The world is the wheel of God, turning round
And round with all living creatures upon
The wheel. The world is the river of God,
Flowing from him and flowing back to him.

On this ever-revolving wheel of life
The individual self goes round and round
Through life after life, believing itself
To be a separate creature, until
It sees its identity with the lord
Of Love and attains immortality
In the indivisible Whole.

He is the eternal reality, sing
The scriptures, and the ground of existence.
They who perceive him in every capture
Merge in him and are released from the wheel
Of birth and death.

The Lord of Love holds in his hand the world,
Composed of the changing and the changeless.
The manifest and the unmanifest.
The individual self, not yet aware
Of the Lord, goes after pleasure, to become
Bound more and more. When it sees the Lord,
There comes the end of is bondage.

Conscious spirit and unconscious matter
Both have existed since the dawn of time,
With maya appearing to connect them,
Misrepresenting joy as outside us.
When all these three are seen as one, the Self
Reveals its universal form and serves
As an instrument of the divine will.

All is change in the world of the senses
But changeless is the supreme Lord of Love.
Meditate on him, be absorbed in him,
Wake up from this dream of separateness.

The Shvetashvatara Upanishad is dedicated to Shiva who represents God as the bestower of Immortality. The root meaning of the term Upanishad is ‘to sit down nearby’ as one would sit by a teacher. Translation by Eknath Easwaran  

This is an excerpt from the longer poem and one I think that is quite beautiful.

I particularly like the primary image of The world is the river of God, Flowing from him and flowing back to him. I can feel the rhythm of the tide going in and out like the great breath of Brahma, a constant recirculation of form and dissolution – the Great Wheel on which we are bound until we see our unity with God.

The river is such an ancient image, one that has been bred into our DNA since the first conception. It reminds me of the phrase ‘crossing the great water’ which is used to describe transition from the shore of maya/dreams to reality/enlightenment. It also puts me in mind of Charon, the ferryman of western mythology who rows the dead souls to the underworld.