Adi Shankara

Loud speech, profusion of words, and possessing skillfulness in expounding scriptures are merely for the enjoyment of the learned. They do not…

— Adi Shankara

Each thing tends to move towards its own nature. I always desire happiness which is my true nature. My nature is never…

— Adi Shankara

Reality can be experienced only with the eye of understanding, not just by a scholar

— Adi Shankara

Just as a stone, a tree, a straw, grain, a mat, a cloth, a pot, and so on, when burned, are reduced…

— Adi Shankara

Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise…

— Adi Shankara

The world, like a dream full of attachments and aversions seems real until the awakening.

— Adi Shankara

Curb your senses and your mind and see the Lord within your heart.

— Adi Shankara

Space seems broken and diverse because of the many forms in it. Remove the forms and pure space remains. So, too with…

— Adi Shankara

Thus one should know oneself to be of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss[Sat-Chit-Ananda].

— Adi Shankara

Do not be proud of wealth, people, relations and friends, or youth. All these are snatched by time in the blink of…

— Adi Shankara

There is sorrow in finitude. The Self is beyond time, space and objects. It is infinite and hence of the nature of…

— Adi Shankara

The witness of the three states of consciousness [waking, dream and deep sleep] and of the nature of Existence-Consciousness-Bliss is the Self

— Adi Shankara

Knowing that I am different from the body, I need not neglect the body. It is a vehicle that I use to…

— Adi Shankara

To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self. By that alone you will become…

— Adi Shankara

As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities…

— Adi Shankara

The treasure I have found cannot be described in words, the mind cannot conceive of it.

— Adi Shankara

From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-gita is the manifest quintessence of all…

— Adi Shankara

Even after the Truth has been realised, there remains that strong, obstinate impression that one is still an ego - the agent…

— Adi Shankara

All the manifested world of things and beings are projected by imagination upon the substratum which is the Eternal All-pervading Vishnu, whose…

— Adi Shankara

You never identify yourself with the shadows cast by your body, or with its reflection, or with the body you see in…

— Adi Shankara

But the jiva [living being] is endowed with ego and his knowledge is limited, whereas Ishwar is without ego and is omniscient.

— Adi Shankara

Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, brother or cousin; do not fritter away your mental energies in…

— Adi Shankara

Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, brother or cousin; do not fritter away your mental energies in…

— Adi Shankara

What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is…

— Adi Shankara

When your last breath arrives, Grammar can do nothing.

— Adi Shankara