Shankara, whose name often appears as Shankaracharya (acharya means “religious teacher”), was no retiring monk; he was a peripatetic, wandering all of India. Born in Malabar in the far south of India, he traveled incessantly, meeting innumerable people, arguing, reasoning, convincing, and infecting others with his tremendous vitality.

Shankara's World

Shankara was the disciple of guru Gaudapada — the Guru of Govinda — and expressed the guru's philosophy that the Brahman of the Upanishads was the only reality. The world itself was but a temporary illusion, a trifle. In fact, Shankara denounced the entire visible cosmos as an illusion superimposed on true being by man's deceitful senses and unenlightened mind. Any person trying to understand the ultimate nature of reality could not help but see the insignificance of this world of space and time.

Shankara possessed a far-reaching intellect. He wrote commentaries on the Vedanta Sutra, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita. He thought that only the path of knowledge, which culminated in knowing the Brahman, could lead to liberation; the paths of work and devotion were secondary. Further, he initiated a tradition of renunciative yogis, who sought the full realization of the Brahman in a state of being, consciousness, and bliss.

Shankara's Impact

In subsequent centuries, a number of important thinkers took different interpretations of the earliest Vedanta. Whereas Shankara leaned toward a monistic view of the identity of Brahman and atman, Ramanuja (1077– 1157 C.E.) took up a qualified or modified monism. Madhva (1199–1278 C.E.) rejected monism altogether in favor of out-and-out dualistic theism.