The Way and Its Goal

Extracts from Shri Shankara’s commentaries on the classical texts, with introductory observations.

At the heart of Shri Shankara’s teaching is the claim that our ordinary knowledge is rooted in a fundamental misconception about our own true nature. We think we are an individual knowing subject, encased within an individual body, and able to know only what comes to us through our sense organs, as elaborated by reason and imagination. This body came into being as the result of the action of our parents and, like everything that comes into being through action, will come to an end.