Born: 788 AD

Left the body abode: 820 AD,Kedarnath,now Uttarkhand

Birth Place: Kalady, now named Kerala

Known as: Bhagavatpada Acharya (the guru at the feet of Lord)

Known for: ‘Eka-Sruti-Dara’, one who can retain anything that has been read just once.

Quote: ”Knowing that I am different from the body, I need not neglect the body. It is a vehicle that I use to transact with the world. It is the temple which houses the Pure Self within”.

Guru: Govinda Bhagavatpada

Website: https://sringeri.net

Samadhi: Kedarnath, Uttarakhand

Many instances that reveal the divine spirit of great men are available at every stage of their lives. It was so in the case of Shankara also. After completing his education in the Gurukula, it was the time when Shankara was at home rendering service to his mother and also teaching some pupils. Aryamba had fallen ill. But still she insisted on having her daily bath in the river Poornaa. Though the river-bed was in front of her house, it had dried up because of summer, and the slender flow of water was far away. Aryamba had to cross the  vast sand-bed to reach the water. One day she managed to finish her bath and was returning home. While crossing that sand-bed, not being able to withstand the sun and strain, she fainted and fell down on the way. Shankara got the news and rushed to the spot. He attended to her. When she recovered a little, he brought her home.

The summer might be unbearable and the water might be flowing at a distance across a broad bed of sand. But Aryamba would never agree to change her routine. So the next day, would she not go again to the river for bath? this worried Shankara. He folded his hands in salutation to the river goddess, Poornaa Devi. He prayed to her to flow in full, extending her waters up to their house, in order to facilitate his mother’s ritualistic bath. Maybe in answer to his prayer, or maybe by a seasonal phenomenon or due to both, there was a continuous downpour of rain throughout the night. The next morning river Poornaa was found flowing fully over the breadth of her sands in all her grace and majesty. This is as good a miracle as having brought the distant river very near. Whether spirituality has or has not the power to awaken the static power latent in Nature and make it dynamic is a Templeer for thought. All the people of Kalati joined the ailing Aryamba in praising and blessing Shankara.

There is an interesting story about Adi Shankaracharya, the famous founder of Advaita Vedanta or the school of non-dualism which is connected with the temple of Guruvayoor. At that time Shankaracharya advocated only meditation on the supreme Brahman, the formless Absolute. He possessed many siddhis or supernormal powers and one day when he was travelling through the air, he happened to pass over the temple of Guruvayoor where Guruvayoorappan was being carried round on an elephant on his daily morning ride! This is a ritual which takes place three times a day and crowds flock to see the pageant. Shankaracharya was about to pass on with hardly a glance at the procession below, when despite his fabulous powers, he found himself forcibly dragged to the ground in order to bow to the embodied Brahman who was being carried round on an elephant!! After this he became a great devotee of the Lord. It is to be noted that even though he was a pure advaitin or advocate of the non-dual reality of Brahman, he established many temples all over India including the Himalayan shrines of Badrinath and Kedarnath and laid out the types of rituals to be followed therein!

Highlights of his teachings: His teachings or the doctrine of Advaita Vendanta can be summed up in a half a verse: “Brahma Satyam Jagan Mithya Jivo Brahmaiva Na Aprab (Brahman or the Absolute is alone real; this world is unreal; and the Jiva or the individual soul is non-different from Brahman)”. Core teachings that arise from his works are:

1. You are not your thoughts. You are the awareness behind the thoughts. Thoughts are often negative and painful, yearning for or fearing something in the future, complaining about something in the present or fearing a Templeer from the past. However, the thoughts are not you; they are a construct of the ego. Awareness of your thoughts without being caught up in them is the first step to freedom.
2. Only the present moment exists. That is where life is (indeed it is the only place life can truly be found). Becoming aware of ‘now’ has the added benefit that it will draw your attention away from your (negative) thoughts. Use mindfulness techniques to fully appreciate your surroundings and everything you are experiencing. Look and listen intently. Give full attention to the smallest details.
3. Accept the present moment. It is resistance to the present moment that creates most of the difficulties in your life. However, acceptance does not mean that you cannot take action to rectify the situation you are in. What is important is to drop resistance so that you let the moment be, and that any action arises from deeper awareness rather than from resistance. The vast majority of pain in a person’s life comes from resistance to what is.
4. Observe the pain-body. Years of conditioned thought patterns, individually and collectively, have resulted in habitual emotional reactions with an apparent personality of their own. During ‘pain-body attacks’ we become completely identified with this ‘pain identity’ and respond from its agenda-which is to create more pain for ourselves and others. Observing the pain-body is awareness itself arising-as it allows humans to separate from this unconscious identification with pain.
5. Everything that exists has Being, has God essence, has some degree of consciousness. Even a stone has a rudimentary consciousness; otherwise it would not be, and its atoms and molecules would disperse. Everything is alive. The sun, the earth, plants, animals, humans-all are expressions of consciousness in varying degrees, conscious manifesting as form. The world arises when consciousness takes on shapes and forms, thought forms and material forms. The ancient seers of India saw the world as lila, a kind of game that God is playing. You do not truly know that until you realize your own God-essence as pure consciousness. When we talk about watching the mind we are personalizing an event that is truly of cosmic significance: through you, consciousness is awakening out of the dream of identification with form and withdrawing from form. This foreshadows, but is already part of, an event that is probably still in the distant future as far as chronological time is concerned. That event is called-the end of the world. When consciousness frees itself from its identification with physical and mental forms, it becomes what may be called pure or enlightened consciousness or presence.