Overview

The title comes from the first word: kena — by whom? The inquiry begins with the most intimate possible question: what is the power behind the mind, behind speech, behind sight? The answer will not satisfy a person looking for a new object of knowledge, because the answer is: the thing you are looking for is what is looking.

The text has four sections. The first two are verse — a question-and-answer exchange that establishes the paradox of Brahman as the knower who cannot be known as an object. The third and fourth are prose — a story in which the gods mistake their own victory for Brahman's, and learn through Indra's encounter with a teacher that the self behind the victory was never the ego.

Śaṅkara wrote a detailed bhāṣya distinguishing two interpretations of verse 1.4: Brahman is the mind of the mind, the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear — not the gross faculty but the consciousness that enables each faculty to function. This verse becomes one of Advaita's clearest statements of the witness-consciousness doctrine.

Key Passages
1.1–2 · Opening
केनेषितं पतति प्रेषितं मनः
By whom is the mind directed?
The opening sequence of questions: by whom does the mind go? By whom does breath breathe? By what do people speak, see, hear? The inquiry into the power behind all powers.
1.4 · The central paradox
यन्मनसा न मनुते येनाहुर्मनो मतम्
That which the mind does not think — but by which the mind thinks
Brahman is not what the mind thinks; it is what enables the mind to think. Not what the eye sees; it is what enables seeing. The most concentrated statement of Brahman as witness-ground in the Upanishads.