Adi Shankara Quotes

When your last breath arrives, Grammar can do nothing.

When our false perception is corrected, misery ends also.

You never identify yourself with the shadow cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in a dream or in your imagination. Therefore you should not identify yourself with this living body, either.

Where renunciation and longing for liberation are weak, tranquillity and the other virtues are a mere appearance, like the mirage in the desert.

Once we become conscious, even dimly, of the Atman, the Reality within us, the world takes on a very different aspect. It is no longer a court of justice but a kind of gymnasium. Good and evil, pain and pleasure, still exist, but they seem more like the ropes and vaulting-horses and parallel bars which can be used to make our bodies strong. Maya is no longer an endlessly revolving wheel of pain and pleasure but a ladder which can be climbed to consciousness of the Reality.

Yeilding to the power of rajas, he identifies himself with the many motions and changes of the mind. Therefore he is swept hither and thither, now rising, now sinking, in the boundless ocean of birth and death, whose waters are full of the poison of sense-objects. This is indeed a miserable fate.

The Soul appears to be finite because of ignorance. When ignorance is destroyed the Self which does not admit of any multiplicity truly reveals itself by itself: like the Sun when the clouds pass away.

प्रातः स्मरामि हृदि संस्फुरदात्मतत्त्वं सच्चित्सुखं परमहंसगतिं तुरीयम् । यत्स्वप्नजागरसुषुप्तिमवैति नित्यं तद्ब्रह्म निष्कलमहं न च भूतसङ्घः ॥१॥ prātaḥ smarāmi hṛdi saṃsphuradātmatattvaṃ saccitsukhaṃ paramahaṃsagatiṃ turīyam | yatsvapnajāgarasuṣuptimavaiti nityaṃ tadbrahma niṣkalamahaṃ na ca bhūtasaṅghaḥ ||1|| ~ At dawn, I meditate in my heart on the truth of the radiant inner Self. This true Self is Pure Being, Awareness, and Joy, the transcendent goal of the great sages. The eternal witness of the waking, dream and deep sleep states. I am more than my body, mind and emotions, I am that undivided Spirit. At dawn, I worship the true Self that is beyond the reach of mind and speech, By whose grace, speech is even made possible, This Self is described in the scriptures as “Not this, Not this”. It is called the God of the Gods, It is unborn, undying, one with the All. At dawn, I salute the true Self that is beyond all darkness, brilliant as the sun, The infinite, eternal reality, the highest. On whom this whole universe of infinite forms is superimposed. It is like a snake on a rope. The snake seems so real, but when you pick it up, it’s just a rope. This world is ever-changing, fleeting, but this eternal Light is real and everlasting. Who recites in the early morning these three sacred Slokas, which are the ornaments of the three worlds, obtains the Supreme Abode. ~ Adi Shankara (8th century)

The first wave involved Sanskrit ‘commentaries’ (bhasyas) by Vedanta scholars, the most celebrated of whom were Adi Shankara from Kerala in the eighth century followed by Ramanuja from Tamil Nadu in the eleventh century and Madhva Acharya from Karnataka in the thirteenth century. They

Realize YourSELF

Mandana Misra was a great scholar and authority on the Vedas and Mimasa. He led a householder’s life (grihastha), with his scholar-philosopher wife, Ubhaya Bharati, in the town of Mahishi, in what is present-day northern Bihar. Husband and wife would have great debates on the veracity of the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita and other philosophical works. Scholars from all over Bharatavarsha came to debate and understand the Shastras with them. It is said that even the parrots in Mandana’s home debated the divinity, or its lack, in the Vedas and Upanishads. Mandana was a staunch believer in rituals. One day, while he was performing Pitru Karma (rituals for deceased ancestors), Adi Shankaracharya arrived at his home and demanded a debate on Advaita. Mandana was angry at the rude intrusion and asked the Acharya whether he was not aware, as a Brahmin, that it was inauspicious to come to another Brahmin’s home uninvited when Pitru Karma was being done? In reply, Adi Shankara asked Mandana whether he was sure of the value of such rituals. This enraged Mandana and the other Brahmins present. Thus began one of the most celebrated debates in Hindu thought. It raged for weeks between the two great scholars. As the only other person of equal intellect to Shankara and Mandana was Mandana’s wife, Ubhaya Bharati, she was appointed the adjudicator. Among other things, Shankara convinced Mandana that the rituals for the dead had little value to the dead. Mandana became Adi Shankara’s disciple (and later the first Shankaracharya of the Sringeri Math in Karnataka). When the priest related this story to me, I was shocked. He was not giving me the answer I had expected. Annoyed, I asked him what he meant by the story if Adi Shankara himself said such rituals were of no use to the dead. The priest replied, “Son, the story has not ended.” And he continued... A few years later, Adi Shankara was compiling the rituals for the dead, to standardize them for people across Bharatavarsha. Mandana, upset with his Guru’s action, asked Adi Shankara why he was involved with such a useless thing. After all, the Guru had convinced him of the uselessness of such rituals (Lord Krishna also mentions the inferiority of Vedic sacrifice to other paths, in the Gita. Pitru karma has no vedic base either). Why then was the Jagad Guru taking such a retrograde step? Adi Shankaracharya smiled at his disciple and answered, “The rituals are not for the dead but for the loved ones left behind.

Shankara assured her he would return whenever his mother, conscious, unconscious or burdened by sorrow, needed him.

Each one of us must endure the fruits of his past actions. Whatever a human being is involved in during a lifetime leaves its impression stored in his mind and this impression acts as the seed from which future desires and actions will in time sprout. These seeds may take many births to come to fruition; like any crop, they need favourable conditions to appear. You are a farmer Sir, so you know well the principles involved here”.

The headman nodded, then asked: “So is this is the cause of rebirth, Sir?” “It is. An individual may have to take an indefinite number of births to harvest the effects of all his latent impressions, and then, in each fresh lifetime there is further action, which sows further seeds of karma”.

Well, it will continue until the destruction of its cause”. “And what is that, Sir?” “The way we identify with our body as the doer of action. And this lifelong habit is only destroyed by knowing oneself to be the bodiless Self. This is why it is said that knowledge is the fire that reduces karma to ashes”.

Many centuries ago, a vedic sage declared that man does not begin to exist till he stops thinking. Adi Shankara, at the age of eight, faced his future master across the waters of the holy Tungabhadra river. The master asked him, ‘Who are you?’ In response Shankara said, ‘I am not the mind, I am not the intellect, I am not the ego and I am not the senses. I am beyond all that. I am pure consciousness.

The Dream Lives On (The Sonnet) Washington had a dream, The dream of free America. Martin Luther had a dream, The dream of equal America. Adi Shankara had a dream, The dream of advaita Bharat. Chandra Bose had a dream, The dream of azad Bharat. Naskar too has a dream, The dream of undivided Earth. My body will perish soon but, The dream will live on through hearts. Gone are the days of nationalistic insecurity. Lo the time comes for expansion of humanity.

as a Hindu I belong to a faith that expresses the ancient genius of my own people. I am proud of the history of my faith in my own land: of the travels of Adi Shankara, who journeyed from the southernmost tip of the country to Kashmir in the north, Gujarat in the west and Odisha in the east, debating spiritual scholars everywhere, preaching his beliefs, establishing his mutths.

Vicdansaadet, The Sonnet I have many names, Sometimes I am Hometown Human, Sometimes I am Mucize Insan, Sometimes I am Ingan Impossible, Sometimes I am Mukemmel Musalman, Sometimes I am Dervish Advaitam, Sometimes I am Bulldozer on Duty, Sometimes I am Corazon Calamidad, Sometimes I am High Voltage Habib, Sometimes I am Himalayan Sonneteer, Sometimes I am The Gentalist, Sometimes I am Divane Dynamite, Sometimes I am Rowdy Scientist. These all look and sound so different, because you are distant in culture. Move past the circus of manmade caves, within every heart you'll find a Naskar. Call it Naskar, Shams or Adi Shankara, it is all but one spirit of oneness. Wherever the fire of integration takes hold, there emerges Vicdansaadet.

A hundred scriptures may declare that fire is cold or that it is dark; still, they possess no authority in the matter.

The antahkarana is ever active and assumes various forms or ‘modes’ — except in deep sleep, when its activity is latent in itself. One of its modes is the consciousness of itself, which may be called ‘ego-hood’. The ego commonly confuses itself with the real Self. ‘When we say ‘I am restless’, we mean that the antahkarana is restless, but we wrongly transfer the restlessness to our inner Self. Herein lies the essential difference between mere introspection and the knowledge of the inner divine Self, which comes from knowing this philosophy as Shankara knew it. Knowing his philosophy and knowing ‘about’ it are on two different planes. When the antahkarana assumes the mode of doubt or indetermination, it is called ‘mind’ — in the sense used in the statement ‘I cannot make up my ‘mind’. The item ‘mind’ includes resolution, sense-perception, desires and emotions. When the antahkarana has the mode of certainty or determination, it may be called ‘intellect’, including the powers of judgment and reasoning; and when in the mode of reflection and remembrance, it may be called ‘attention’. The ego, the mind, and the intellect function only intermittently; their activity has a birth, growth and death. An argument, for example, begins with the premises and works through a chain of reasoning to a conclusion. ‘Attention’, however, may endure; and this mode of the antahkarana is regarded as the most important, because meditation, contemplation and concentration belong to its province, and these are the activities by which a person uses his antahkarana to seek and find Reality. They are the point of the thorn used to extract the other thorn of avidya.

Shankara’s approach to this basic problem is quite different. In the first place, there are in his view three entities to be accounted for—(a) the pure Self, (b) the antahkarana, and (c) the body and other matter. The essential interaction was, for him, between (a) and (b), whereas the Western philosophers have been looking mainly at the interaction of (b) and (c). For him, the apparent incompatibility of the Pure spirit or Self and the antahkarana was not real but only empirical: ultimately, both of them are in essence the non-dual Atman. He says frankly that the Self contains the antahkarana, and the antahkarana reflects (though it does not contain) the Self.

The lord of creation is both inside and outside creation. He is like the sap in the flower, the space in an empty room. He is always present but unseen. His joy shines like the sun in the sky, his will swims like a fish beneath the ocean. He cannot be known by the mind or even the heart. Only the inner silence recognizes him. He is both male and female and he is neither. To speak of him as one or the other is only a manner of speaking. In order to protect the righteous and destroy the wicked, he takes birth again and again throughout the ages. His most recent birth was as Sri Krishna in the land of the Pandu brothers. Then and there he slew demons and granted realization to the worthy. His life lasted 135 years, from 3675 to 3810. He will be remembered as the divine personality. His next birth will be as Adi Shankara in the land of the Vedas. Then and there he will make available the knowledge of the Brahman, the highest reality. His life will last 32 years, from 6111 to 6143. He will be well remembered as the divine teacher. His subsequent birth will be as Jesus of Nazareth in the land of Abraham. Then and there he will embody and teach perfect love and compassion. His life will last 108 years, from 7608 to 7716. He will be well remembered as the divine savior.