Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism's Greatest Thinker

by Pavan K. Varma

Everything in the cosmos is an emanation of Brahman, but it is beyond all activity and purpose as per our finite ways of thinking. Unchanging, it has no need to evolve or develop, grow or diminish. In its passivity, it’s potentiality itself; in its aloofness, it’s omnipotent; in its apparent purposelessness, it’s infinite intelligence; and, in its indefinability, it’s definitiveness itself. It is. Nothing without it is. And yet, in its undifferentiated fullness, it’s path is supremely overarching, beyond all compulsions of choice or will. Like the sun, it continues to shine even if there were no object to be illumined. Its uniformity (ekarasa) has no parts; its identity is division-less (akhanda). In this sense, it is self-luminous, without the need of predication, conditionality or qualification. In Shankara’s words, Brahman is ‘eternally pure, intelligent and free, never changing, one only, not in contact with anything, and devoid of form.’

Brahman