Adi Shankaracharya

Adi Shankaracharya

"This world is full of injustice , something has to be done with it" is what he always dreamt of .

Being brought up in a Brahman family , after his fathers death he accepts brahmanathva by his choice and starts searching for the eternal truth .

Early in his life he defeated the fear of death and understood the immortality sole (which is the core ideology of Sanathana Dharma). His stay on this planet from here after was to build up on this ideology .

With his mother's acceptance he takes up sanyasathva at a very young age   and started marching to the north of india to meet Govidapada whom he believed would direct him in his mission .

On this journey  he meat a lot of thinkers and got to know  that vedas are getting farther and farther away from peoples life and soon we would forget it . He wanted to know what is Vedanta and if it has substance then he must spread it .

When he meat Govinda  at the banks of the river Narmada , Sankaracharya  falls to his feet and says " I have come to your feet to understand the reason for existence".

Govinda reply " with this mortal body how can you cross the ocean of samsara sagara and understand eternity " .

Shankaracharya replys " my body is mortal but atma is immortal ".

Astonished by this answer from a small kid govida accepts him as a student and helps with what ever he can .

Govinda shows him the Veda scripts that were lying and dying from a long time and explains his strive to atleast store them but regrates his inability to broadcast them .

Shankaracharya spends years understanding them and comes up with a summary of all those he had read and calls is "Advitha"

Advitha literally means " nothing second " . The core philosophy is that Atman (self's immortal sole) and Brahman (universal creator) can be united when enlightened by a proper education(Veda).

Criticism started to his work and the first among them was with his statement

"Sarvam Brahmyethyaha " In which he says all are Brahman .

But it was that point of time in india when fast castism was already rooted and people had started inheriting cast by birth from parents. Also a tag was attached to brahmin as upper cast and were hindering their counter parts "The kshudras" .

The Varna padathi was a system that was brought in with the philosophy " Not more than one power in the world ( knowledge, weapons, money,land) shall go to an individual so as to build a healthy society " . Also what weapon one wants to practice and use was a choice one has to make with his self consciousness and belief during his education , this weapon was not inherited by birth. But later with greed and ego this system was converted to castism .

But shankaracharya stood by his statemement "Sarvam Brahmyethyaha " and defeated many scholars in a war of thoughts and helped them to understand and accept this and his other philosophy. 

He continued his journey and spread advida to the length and breadth of the country and created 4 shakthi peeta at four corners of india ( first one being the sringeri mutt) .

Last days of his mortal body was spent in the great  Himalayas . But his soul as being immortal is still with us and striving for the betterment of humanity