Adi Shankaracharya Quotes

Sickness is not cured by saying 'Medicine,' but by drinking it;

like how a lotus is unaffected by dewdrops on lotus leaves, don’t get affected by situations of life. Develop that secretion in you; develop that knowledge — vidya

at peace like a fuelless fire;

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.

One need to address this aspect in one’s living and seeking. The world and time are impermanent, and one is mechanically seeking permanence in the impermanent.

Who is more self-deluded than he who is careless of his own welfare after gaining a hard-won human birth and manhood, too?

By fulfilling his dharma a man marches along the path of progress until he attains the supreme dharma of all beings, namely, the realization of Truth. (p. 28)

When the age of youthfulness has passed where is lust and its play? When water is evaporated, where is the lake? When the wealth is reduced, where are the attendants? When truth is realised, where is samsara?

your mind at time becomes foggy, cluttered and unclear. This happens especially when someone does not endorse your views or when you are unhappy. The remedy is to look and work on cleansing your mind repeatedly — manasi vicintaya varam varam, with the understanding of the verse, ‘Bhaja govindam, bhaja govindam, govindam bhaja mudhamate.

The same objections lie against the doctrine of the world having originated from atoms. For on that doctrine one atom when combining with another must, as it is not made up of parts, enter into the combination with its whole extent, and as thus no increase of bulk takes place we do not get beyond the first atom If, on the other hand, you maintain that the atom enters into the combination with a part only, you offend against the assumption of the atoms having no parts. Brahma-sûtras, 2e Adhyâya, 1er Pâda, sûtra 29

As a lotus that grows in muddy water and yet not affected by its surroundings, one’s growth parameter should be unruffled against all odds such as bad influence of external situations, disappointments, extreme difficulties, or entrapment of muddy surroundings of life. Lotus

Of the plant of birth and death, the seed is Darkness, the sprout is the thought that body is Self, the shoot is rage, the sap is deeds, the body is the stem, the life-breaths are the branches, the tops are the bodily powers, sensuous things are the flowers, sorrow is the fruit, born of varied deeds and manifold; and the Life is the bird that eats the fruit.

what is ubiquitous but not constrained by the brittleness of form, is by definition imperishable.

Bhaja govindam, bhaja govindam, govindam bhaja mudhamate.

lokam soka hatham cha samastham.

Yavatpavano nivasatidehe tavat prcchati kusalam gehe gatavati vayau dehapaye bharya bibhyati tasminkaye.

for he who grasps the unreal is bound; mark this, my companion.

assert the primacy of thought over ritual,

Satyam jnanam, anantam Brahma: Knowledge is truth and Brahman is eternal, was what he proclaimed, and the Upanishads were the source of his jnana.

I am neither the earth, nor water, nor fire, nor air, nor sky, nor any other properties. I am not the senses and not even the mind. I am Shiva, the undivided essence of consciousness.

During childhood one is attached to play, during youth one is attached to women. In old age one is attached to anxiety… yet, no one is attached to supreme Brahman. (Seek Govinda, seek Govinda).

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 unity of existence is the foundation of all ethical codes. Properly understood, it widens the bounds of charity beyond humanity to include the animal world as well. Self-love is the mainspring of man‘s action and the raison d'être of his love for others. We learn from Non-dualistic Vedanta that the true Self of man is the Self of all beings. Therefore, self-love finds its expression and fulfilment in love for all. – Swami Nikhilananda

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.

The etymological meaning of Veda is sacred knowledge or wisdom. There are four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. Together they constitute the samhitas that are the textual basis of the Hindu religious system. To these samhitas were attached three other kinds of texts. These are, firstly, the Brahmanas, which is essentially a detailed description of rituals, a kind of manual for the priestly class, the Brahmins. The second are the Aranyakas; aranya means forest, and these ‘forest manuals’ move away from rituals, incantations and magic spells to the larger speculations of spirituality, a kind of compendium of contemplations of those who have renounced the world. The third, leading from the Aranyakas, are the Upanishads, which, for their sheer loftiness of thought are the foundational texts of Hindu philosophy and metaphysics.

Brahman is the universal aspect of the Self which needs to be revealed; Atman is the self-revealing essence deep within us. But to the enlightened person, Atman and Brahman are known to be the same. The problem that the mind contains the world and the world contains the mind is solved when this identification is intuitively known.

The Self is not an attribute of consciousness because it is consciousness itself. The Self is not the body, the ego, or the soul, nor is it a series of mental states or a logical postulate. What is it, then? It is impossible to describe or define it. It does not have qualities or parts or attributes. The Self is not established by proofs of its existence it is prior to all proof. It is not possible to deny the existence of the Self because it is the very essence of him who doubts or denies it. It cannot be grasped by thought; it has. to be grasped whole with the whole being. The most important property of the Self is that it is directly revealed, or if, owing to the inadequacy of language, we may use the word in a double meaning, it is self-revealing; and its immediate revelation is the source of its certitude. But owing to avidya, there arises a confusion when we search for it. ‘The Self, which is ever with us, appears, owing to ignorance, as if it were unattainable; but when that ignorance is removed by knowledge, the Self is attained.

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.

Reality cannot be made dependent on the cleverness or length of tongue of debaters.

As long as man is within the limitations of Maya, the One is seen as many. Ignorance can do no better than to worship Appearance; and Iswara is the ruler of all appearances-the highest idea which the human mind can grasp and the human heart can love. The human mind can never grasp the absolute Reality, it can only infer its presence and worship its projected image. In the process of this worship, the mind becomes purified, the ego-idea thins away like mist, superimposition ceases, Iswara and world-appearance both vanish in the blaze of transcendental consciousness when there is no seer, no seen-nothing but Brahman, the single, all-embracing, timeless Fact.

They have been fed various heroic tales of the BJP heavyweight dating back to his childhood ever since he became Gujarat’s chief minister some thirteen years ago. Some of these tales have become part of Modi mythology, such as the story of the teenaged Narendra’s escape from the jaws of a crocodile in the nearby Sharmishtha Lake, which is fed by water from the river Kapila known to nourish the earliest settlement in this region. The story of Modi’s escape from a crocodile echoes the childhood experience of Jagatguru Adi Shankaracharya, the great Hindu seer who lived and died in Varanasi.

Adi Shankaracharya smiled at his disciple and answered, “The rituals are not for the dead but for the loved ones left behind.

In the sutra, discipline is outlined as an eightfold path, starting from yama (self-restraint), niyama (virtuous observances), asana (posture), pranayama (consciously controlling breath), pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses), dharana (concentrating the mind), dhyana (meditation), and samadhi (a trance-like state in which there is complete union with the subject of meditation).

my mind is in the world, and the world is in my mind. How are we to solve this puzzle?

I’ can denote: (1) the inner consciousness, or knower; (2) the ‘antahkarana’, or ‘inner organ’; (3) the ego; (4) the ‘jiva’, or soul.

it is the same Atman that is present in all bodies, irrespective of their castes?

All human beings, according to the conception of the Vedic seers, form the physical body of the Purusha, or Cosmic Person. The spiritual men form, as it were, his head, the warriors His arms, the merchants and traders His thighs and the labourers His feet. A healthy co-ordination among these four classes of people sustains the strength and the well-being of a society, as a harmony among the four principal physical parts insures the strength and well-being of a body. (p. 30)

She could either give birth to a fool who would live long or be blessed with a genius who would die young.

A crocodile has caught me and I cannot be saved until you give me permission to become a sanyasin.

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