Adi Shankaracharya

Adi Shankara was an intellectual giant, a genius of linguistics, and above all, a spiritual light and the pride of India. The level of wisdom and knowledge he showed at a very early age made him a shining light for humanity.

He was a prodigal child and an extraordinary scholar with almost superhuman capabilities. At the age of two, he could fluently speak and write Sanskrit. At the age of four, he could recite all the Vedas, and at the age of twelve, he took sanyas and left his home. Even at such a young age, he gathered disciples and started walking throughout the country to re-establish the spiritual sciences. 

The Extraordinary Guru of Adi Shankara

Adi Shankara’s guidance came from Gowdapada. Under his guidance, Shankara went about doing all this incredible work. Gowdapada is very much a part of our tradition also. He was an extraordinary guru, but his teachings were never written down. He made sure it was not written down. He must have taught thousands of people but he produced fifteen to twenty good people who re-established the spiritual science in the country very quietly, without any noise, without starting a new religion or anything.

Adi Shankara and Badrinath Temple

Badrinath has historical significance because the temple here was installed by Adi Shankara. He set up his own people there. Even today, the descendants of the families that he set up – traditionally, the Nambudiris – are the priests in the temple. From Kaladi to Badrinath, the distance is more than three thousand kilometers by walk. Adi Shankara walked such distances.

Adi Shankara’s Mother’s Death

Once, when Adi Shankara was up in the North, he intuitively came to know that his mother was dying. At the age of twelve, his mother had given him permission to take sanyas only after he had promised her that he would be there with her at the moment of her death. So when he realized that his mother was ill, he walked all the way back to Kerala just to be with her beside her deathbed. He spent a few days with his mother and after she had died, he walked back north again.

How Adi Shankara Entered a Dead King's Body

Adi Shankara got into an argument with a man and won. Then that man's wife maneuvered herself into the argument. Adi Shankara is a certain level of logic – you should not argue with a man like that. But she negotiated herself into the argument, saying, “You defeated my husband, but he is not whole. We are two halves of the same thing. So you must also argue with me.” How can you beat this logic? So, arguments started with the woman. Then she saw she was losing and so she started asking him questions about human sexuality. Shankara said whatever he said. Then she went into more details and asked, “What do you know by experience?” Adi Shankara was a brahmachari (a celibate). He knew that this was a trick to defeat him so he said, “I need a month’s break. We’ll start from where we left off after a month.”

Then he went inside a cave and told his disciples, “No matter what happens, do not allow anybody into this cave because I'm going to leave my body and look for another possibility for some time.” The life energies, or prana, manifest in five dimensions: prana vayu, samana, apana, udana and vyana. These five manifestations of prana have distinct functions. Prana vayu is in charge of respiratory action, thought process and the sensation of touch. How do you check whether someone is alive or dead? If his breath has stopped, you say he is dead. The breath has stopped because the prana vayu has begun to exit. It will take up to one-and-a-half hours for the prana vayu to leave completely.

This is why it was traditionally set up that after the breath stops, you must wait for a minimum of one-and-a-half hours before you cremate someone – because he is still alive in many other ways. We wait for one-and-a-half hours so that his thought process, his respiratory action and his sensations are gone, so that he doesn't feel the burn. Now the remaining part of the prana will still be there. The vyana, the last dimension of the prana, could last up to twelve to fourteen days. The preservation and integrity of the body is largely due to the function of the vyana prana in the system. When Adi Shankara left his body, he left his vyana in the system because his body should be maintained.

It so happened, a king was bitten by a cobra and had died. When cobra venom enters your system, your blood begins to coagulate and breath becomes hard, because when circulation becomes difficult, it becomes hard to breathe. Your breath will stop well before your prana vayu has exited. In many ways, this is an ideal condition for one who wants to enter that body. Normally, it would give you only a window of one-and-a-half hours’ time. But when a person has got cobra’s venom in the system, it will give you up to four-and-a-half hours’ time.

So Adi Shankara got this opportunity and he very easily entered the king’s body. And he went through the process so he could answer those questions experientially. There were some wise people among the king's circle, who, when they saw a man they had declared dead suddenly sit up full of energy, could recognize by his behavior that it was not the same person but someone else in the same body. They sent soldiers all over the city, telling them wherever they saw a body lying around, to burn it immediately – so that if that body belongs to the person who has come here into the king’s body, then he will not be able to leave and go back. Because now the king has come alive – a different guy, but he looks the same, so what? But they did not succeed and Adi Shankara went back.

Adi Shankara’s Death

Towards the end of his life, Adi Shankara was so established in his culture, his Brahminic way of life and his Vedic knowledge, that he did not see fundamentals properly. One day, he was entering a temple and another person was walking out of the temple. That person happened to be of the low caste, but Adi Shankara was a Brahmin, the purest of the pure. When he was walking into the temple and he saw the person of low caste, he saw it as a bad omen. When he was going to worship his God, this low caste person came in the way. He said, “Move away.” That man just stood there and said, “What should move away, me or my body?” That is all he asked. This struck Adi Shankara so hard, and that was the last day he spoke. He never gave any other teaching. He just walked straight to Himalayas. No one ever saw him again.

Adi Shankara Teachings on Maya

There is some misunderstanding about what Adi Shankara said. I think we owe it to him to clear at least one. A lot of people are saying, “What is this nonsense that he said, ‘Everything is Maya.’” The way it is being (wrongly) interpreted is – “Maya means it doesn’t exist.” Maya does not mean it does not exist. Maya means an illusion, in the sense that you are not seeing it the way it is. Here you are with this seemingly solid body, but with the food that you eat, the water that you drink, and the air that you breathe, the cells of your body are being exchanged on a daily basis. The tissues and organs in your body completely rejuvenate in a matter of a couple of days to a few years, depending on the type of cells. This means after some time, you have a completely new body. But in your experience, it looks like it is the same thing – this is Maya. Similarly, the way you perceive existence, the way you know the world through the five senses, is completely off the mark – this is the illusion. It is like a mirage. If you are driving on the highway, sometimes, far away, there seems to be water. When you go there, definitely there is no water. This does not mean there was nothing there. There was some refraction of light that created this illusion. What is one thing seems to be something else. What you think is “me” is actually everything – this is the Maya. What you think is “the other” is actually you. What you think is everything is nothing too. That is the Maya that Adi Shankara is taught about.