Theology
c. 700 to 750, Kerala and across India
Non-dual reality, the illusory world, and the Self as Brahman.
Start learning Adi →Shankara’s half-verse compresses an entire philosophy: only Brahman is finally real, the world is a dependent appearance, and your deepest self is Brahman.
How does a partless, changeless Brahman come to appear as a teeming world of many things? Shankara’s answer is maya - the beginningless power of appearance, neither real nor unreal, that both veils Brahman and projects…
The most radical claim in Advaita is that your innermost self (Atman) is identical with the infinite (Brahman) - ‘Tat tvam asi,’ That thou art. Shankara shows this is not arrogance but the discovery of who, beneath the…
How can Shankara teach both a personal creator-God who answers prayers and an impersonal Absolute beyond all qualities? With his doctrine of two standpoints - empirical and absolute - and two aspects of Brahman: saguna…
For Shankara, freedom (moksha) is not a reward after death but knowledge that can dawn here and now - producing the jivanmukta, the one ‘liberated while living,’ who acts in the world while knowing the actor was always…
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