Adi Shankara Quotes on Mind
Adi Shankara's analysis of mind, developed across the commentaries on the Brahma Sutras and the principal Upanishads, distinguishes pure consciousness (chit, atman) from the manifold of mental states that ordinary self-experience attributes to the personal mind. The personal mind — including the buddhi (intellect), manas (the coordinating sense-faculty), and ahamkara (the I-maker) — is part of the subtle body that the embodied self superimposes on the underlying pure consciousness, and the discipline of philosophical discrimination (viveka) traces this superimposition back to its source in cosmic ignorance (avidya). The framework grounds Shankara's distinctive non-dualist (advaita) Vedanta and the closely related theory of mistaken cognition that explains how the unitary Brahman appears as the manifold of finite minds and selves to ordinary unenlightened experience.
Quotes
-
Attributed to Adi Shankara:
“Brahman alone is real; the world is illusory; the individual self is non-different from Brahman.”
-
“Knowledge of the Self is the only means to liberation.”
p. 4: Quote nr. 2. -
Attributed to Adi Shankara:
“The mind alone is the cause of bondage and liberation for human beings.”
-
Attributed to Adi Shankara:
“Pleasure and pain are mere ideas, transient and unreal; renounce them.”
-
Attributed to Adi Shankara:
“He who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings has no fear.”
-
“One should become aware of oneself, indivisible, and perfect; free from identification with all things transient, such as one’s body, functions, mind, and the sense of being the doer, for all these are the product of ignorance.”
p4