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The fifteenth and highest of the rungs: prāṇa, the breath of life — and the image of a wheel: "as spokes in a nave, so everything is set into the prāṇa". We heard this image of the prāṇa in the body (the quarrel of the powers, 5.1); now it is cosmic: the whole wheel of being — memory, hope, the elements — is set upon one living axle. The prāṇa here is Life itself, living in all.
Hence the daring litany: "breath is father, mother, brother, sister, teacher, brāhmaṇa". Not rhetoric but exact sense: in a father you honour not his body but the life in him; let the life die in him and there is no one left to honour, as the next verse will pitilessly show. All the holy bonds — fatherhood, brotherhood, teachership — are relations of life with life. So the ladder brings us to a threshold: if everything dear in people is one Life, the last question is what that Life itself is. The answer will lie beyond the ladder — in the Bhūman.