The Thousand Teachings of Shankara: Upadeshasahasri

THE THOUSAND TEACHINGS

UPADEŚA SĀHASRĪ

THE THOUSAND TEACHINGS

UPADEŚA SĀHASRĪ

of

ŚRĪ ŚAṂKARĀCĀRYA

Translated by

A. J. ALSTON

SHANTI SADAN

First edition 1990

ISBN 0-85424-041-1

Second edition 2024

978-0-85424-086-9

eBook edition 2024

978-0-08424-085-2

Copyright © Shanti Sadan 2024

29 Chepstow Villas

London W11 3DR

shantisadan.org

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher.

Preface to the 2024 Edition

This translation of The Thousand Teachings of Śaṃkara was made by Dr Anthony J Alston (1919-2004), a Sanskrit scholar and lifelong member of Shanti Sadan, who also translated and compiled the six-volume Śaṃkara Source Book.

Alongside the translation, Dr Alston has provided extensive notes especially in those places where the argument may be difficult for modern readers to follow. Where appropriate, references are made to versions and translations of the Thousand Teachings by other scholars with which some students may be familiar.

The aim of this edition is to provide a text which is helpful in particular to people who wish to read the writings of Śri Śaṃkara as part of their study and practice of the non-dual teachings, in pursuit of the goal of inner illumination.

As explained elsewhere, the Thousand Teachings is the one work which almost all scholars agree was written by the original Śaṃkarācārya, and which is not a commentary on something else. A number of texts that have been attributed to him in the past are now believed to have been written by followers. And the majority of Śaṃkara’s own writings are commentaries on the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras and Bhagavad Gita. In the Thousand Teachings Śaṃkara quotes these texts but the overall presentation is his own.

Śaṃkara probably lived in the eighth century of the common era. Since then, numerous commentators and exponents of non-duality have endeavored to explain aspects of his teachings which they find difficult or obscure. But where these presentations tend to diverge from the original, even in apparently slight and subtle ways, it has been found that they lead to more difficulties than they resolve.

In some places Śaṃkara discusses points of view that are no longer widely held, so these passages are of less relevance today, and need not detain us. But always his principal concerns are to distinguish the Real from the apparent; to establish the identity of the Self and the Real; to understand and correct the way that juxtaposition of the Real and the apparent leads to false identification and human suffering; and to understand how right knowledge, including empirical knowledge, can occur. It is the identity of the Self and the Real that makes it possible for human beings to attain knowledge of ultimate Reality and liberation from all suffering and limitations. On these perennial and essential questions, the experience of many enquirers has been that Śaṃkara and those contemporary exponents who do not depart from his core principles, remain the most insightful and reliable of all guides.

Contents

Preface to the 2024 Edition

Analytical Table of Contents

List of Abbreviations

Introduction by the Translator

The Thousand Teachings

Prose Part

Section 1:

The Teaching of the Pupil

Section 2:

Knowledge of the Self as Changeless and Non-Dual

Section 3:

Recapitulation

The Thousand Teachings

Metrical Part

Chapter 1:

Introduction

Chapter 2:

Negation

Chapter 3:

The Lord (Īśvara) as One’s True Self

Chapter 4:

The True Nature of Metaphysical Knowledge

Chapter 5:

Shortcomings of the Mind

Chapter 6:

Negation of Qualifying Characteristics

Chapter 7:

On What Enters the Mind

Chapter 8:

Dissolution of the Mind

Chapter 9:

Subtlety and Inclusiveness

Chapter 10:

Vision of the True Seer

Chapter 11:

On Being the Witness

Chapter 12:

Light

Chapter 13:

On Being Without an Eye

Chapter 14:

Dream and Memory

Chapter 15:

On One Thing Not Being Another

Chapter 16:

The Element Earth

Chapter 17:

The Right View

Chapter 18:

‘That Thou Art’

Chapter 19:

Spiritual Medicine

Bibliographical Note

Analytical Table of Contents

Prose Part Enumerated in Sections and Paragraphs

Para

Section 1: Introduction

1 - Statement of subject-matter and aims of the work

2 - The approach to the Teacher

7 - The Teacher cites texts in definition of the Absolute

8 - The Teacher asks ‘Who are you?’

10 - The pupil is taught that he is not the body

18 - The body as evolute of name and form

22 - The mind and senses also

23 - The supreme Self present in all beings

25 - Not to be worshipped as different from the worshipper

27 - Vision of difference as source of bondage

30 - No ritual after metaphysical knowledge

33 - Arguments to show that the Self is not afflicted by pain

35 - Pain and its impressions belong to the mind

37 - Texts identifying the Self with the Absolute

39 - Is there not a distinction between goal, means and aspirant?

41 - The ritualistic part of the Veda is for the metaphysically ignorant

Section 2: Knowledge of the Self as changeless and non-dual

45 - A Brahmacārī asks how he can be liberated from rebirth

46 - Experience of pain is not natural but adventitious, due to nescience

49 - The nature of nescience

51 - There can be mutual superimposition of the Self and the body because they are not initially known as distinct

55 - The Self cannot be conjoined with the body or it would exist for the sake of another

57 - Doctrine that the Self is superimposed on the body does not imply the unreality of the Self

60 - The Self can be superimposed because it is already evident

62 - The contradiction in worldly experience: the Self is felt as free and also as bound

74 - The Self as changeless, actionless Witness

86 - Therefore the states of waking and dream cannot belong to it

90 - Presence of consciousness in dreamless sleep

94 - Being self-evident, the Self does not require proof

102 - Non-difference in essence of eternal knowledge and transient worldly knowledge

104 - Apparent activity of Self in knowledge due to the failure to distinguish it from its apparent conditioning factors

106 - Even the body and senses sometimes require to be perceived, the Self never

108 - Knowledge only metaphorically referred to as a ‘result’ in the phrase ‘resultant cognition’

109 - Conviction of the pupil that the Self has independent existence and that all else is unreal

Section 3: Recapitulation

112 - The seeker should reflect that it is mental and physical defects that cause action

113 - As pure subject, the Self is different from all it knows in the objective field

114 - The Self cannot be affected by objects

Verse Part Enumerated in Chapters and Verses

verse

Chapter 1: Introduction

1 - Invocation

2 - Statement of the topic as ‘knowledge of the Absolute’

3 - Action is caused by nescience and results in painful rebirth

6 - Action cannot destroy nescience

7 - The view that metaphysical knowledge depends on action

11 - Untenability of this view

16 - Scope of the ritualistic injunctions of the Veda

18 - Once negated nescience never returns

20 - The cause of liberation is metaphysical knowledge unaccompanied by action

26 - Etymology of the word ‘Upanishad’

Chapter 2: Negation

1 - The Veda negates all else but cannot negate the Self

2 - The ego-notion rests on the false notion ‘this’ and falls with it.

3 - As the ‘resultant awareness’ in all cognitions, the Self is uncontradictable

4 - Asking the way out of the infested forest of the world from those who know

Chapter 3: The Lord as one’s own Self

1 - The conviction ‘I am He’ brings all other knowledge to an end

2 - The negations in the Veda negate false notions about the Self

Chapter 4: The true nature of metaphysical knowledge

1 - After metaphysical knowledge there is no more action (though experience may continue through prārabdha-karma)

Chapter 5: Shortcomings of the mind

1 - People reject the metaphysical teaching from a false conviction about caste duties

2 - The Self as consciousness only appears to act

5 - When the true nature of the ego is realized, it proves to be the Self

Chapter 6: Negation of qualifying characteristics

1 - All characteristics appearing to pertain to the Self are subject to elimination

6 - Force of the text ‘I am the Absolute’

Chapter 7: On what enters the mind

1 - Ordinary experience reveals the Self as the universal Knower

5 - The Self as consciousness is constant, but objects disappear in the dreamless sleep state: they depend on the mind for their existence

6 - After discriminating the Self the mind sees all else, including itself, as the latter

Chapter 8: Dissolution of the Mind

1 - An enlightened soul explains to his mind how he has transcended its activities

Chapter 9: Subtlety and inclusiveness

1 - The Self the subtlest and most inclusive principle

3 - I am that principle

6 - All beings are my body, but I am free from taint

7 - Knowledge is constant and real, all else unreal

9 - The Knower is infinite and not an object of knowledge

Chapter 10: Vision of the true Seer

1 - I am infinite consciousness: the not-self is unreal

8 - I am mistakenly supposed to be the not-self through nescience

10 - After vision of the Self, there is no more rebirth

13 - Nor is there action

Chapter 11: On being the Witness

1 - The notion that one is anything other than pure consciousness as the Witness is extrinsic and therefore subject to removal

5 - Waking experiences are valid for the waking state, as dream experiences are valid within one dream

6 - I am the source of consciousness in all the conscious

8 - Wrong to think ‘I am the Absolute’ and also an individual agent

9 - The ritualist accepts the Veda’s teaching about ritual; he should accept its teaching about liberation also

10 - Self revealed in dream as the source of all consciousness

12 - Liberation an awakening which negates all superimposition

15 - The cause of action is nescience, the cause of liberation is knowledge

Chapter 12: Light

1 - Non-discrimination of the Self from its reflection in the mind

4 - Correction of this through ‘That thou art’

6 - Self not knowable through mental cognition

9 - Self as Witness of the mind

16 - The Self does not act

Chapter 13: On being without an eye

1 - The Self is pure and motionless

14 - Concentration (samādhi) a state of the mind, not the Self

18 - I am present in all, like the ether

22 - Liberation through transcending notion of plurality

Chapter 14: Dream and memory

1 - The mind reveals objects, the Witness reveals the mind

8 - Witness is different from the mind

11 - After knowledge of the Self there is nothing further to do

16 - Disappearance of false notions of individuality stemming from the mind

26 - Significance of dream-experience for metaphysics

27 - Knower of the Self higher than the gods

29 - He rises above individuality and action

32 - Freedom from the mind and its limitations

50 - Self unaffected by bondage or liberation

Chapter 15: On one thing not being another

1 - Self different from body and mind

6 - No liberation through action

9 - As Witness, we pervade all bodies, untouched

20 - The Witness unaffected by waking, dream and dreamless sleep

38 - The Self not known as an object

43 - The Self not active in knowledge

49 - Self unaffected by bondage or liberation

51 - No rebirth after metaphysical knowledge

Chapter 16: The element earth

1 - The Self is not the body, senses or mind

15 - It is not the ‘emptiness’ of the Buddhists

16 - The Self, as constant, is real, all else unreal

22 - The Self appears to be co-terminous with the body through illusion

23 - Falsity of Buddhist doctrine ‘all is momentary’

30 - All else is unreal, but not the Self

38 - Liberation not a new ‘state’ to be acquired

45 - Inadequacy of the Sāṃkhya doctrine

51 - Inadequacy of the Vaiśeṣika doctrine

57 - Neither bondage nor liberation apply to the Self

69 - Results of realizing the Self

Chapter 17: The right view

1 - Reverence to the Teacher and his line

4 - Realization of the Self the supreme end of life

7 - Liberation is through knowledge only, not through action

9 - The Veda as consisting of one sentence

10 - The world of name, form and action unreal

14 - Self is that through which one knows and acts

16 - The forms in dream are mere adjuncts of the Self, and so are those of waking

19 - Desire and action pertain to nescience

22 - Purification of the mind through asceticism

25 - The one appears as many through illusion (māyā)

32 - The Self can be known through the mind in a special way

35 - Consciousness is perceived (reflected) in the mind but is different from it

40 - The Self, as consciousness, is immediately evident

44 - Ritualistic action depends on self-identification with the body

49 - But the seeker of the Self withdraws from action

51 - The Teacher

54 - Consciousness, reflected in the mind and senses of the individual, illumines them, remaining motionless and unlimited

57 - Through realizing the Self one transcends the states of waking, dream and dreamless sleep

59 - And transcends rebirth and fear

72 - And realizes one is the true Self of all creatures

73 - And dominates over the gods

76 - Enlightenment through meditation on OM

77 - The Self supports all but remains unchanged

82 - The crowning truth of the Veda can be learned only by an obedient pupil from a Teacher who has direct experience

Chapter 18: ‘That thou art’

1 - Benedictory verse reverencing the Self as consciousness (avagati)

2 - Benedictory verse reverencing Gauḍapāda

3 - Liberation implies knowledge of the real nature of one’s own Self through negation of the not-self; the authoritative means to this knowledge are the great Upanishadic texts.

6 - The knowledge ‘I am the Absolute (brahman)’ cancels the notion ‘I act’

9 - Statement of the Prasaṃkhyāna Vādin’s view that knowledge of the Absolute depends on meditation practised in dependence on a Vedic injunction until the fall of the body

13 - His doctrine that hearing the texts yields abstract knowledge only which will be effaced by contradictory empirical experiences unless continually strengthened by meditation

17 - Reiteration of his view that liberation depends on meditation performed as an act in obedience to a Vedic injunction.

19 - Error of Prasaṃkhyāna Vādin in thinking that all Vedic texts are concerned with action

20 - Action depends on erroneous superimposition; the purpose of the highest texts is not to enjoin it but to prohibit it; sense in which erroneous cognition can be ‘prohibited’

24 - The holy texts ultimately reveal the Self not positively but only through negation of all the not-self from the ego-sense onwards

27 - Ego-consciousness arises as the undiscriminated complex of the light of the Self and the reflection of that light in the individual psycho-physical organism

28 - Words (e.g. the word ‘I’) can designate the ego-sense directly, but only indicate the pure Self indirectly through the ego-sense

32 - A reflection and its original are distinct, as are ego-sense and Self; but in ordinary empirical experience the latter couple are not discriminated

34 - View of some (? early Vedāntins) that the ego-sense alone forms the individual soul, a mere reflection of the supreme Self but yet a reality

35 - View (? of Bhartṛprapañca) that the individual soul is a real modification of the supreme Self, serving as a receptacle for the reflection of its own consciousness; view of the Bhāṭṭas that the soul is the bare ego-sense

36 - View of the Buddhists that there is nothing permanent in the soul but only a succession of momentary flashes of consciousness

37 - Analysis of the nature of a reflection; it is different both from the original it reflects and the receptacle in which it is reflected

39 - It is not a reality

44 - Transmigration is but an illusory notion arising in practical experience from the failure to discriminate the pure Self from the complex of the Self, its reflection and the reflecting medium

47 - View of the Bhāṭṭas that the soul is the ego-sense and an independent reality rests on ignorance of the Upanishadic doctrine and cannot lead to liberation

50 - The reflection theory, however, explains both the possibility of liberation (through the cancellation of the illusory reflection) and also the fact that the Upanishads can refer to the Self as knowledge, since words meaning knowledge in the empirical sense refer to the reflection of consciousness in the active intellect and so point indirectly to pure consciousness, the original of that reflection

51 - View of the grammarians that the phrase ‘he knows’ refers to an activity in which agent and act are inseparable

53 - Advaita analysis of ‘he knows’, which apportions activity to the intellect and agency to the reflection of consciousness in the intellect, and shows that the statement can only be made through non-discrimination of these two different factors, cp. verse 44 above

54 - The empirical knower can neither be the intellect nor the Self

55 - The Self is not ‘knowledge’ in the sense of actively knowing

56 - Nor is the Self that through which active knowledge takes place (i.e. in the sense of instrument for an agent in his act), nor is the Self the object of an act of knowing

57 - The Self neither knowable as an object nor expressible in words

58 - The ego-sense is not the pure Self of the Upanishads

59 - The phrase ‘he knows’ is meaningful in practical experience, but only because in practical experience we fail to discriminate between reflected consciousness and its original, pure consciousness

65 - The expression ‘he knows’ also presupposes superimposition of the qualities of the intellect onto the Self and vice versa

66 - But that knowledge to which the Upanishads ultimately refer is nothing that is produced

68 - The representations of the intellect are admittedly produced, but they are only a semblance of real knowledge, which latter is pure consciousness

69 - Summary of present argument; empirical knowledge, conceived as an activity, is but an appearance arising through failure to discriminate pure consciousness from its reflection in the intellect

72 - View of the Buddhists that the empirical cognitions themselves are active and self-luminous

73 - Need for the introduction of a radical distinction between pure consciousness as actionless Witness and the flow of active empirical cognitions witnessed by the latter as objects if the Buddhist position is to be refuted satisfactorily

74 - Any active (and therefore changing) principle conceived as persisting among the cognitions and perceiving them as objects would itself have to be established by an actionless witness and so would itself be an object for consciousness and so inert

75 - Inadequacy of Sāṃkhya view that the facts of empirical experience and liberation can be explained on the assumption of an actionless witness but without the assumption of a reflection of consciousness in the intellect

78 - Unintelligibility of the text ‘that thou art’ on the above-mentioned Sāṃkhya view; this text is intelligible only on the assumption that the word ‘thou’ designates directly the ‘I’ known as an object in empirical experience, and refers indirectly through that to the Witness, the source of the consciousness reflected in the intellect as ‘I’

85 - Despite appealing to the simile of the red-hot iron, the Advaitin does not regard the reflection (ābhāsa) as a reality

87 - View that reflected consciousness is real consciousness would imply materialism in the end

89 - Mental conviction ‘I am the Seer’ possible only through the medium of reflected consciousness

90 - And this conviction is a necessary prerequisite for understanding the text ‘that thou art’ intuitively

91 - Self and not-self; the ‘I’, the ‘mine’ and the ‘this’

94 - When the above factors are discriminated it is seen that the Witness, itself untouched, is the support of all that comes into the mind

96 - The above reasoning is an example of reasoning through agreement and difference (anvaya and vyatireka) to determine the meaning of ‘I’ in the context of the supreme Vedic texts

97 - The same reasoning supported by the example of sleep

98 - And by Vedic texts

99 - Liberation proceeds from merely hearing the supreme texts after previously ascertaining their theoretical meaning through anvaya and vyatireka reasoning

100 - Example from Rāmāyaṇa

101 - Final illumination proceeds from merely hearing the text—no further activity of any kind necessary or possible

105 - In the supreme Vedic texts the word ‘I’ is used to refer indirectly to the Absolute (brahman)

107 - The ‘fruit’ of the liberating cognition is attributed figuratively to pure consciousness

109 - Alternative way of accounting for the ‘fruitfulness’ of the liberating cognition

110 - Neither ‘I am the Absolute’ nor ‘that thou art’ are intelligible without appeal to the reflection theory

115 - The reflection theory can be established without circular reasoning on account of the evidence of dream experience

118 - Analysis of the genesis of the triad of ‘knower, knowing, known’ in perception, and its distinction from the Witness

121 - The persisting of a single Witness throughout all our changing cognitions implies the changelessness and purity of the Witness

123 - The mere fact that all the stream of our cognitions are known implies that the Witness is different from them

124 - The existence of the transcendent Witness can initially only be established by the Vedic texts, not by perception and inference conducted independently of them

128 - Refutation of the attempt by the Mīmāṃsaka (? of Prabhākara’s school) to show that the nature of the Self as knower can be determined by mere reasoning on the data of experience and without appeal either to the Veda or to the reflection-theory for interpreting it

134 - An authoritative means of knowledge is required to establish the Witness

138 - Establishing the existence of the Witness means consciously knowing it as such

139 - The Self cannot be ‘clearly’ apprehended as an object in empirical experience in the manner suggested by the Bhāṭṭas

141 - The Vijñāna Vāda Buddhist view that the momentary experience is itself the experiencer

143 - Defects of the Buddhists’ ‘momentary’ theory of consciousness and of their doctrine that words stand for universal ideas as subjective projections

152 - Upshot of criticism of the Buddhist doctrines is that there must exist a permanent Witness separate from the empirical cognitions and witnessing them as objects

154 - Further account of the process of perception

158 - In this process, only the intellect illumined by a reflection of consciousness undergoes modification, not the Witness

159 - Only the intellect can have the conviction ‘I am (really) the Witness’, not the Witness itself

160 - But experience of liberation does not fall to the ego

161 - Cancellation through right knowledge of the non-discriminatory notion ‘I am the sufferer’ arising from false identification with the mind and body

170 - Mutual qualification of the meanings of the words ‘that’ and ‘thou’ in ‘that thou art’.

174 - Analogy of ‘that thou art’ to ‘thou art the tenth’

177 - Comprehension of the meaning of the holy texts is normally preceded by reasoning to determine the meaning of the words

179 - But when the sentence has once been understood there is no further room for reasoning (i.e. contrary to the view of the Prasaṃkhyāna Vādin, who holds that reasoning about the meaning of the texts must continue along with meditation until the fall of the body in order to strengthen the conviction acquired from them, which, according to him, is only that of an abstract idea, cp. verses 9 ff. above)

181 - Examples of the kind of preliminary reasoning required to understand the meaning of the great Upanishadic texts

185 - Once the text has been comprehended, the deliverances of the empirical means of cognition are not competent to contradict it

186 - Nor can they prevent the conviction ‘I am free from suffering’ from arising from the texts; one who has awoken from a painful dream realizes that he was free even during the dream itself

190 - Restatement of the sole effective means to the realization that one is not the sufferer—hearing from