The Teachings of Śankara
TRADITION, our best guide in many of the dark problems of India's past, attributes the admirable philosophical work we have just translated to Śankarâchârya, the greatest name in the history of Indian Philosophy, and one of the greatest masters of pure thought the world has ever seen.
Śankara, again according to the tradition of the East, lived and taught some two thousand years ago, founding three colleges of Sanskrit learning and philosophy, the most important being at Śringeri, in southern India. He wrote Commentaries on the older Vedânta books, and many original works of great excellence, of which this is reckoned to be one.
Like all Śankara's separate works, The Essence of the Teaching is complete in itself, containing a survey of the whole of life' from a single standpoint; in the present case, from the point of view of pure intellect.
The moral problem before us, is the liberation of our souls from the idea of personality; and the opening of the door to the life of the universal Self, which will enter our hearts, and rule them, once the personal idea is put out of the way. And there is no more potent weapon for combating the personal idea than the clear and lucid understanding that what we call our personality is, in reality, only one of many pictures in the mind, a picture of the body, held before our consciousness, viewed by it, and therefore external to it. If the personality is a picture in the field of consciousness, it cannot be consciousness itself; cannot be our real
