Sankara's Atmabodha for Beginners with a Translation of Vedanta Dindima

There appears to be a growing resurgence of interest in spirituality, both in India and abroad, to varying degrees. With this resurgence comes an enticing variety of philosophical teachings to explore.

Among these, one of the most profound contributions was made by the great saint Śańkara in the 8th century (788-820 CE). In just thirty-two short years, Śańkara produced a vast body of work that spanned the entire spectrum of Indian philosophical thought, from the Vedas to the Bhagavad Gītā, leaving no stone unturned. He constructed a concrete canonical foundation for his teachings, naming it Advaita-nondualism. In essence, Advaita reveals that when all illusions are stripped away, only your true Self (atman) remains-omnipresent, omniscient, and brimming with unalloyed Bliss (saccidānanda).

For us ordinary mortals, who are often consumed by self-inflicted struggles and endless imagined miseries, it can be difficult to grasp our infinite potential. Śankara, with his compassionate i compassionate insight, offers a remedy.

One of his foundational works, Atmabodha (translated as Self-Knowledge), is a concise text of 68 verses. It teaches us that we are not merely physical bodies but the all-powerful Self. The Self, which pervades all moving and stationary objects, is identical to the Supreme Consciousness, known as Brahman. Each of us shares this divine heritage-if only we come to realize it.

If Atmabodha serves as a teaching manual for a spiritually challenged world, this work is intended to be a guide to that manual. It explains each verse, accompanied by related questions, answers, and keyword definitions. Written in clear and straightforward language, it aims to provide first-time readers of Sankara's opus with a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment.

About the Author:

I. S. MADUGULA, Ph.D., is convinced that the simplest and the straightest path to understanding 'the meaning of life' is through an inquiry into one's own origins, one's own Self, and one's own inevitable mergence into the Supreme Consciousness. As a writer, his passion is the application of linguistic techniques to the analysis of poetry and how it touches one's inmost being. While The Acarya is an effort to understand how Sankara helps in the former endeavor, his two later works, Sankara the Poet: Śivanandalahari (2021) and Beauty and the Saint: Sankara Saundaryalahari (2023) aim to understand how his poetry uniquely engages the savant.