Vivek Chudamani

Author(s): Chandrashekhar Bharti Swami, P Sankaranarayan
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidyabhavan

Page 17

INTRODUCTION
(BY THE TRANSLATOR)
Śrī Gurubhyo Namaḥ
Śrī Śamkara, reverently adored as the Bhagavatpäda belongs to the galaxy of Master-Minds of the world holding a pre-eminent place among intellectuals and prophets. He is by far the most out. standing personality of all times and of all countries. One must search long, wearily and in vain among the illustrious of every land for a seer and saint of such stature and of such achievements as he packed into his all-too-short life. During a period of intense activity which, in the thirtytwo years of his sojourn on earth, omitting the years of his nonage, could not have exceeded fifteen or sixteen of them, he sanctified the soil of this ancient land by traversing its farflung corners, performing his intellectual digvijayas, and u mately, he established himself on the throne of omniscience. His marvellous intellect has evolved out of the tripod of our scriptures a school of philosophy of great speculative daring and logical subtlety. Acknowledged as such by everyone in the east and in the west, in its thoroughness and its profundity, the system of Śrī Śamkara holds the first place among the philosophies of the world, Much as followers of other schools may deplore it, it is not wholly unmerited that Vedānta and Advaita are understood to be synonymous. The chronological first in the triad of the main current Vedāntic interpretations is also acclaimed as the logical highest.
Sri Sankara was no mere dialectical metaphysician. He also prescribed a way of life which must inevitably lead to a vision in which the individual loses himself in the discovery of his true nature. Appalling as it is in its heaven-kissing grandeur, relentless in its incisive logic, and forbidding in its austere absoluteness, Advaita Vedānta has been the despair of minds made out of common clay. But, we have the authority of the illustrious line of his disciples that to a wise and initiated mind instinct with faith and understanding, governed by, discipline and held by devotion, Sri Sankara's system, grounded on śāstra, guided by yukti, and confirmed by anubhava, in its design and in its execution, has an artistic merit all its own which compels conviction and invites acceptance. Its nume