'Vedanta' means 'the end of the Vedas.' 'End' signifies 'that beyond which there is nowhere else to go' or 'the ultimate plane of knowledge.' Then what is the Veda? The word 'veda' (knowledge) derives from the root 'vid' (to know). Thus Vedanta is the final word on knowledge. The concluding section of the Vedas, the Upanishads, is called 'Vedanta.' The supreme philosophical text of Vedanta is the 'Gita,' which contains the essence of all the teachings of the other Upanishads. Though the Upanishadic texts belong to the Sruti Shastras (revealed scripture), the Gita, being part of the Mahabharata, falls within the Smriti Shastras (remembered scripture).
The knowledge upon attaining which a human being lacks nothing further—that knowledge is called Atma-jnana or Brahma-jnana, knowledge of the Self or knowledge of Brahman. Now, what is Brahman? That supreme being who pervades all existence across the world, than whom nothing greater can exist—that is Brahman. The people of the world address him by different names and in various ways. Hindus call him Ishvara or Bhagavan, Muslims call him Khuda or Allah, Christians call him God, Buddhists call him Buddha; thus people of different faiths call that one Brahman by many names. Water is called 'water' by some, 'pani' by others, and in this way the same water is known by different names in different languages; yet the nature of water does not change. Whatever anyone may call it, if you drink it, water will quench your thirst—for all, in the same way.
One of the three principal texts of the Vedanta branch of Hindu philosophy is the Brahma Sutra or Vedanta Sutra (the Nyaya-prashthana, or the path of logic). The other two are the Upanishads (the Shruti-prashthana, or the path of revelation) and the Gita (the Smriti-prashthana, or the path of remembrance).
The very first sutra of the Vedanta Sutra reads: "Athato Brahma-jijnasa." (Brahma Sutra 1/1/1), which means: After realizing that the fruits of ritualistic actions are transient, having acquired the necessary virtues for spiritual practice, and having freed oneself from all doubts, "from this point forward comes the inquiry into Brahman." Whoever has developed the desire to know Brahman will alone be able to know him. Upon knowing him, the thirst for knowledge is quenched for all, and this attainment of knowledge, this flowering of our humanity, is the sole purpose of human life.
Concerning the oneness of Brahman, the Vedas proclaim:
1. Ekam sat vipra bahudha vadanti (Rig Veda, 1/164/46)—The wise speak of that one existence in many ways.
2. Ekam jyotir bahudha vibhati (Atharva Veda, 13/3/17)—That one light (Brahman) manifests in countless forms.
3. Ekam sant bahudha kalpayate (Rig Veda, 1/114/5)—The truth is one, yet it is conceived in manifold ways.
We see that the Vedas call him (Brahman) 'one.' There is but one supreme power governing creation, sustenance, and dissolution—we call him God, or Allah, or Lord; and by countless other names do we invoke that same one. That he is one—an analogy may further illuminate this truth. A man is the master of a large household. To his son, he is a father; to his parents, he is a son; to his wife, he is a husband; to his siblings, he is a brother; and to his friends, he is a friend. If one man alone in a single household can be addressed by different names by different people, then surely eight billion people in this vast world, this great household, will address its master by different names—and this is both natural and beautiful.
To attain this self-knowledge, according to Acharya Shankara, one must pursue four successive disciplines of practice. Vedanta speaks of this fourfold path of practice:
First comes discrimination—viveka—the capacity to discern what is eternal and what is transient. To gain this knowledge, one must understand: that which has always existed and will always exist, that which knows no decay, no destruction, is called the eternal; and that which exists today but not tomorrow, or will exist tomorrow but did not exist before, and will not endure two days hence—that is the transient. One must embrace the eternal alone. Attachment to the transient must be relinquished. Whatever is real, whatever partakes of true being, is all a manifestation of the Supreme Self—that is, intelligence or knowledge itself. The real alone is eternal; all else beyond it is transient or unreal. Grasping the transient inevitably yields suffering in the end. Therefore, one must consciously identify and deliberately abandon all such things.
Second is dispassion—vairagya, or stoicism—renunciation of the fruits of action in this world and the next (Vedantasara 15): that is, one must harbor no desire for enjoyment of results, whether here or hereafter. Following the philosophy of desireless action taught in the Bhagavad Gita, one must direct one's attention not to the fruits of action but to the very process of work itself. If one gives one's fullest capacity to the work at hand, the outcome will naturally be the best possible; to anxiously fixate on results and thereby diminish one's own capacity for work is the height of folly. From the pursuit of one's ultimate aim, one must withdraw attention from all unnecessary spheres of action.
The third discipline emphasizes the acquisition of transcendent wealth. It declares that we must become possessors of the six treasures—shad-sampatti—inner restraint, sense control, withdrawal, forbearance, faith, and meditative absorption. These six constitute the transcendent, suprasensory, inner spiritual wealth that must be our inheritance.
What is inner restraint? It is the mastery of the subtle inner faculties—mind, intellect, consciousness, the ego or sense of "I"—drawing them inward through discipline and directing them toward the Self. This is what inner restraint truly means.
We ordinary worldly people easily become slaves to the senses. Our patience is meager. Wherever the senses pull us, we run in that direction. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the skin—we cannot disregard the demands of any one of them. But the great souls are not enslaved by the senses or the mind. Rather, they keep both firmly under their own command.
Do we belong to the mind, or does the mind belong to us? If we belonged to the mind, why would we say "my mind"? And yet if we do say "my mind," why then do we serve the mind as slaves? If the mind truly belonged to us, should it not be the mind's duty to serve us, not ours to serve it?
In his answer to the Dharmaraja's third question, posed in the guise of a crane, King Yudhishthira speaks thus: "Mahajano yena gatah sa panthah"—the path that the great traverse is the path worth following. In the verse rendering of the learned Kashiram Das: "The path is worthy that the great ones take." The great souls keep their mind and senses as servants. Without mastery over these two, it is impossible to accomplish the right deed in the right way at the right moment.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, in its verse 5/2/3, speaks of three marks of a good, evolved person: self-restraint (dama), compassion and sympathy for all sentient beings (daya), and charity (dana). By 'shama' is meant 'mental tranquility.' But how shall this tranquility come? The true inner meaning of the word 'shama' is 'self-discipline.' The roots 'sham' and 'dam' are nearly equivalent in their reach. From the root 'sham' with the suffix 'kta' comes 'shanta.' To the root 'dam' we add the suffix 'anat' to form 'damana.' 'Shama' means peace, withdrawal, the subsiding of desire and anger, steadiness of mind or self-restraint, the quelling of craving. 'Dama' means regulation, restraint, the mastery of the senses, the prevention of the mind from turning toward evil.
'Uparati' is withdrawal from worldly action and indifference to pleasure; 'titiksha' is the ability to remain calm even in adversity, to endure suffering; 'shraddha' means faith in the Divine or in the words of a true teacher; 'samadhana' means to bridle one's own mind and fix one's consciousness wholly upon the Desired, the Worshipped, or the Goal one seeks.
Once these six treasures are obtained, one must strive toward the final, the fourth discipline: 'mumukshata'—the burning desire for liberation. Man desires freedom. Peace comes only with liberation. In search of peace do all creatures run. An ant finds a grain of sugar and thinks itself utterly content. Yet even then, unease begins again. Before it has finished savoring the first grain, it scurries about in agitation for another. The first grain cannot bring it peace, nor can all the grains that follow. It runs and runs its whole life long, searching for peace, and finds it never.
We rush about for peace, for joy—here and there, in countless ways, with endless hopes—to gatherings, to dance, to music, to parks, to cinemas, to distant lands in search of peace. We obtain something and believe, for a moment, that peace has been found. Yet soon after, restlessness returns. We want more—this is missing, that we desire. Thus we find peace nowhere.
The great souls have known what is true (eternal) and what is false (impermanent), and so they no longer chase after what is false. They run only toward what is true and eternal. When the bandit Ratnakara, understanding the impermanence of worldly bonds, found the way to truth, he became through spiritual practice the sage Valmiki, and revealed himself as the great poet of the Ramayana.
Death is inevitable; birth brings with it the certainty of death. Therefore, to attain that truth by which we may pass beyond death with a tranquil heart—that truth after which nothing remains unattained—to attain this is the ultimate fulfillment of human life. There is no other thing of value beyond this, no other purpose to existence. All religions speak thus. Just as a painter inscribes his name in a corner of his own creation, so too does God, after creating man, place his own name permanently within the essential core of man—the soul. Thus, by treading the right path at the right time in the right manner, we come to feel the presence of God, and such an awakening of the soul is the greatest achievement in human life.
Among all forms of charity, the gift of knowledge is supreme. When we give food and clothing, we relieve man's temporary want, but bring no lasting benefit—want returns again. But once knowledge of the Self is attained, man lacks nothing further; rather, he becomes whole and complete. And such self-knowledge is within the reach of any human being. For the infinite Brahman dwells equally within all—all are complete, they need only seek that completeness; none is greater or lesser, all are equal. Bound by illusion, we cannot perceive truth. Those whose illusion has fallen away—they alone see: I am whole, I am Brahman. There is but one obstacle on the path to self-knowledge: ignorance concerning oneself.
A mother places chocolate on the refrigerator shelf right before her child's eyes. Each afternoon, after lunch, when the mother falls asleep, the child opens the refrigerator and finds the chocolate gone. The child cannot fathom this mystery. It seems to him that his mother practices magic. He searches the entire refrigerator thoroughly, yet never finds the chocolate. The truth behind it all is this: by showing the child the chocolate and placing it there, the mother means to tell him, "Look, there is chocolate here. If you search here, you will find chocolate." But before going to sleep at noon, the mother cunningly hides that very chocolate near the child's pillow, beyond his sight. The child's entire attention remains fixed upon the refrigerator, searching for chocolate there, never reaching for what lies within his grasp—because he has been cleverly blinded to the actual truth.
A line from Sabina Yasmin's song, heard since childhood, returns to mind: "A full pitcher sits at my hand, yet thirst is not quenched."—How could it be? One must know where the pitcher is! The chocolate lies beside the child's head, yet through ignorance he wanders far from it, dying in search of it! We do the same—seeking peace, we rush about the world like the blind, forgetting to dive into the depths of our own mind. In hope of finding peace, we go to this one and that one, but never turn to ourselves. There is no true peace in the external world. The peace of the spiritual joy within far exceeds the pleasure of material things. When the home of this peace lies within the heart itself, how can we ever find it by searching through all the rooms of the world beyond?
What in this world endures forever? Once Greece and Rome scaled the highest peaks of civilization through their power and glory, yet where are they today? Only their treasury of knowledge remains—the sole eternal wealth in this world. Earthly riches shall crumble away; only the imperishable wealth shall survive. No matter how fiercely one may struggle, quarrel, and wage war to make oneself great, if one does not properly honor the power that dwells within, one can never truly succeed in the end. One's existence dissolves like a bubble in an instant. This truth holds for both the individual and the collective.
History testifies that truth is upheld more perfectly in this world by giving each their due than by any other means. Who has ever risen to greatness without honoring the guru? Children cannot grow great without respecting their parents; a student's true power cannot unfold without genuine reverence toward the teacher. There is but one mantra for greatness in this world: not to think oneself superior to others. In this lies the honoring of all, and from this awakens the impulse to lift oneself above the rest through excellence.
When honor is withheld, the latent power within gradually decays. Any faculty, neglected, eventually withers away. Humanity is caught in turmoil because it does not know itself. Because it knows nothing of its own soul, it runs hither and thither seeking peace everywhere but within. Perhaps it finds pleasures thus, but peace—peace it shall never find.
The dualists raise an objection thus: If there is no real difference between Brahman and the individual soul, if the soul itself is the supreme Brahman, why then does the individual suffer illusion? Perfect liberation through realization of Brahman is already inherent here, so what need is there for knowledge of truth? Why exert additional effort in striving for what is already accomplished? Where then is the role of the human, of the thing, of experience, of knowledge, of faith—or indeed of the guru?
Here lies a subtle misunderstanding. People deceive themselves in knowing themselves. What lies before the eyes, one rarely sees unless another points it out. Unless one hears from another's lips the assurance "You can do it," one does not even attempt. Ten foolish men crossed a river. To verify that all had arrived safely, each counted the others without counting himself, and found only nine. None could reach ten. They all concluded that though there were ten on the far bank, only nine had made it across—surely one had been swallowed by a crocodile. As they all wept together at this thought, a wise traveler passing by addressed them: "Deshmas-twam-asi—you are the tenth!" Upon hearing the traveler's words, they counted again, including themselves this time, and reached a new conclusion: there is no cause for sorrow; none of us has been swallowed by a crocodile. We are ten, all present and accounted for.
A person cannot see himself in this way. To see oneself, one needs the help of a guru. This very act of seeing is what is called attaining self-knowledge. One must sit at the guru's feet, bow the head, and casting away all pride with undivided attention, receive this knowledge. Thus, even though the living being is of the nature of Brahman, to dispel ignorance and seek that supreme Brahman, the Shruti and Smriti—at minimum seventy-six texts: the four Vedas, six Vedangas, eighteen Brahmanas, nine Aranyakas, ten Upanishads, four Upavedas, twenty Samhitas or Smritis or ethical treatises, and two synthesizing texts—the Gita and the Brahma Sutras—can serve in the role of the supreme guru. This does not refute the doctrine of non-duality; rather, through the attainment of self-knowledge, the true foundation of non-dualism becomes vividly apparent.
The guru tells us: dharma is not outside, peace is not outside, knowledge is not outside—it dwells entirely within, in the depths of the inner self. Every soul is by nature whole and pure—our duty is to awaken it. Religion is not mere external observance; for true dharma, self-knowledge is essential, and for this knowledge, self-examination is indispensable. Walking this path leads to self-elevation, and from this flows siddhi—the perfection and fulfillment of a human being.
Hinduism holds this truth: where there is man, there is Narayana; where there is woman, there is Gauri. The establishment of God within humanity has found sanction in Hindu philosophical thought. Sri Ramakrishna proclaimed: wherever there is a living being, there is Shiva—a conception born from his non-dualistic understanding. There remains no duality between man and God once man attains Brahma-knowledge and elevates himself to oneness with the Atman, that singular and unchanging reality. To achieve this, one must establish equal vision not merely in mankind, but in all creatures—one must establish the vision of the Atman.
The final word of Vedanta: no distinction must be entertained in anything, for that great Self—that supreme Brahman—dwells in all things. Here, therefore, no separation of any kind can exist—here abides only love. When this love awakens within a person, the distinctions of caste, creed, color, and lineage dissolve; the distances created by ideology vanish—and in their place emerges one magnificent unity.
Today, as humanity strives so earnestly for the establishment of peace, if the great teachings of Vedanta were embraced through one path or another, peace could indeed be established upon this earth. The teachings of Vedanta exist within all faiths, perhaps clothed in different languages—if we accept them and put them to use, peace shall surely come.
In the Taittiriya Upanishad, part of Krishna Yajurveda's Taittiriya Aranyaka, Krishna directs us: Matri devo bhava. Pitri devo bhava. Acharya devo bhava. Atithi devo bhava. (2.23)—Revere thy mother, thy father, thy teacher, thy guest as God. (Notice how the Veda places the mother first among all—from ancient times, Hinduism has established the dignity of woman.) Swami Vivekananda extended this further, declaring: "Daridra devo bhava. Murkha devo bhava."—The countless poor who perish from hunger and lack of medicine must be served with the reverence due to the divine. Those drowning in the darkness of ignorance must be shown the path of light by those who see them, even the most ordinary among us, as manifestations of the divine.
The greatest minds of humanity, age after age, have proclaimed the indispensability of infallible philosophy—the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, and the knowledge of Brahman. The words of Vedanta, uttered nearly four and a half thousand years ago, have been revered—however differently expressed in the newer faiths—as universal for the welfare of the world.
Through the awakening and gradual unfolding of Vedantic teaching, humanity becomes brothers and sisters—all distinction disappears, all discord and strife, all war and conflict cease—and there arises upon the earth a great unity, a great fellowship. The world finds the path to eternal peace. Mankind can then experience a fearless, celestial joy. In establishing peace and in its subsequent evolution, the teaching of Vedanta can emerge as the savior. Only through Vedantic teaching and its right application can humanity's consciousness be awakened, can knowledge-yoga and action-yoga be harmonized, and can human nature reach its highest flowering. Only Vedanta can awaken that divine presence which dwells within human hearts. The time has long come to grasp this simple truth: that through such an awakening alone shall the entire human race and the civilization of the world advance toward its destined future.