The Famous Tenet In Adishankara's Vivekachudamani-I

Tuesday, May 18, 2010, 17:38

To simply live the teachings of the Guru or the Master unswervingly is in itself pursuing the highest Yoga.

Adi Shankara Jayanti, Sri Adi Shankara Bhagavatpada each year brings in fresh life into those seekers who follow the Advaita Vedanta school 'Non Dualism'.

“Brahma satyam jagat mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparah" which means “Brahman is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self," from the'Vivekachudamani', the important philosophical treatise of Adi Shankaracharya, summarises the essence of the Upanishads in one single tenet.

Brahma Satyam ( Brahman is the only truth )

The Brahman or 'Consciousness' is 'Satyam' or the truth. It is termed as truth because that it is the only and ultimate reality that is utterly causeless. Hence it is independent of time. It is again the transcendental reality as it transcends time, the past, present and the future. It is the very cause of the creation and is the essence of the entire manifestation or the created world. This is simply obvious because there should be something beyond the finite world that is responsible for its creation.

It is the intelligence which is behind the creation of the grand cosmos, as an inert world cannot manifest on its own. For when there is a complex procedure involved in the making of even the smallest machinery by expert intelligence, it is simply obvious that the there is definitely a super intelligence that is behind the making and the functioning of the whole cosmos.

No object in the entire cosmos can exist independent of consciousness. Only when one is conscious , all objects are perceived. It still continues to exist even with disappearance of the objects as pure awareness. Yet it forms the essence of all that is created like the spider weaving its web out of its own body.

Since Consciousness is aware of the greatest mechanism that in the modern world we call the mind, it is greater than the mind as it transcends it too. Yet it may not be appropriate to term it as the first or primal, though accepted in the school of 'Monism', since it is the only reality. Attributing it to the first will only denote the presence of the second, third and so on.

Consciousness or the Brahman is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. It is beyond space and time. Hence it is 'Satyam', the ever existing truth.

To be continued