Poorna from Poorna: Is that possible? पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते- declares the second line of one Shanti Mantra 1 . This Shanti Mantra is associated with the Svetasvatara 2 and Isha Upanishads 3 . In English, the mantra translates to: from the poorna (पूर्ण) when when you take out poorna , you are left with poorna . Poorna is a Sanskrit word, which is usually roughly translated as ‘whole’. In the context of the Shanti Mantra, translators 2,3 have interpreted poorna to be a synonym for Brahman (ब्रह्मन्) and the statement to imply that “ Brahman is still full, although the whole universe has come out of it” 2 . Let us take a different route and pretend that we do not know what this statement or the word poorna implies. Instead, we translate the shloka into the following equation: 𝑥-𝑥 = 𝑥, where 𝑥 is this entity to be determined. The Shanti Mantra declares that there exists an entity called poorna that satisfies this algebraic equation. Keeping with ...