Adi Shankara Quotes

• Do not be proud of wealth, people, relations and friends, or youth. All these are snatched by time in the blink of an eye. Giving up this illusory world, know and attain the Supreme.

  Adi Shankara

  Giving Up, Eye, People

  644 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Dream, Real, Attachment

  411 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Eye, Reality, Understanding

  437 Copy quote

• Do not look at anybody in terms of friend or foe, brother or cousin; do not fritter away your mental energies in thoughts of friendship or enmity. Seeking the Self everywhere, be amiable and equal-minded towards all, treating all alike.

  Adi Shankara

  Cousin, Brother, Self

  517 Copy quote

• Knowing that I am different from the body, I need not neglect the body. It is a vehicle that I use to transact with the world. It is the temple which houses the Pure Self within.

  Adi Shankara

  Self, Knowing, House

  430 Copy quote

• Even after the Truth has been realised, there remains that strong, obstinate impression that one is still an ego - the agent and experiencer. This has to be carefully removed by living in a state of constant identification with the supreme non-dual Self. Full Awakening is the eventual ceasing of all the mental impressions of being an ego.

  Adi Shankara

  Strong, Self, Meditation

  439 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Heart, Meditation, Mind

  373 Copy quote

• When your last breath arrives, Grammar can do nothing.

  Adi Shankara

  Lasts, Grammar, Breaths

  380 Copy quote

• As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.

  Adi Shankara

  Inspiration, Reality, Attachment

  379 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Speech, Scripture, Loud

  378 Copy quote

• To be free from bondage the wise person must practise discrimination between One-Self and the ego-self.
  By that alone you will become full of joy, recognising Self as Pure Being, Consciousness and Bliss.

  Adi Shankara

  Wise, Self, Meditation

  347 Copy quote

• Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.

  Adi Shankara

  Giving Up, Thinking, Past

  320 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Mind, Treasure, Awareness

  290 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Time, Space, Self

  319 Copy quote

• You never identify yourself with the shadows 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.

  Adi Shankara

  Dream, Reflection, Imagination

  290 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Truth, Real, Self

  247 Copy quote

• Just as a stone, a tree, a straw, grain, a mat, a cloth, a pot, and so on, when burned, are reduced to earth (from which they came), so the body and its sense organs, on being burned in the fire of Knowledge, become Knowledge and are absorbed in Brahman, like darkness in the light of the sun.

  Adi Shankara

  Spiritual, Fire, Light

  286 Copy quote

• Each thing tends to move towards its own nature. I always desire happiness which is my true nature. My nature is never a burden to me. Happiness is never a burden to me, whilst sorrow is.

  Adi Shankara

  Happiness, Nature, Moving

  265 Copy quote

• From a clear knowledge of the Bhagavad-gita all the goals of human existence become fulfilled. Bhagavad-gita is the manifest quintessence of all the teachings of the Vedic scriptures.

  Adi Shankara

  Teaching, Goal, Gita

  245 Copy quote

• Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.

  Adi Shankara

  Mother, Dream, Real

  244 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Consciousness, Bliss, Should

  183 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Self, Space, Broken

  147 Copy quote

• All the manifested world of things and beings are projected by imagination upon the substratum which is the Eternal All-pervading Vishnu, whose nature is Existence-Intelligence; just as the different ornaments are all made out of the same gold.

  Adi Shankara

  Imagination, Gold, Different

  "Atma Bodh" translated by Swami Chinmayananda, Chinmaya Mission, (p. 16), 1987.

  194 Copy quote

• 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

  Dream, Sleep, Self

  169 Copy quote

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

  Adi Shankara

  Knowledge, Ego, Omniscient

  181 Copy quote

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