Three questions, one answer

Philosophy has three oldest questions. Vedanta gives the same one word answer to all of them, which is either very bold or a trick.

By Sovandarapor (James) Kong · 2026-08-21 · Nondual

Chapter 04 of 18 in Ninety minutes with a swami

The word bliss is doing a lot of work that my Tuesday afternoons do not obviously support. It is the usual translation of ananda, the last third of satchidananda, which is Vedanta's one word answer. Swami Sarvapriyananda says it occurred to him only a couple of years ago that the word lines up with philosophy's three oldest questions. It had not occurred to me either, which is slightly embarrassing given how often the word gets used.

The questions. What is real, which is ontology. How do we know anything, which is epistemology. And the bundle of value questions, what is good, what is beautiful, what is the point, which now gets the label axiology. People have argued about them for three thousand years.

The Vedantic answer to the first is existence itself, sat. The answer to the second is consciousness itself, chit, the thing by which any knowing happens at all. The answer to the third is ananda, the thing everyone is after underneath the things they say they are after. Satchidananda is those three words run together, and the claim is that they are one reality. The tradition says the questions feel like three because of where you are standing.

He is direct about the last part. You ask where this thing is, and the answer is, you. The universe in general too, but you in particular, which is why the tradition keeps sending people back to look at themselves rather than at the stars.

I like that it can be said in one sentence. I also distrust things that can be said in one sentence. He deals with the bliss problem directly, with a dying man, two chapters on.