Why This Blog:
Self-Knowledge Is the Most Important Journey of My Life
Atma
Bodha by Adi Shankaracharya | Bhashya by Swami Nikhilananda
There are moments in life — quiet, unremarkable
moments — when the noise of the world suddenly recedes and something deeper
stirs within. A question surfaces, not from the mind exactly, but from
somewhere beyond it: Who am I, really? Not the role I play, not the name I
carry, not the story I tell others at get-togethers, but truly — who or what
is this awareness reading these words right now?
That question, deceptively simple and endlessly
profound, is precisely what this blog series is about. And it has been asked —
and answered — by one of the most luminous minds in human history: Adi
Shankaracharya, the 8th-century philosopher-saint who wrote Atma Bodha, meaning
'Self-Knowledge' or 'Awakening to the Self.'
I have spent considerable time sitting with this
text, returning to it not as an academic exercise but as a living inquiry into
my own nature. I am not a scholar, nor a monk. I am someone who walks the same
streets you do, navigates the same tensions of work and family, and yet finds
in this ancient teaching an uncanny relevance to everything — to how I respond
when someone cuts me off in traffic, to how I feel when a relationship
unravels, to why the deep satisfaction I chase through achievement always seems
to evaporate moments after I grasp it.
This blog series is my attempt to share what I am
discovering.
The
Urgency That Crosses Millennia
Adi Shankaracharya did not write Atma Bodha as an
intellectual luxury. He wrote it because he saw something that urgently needed
to be said. Around him, as around us, people were busy — worshipping, working,
debating, striving. Yet amidst all this activity, something foundational was
being missed. People were mistaking the costume for the actor. They were
identifying with the body, the mind, the emotions, the social position — and
suffering accordingly.
Swami Nikhilananda, whose magnificent bhashya
(commentary) accompanies and enriches our exploration of this text, notes in
his Preface that Atma Bodha was written specifically for those who have
prepared themselves — who have cultivated a degree of discipline, discernment,
and genuine desire to understand the nature of reality. It is not for the
casually curious. It is for those who sense, however dimly, that there is
something more to existence than the relentless accumulation of experiences.
And yet — this is what moves me so deeply — the text
is utterly accessible. Shankaracharya uses 68 short verses, each a concentrated
capsule of insight, to lead the sincere seeker from confusion to clarity. From
bondage to freedom. From the surface of life to its very source.
Why
Now? Why This? Why You?
We live in an age of extraordinary information and
extraordinary confusion. We have access to more knowledge than any prior
generation, yet anxiety, loneliness, and a pervasive sense of meaninglessness
are at epidemic levels. We scroll through a thousand voices telling us how to
be happy and feel emptier than before. We have unlocked the genome and cannot
quite figure out why we feel so fundamentally incomplete.
This is not new. It is the oldest human predicament.
Shankaracharya saw it in the 8th century. The Upanishads diagnosed it thousands
of years before him. The young Nachiketa, in the Katha Upanishad, walked into
the house of Yama — Death itself — and refused to be deflected by gifts,
pleasures, or promises. He wanted only one thing: the truth about the Self.
That audacity — to seek the deepest truth above all else — is precisely the
spirit this blog series invites you into.
Because here is what I have come to understand:
self-knowledge is not a luxury for spiritual retreats. It is the most practical
thing in the world. Every relationship you navigate, every decision you make,
every moment of suffering and every moment of joy — all of it is coloured and
shaped by your understanding (or misunderstanding) of who you fundamentally
are.
The
Fabric of Our Daily Confusion
Let me offer you some everyday examples of what this
text is pointing at. When someone criticises you harshly and you feel a stab of
pain — what exactly is hurting? If you examine it closely, it is not your body
that is injured. It is the idea you have constructed about yourself: the idea
of being intelligent, or competent, or good. The Self is reacting as though it
IS that idea. This is what the tradition calls identification — mistaking the
temporary label for the eternal Self.
Or consider nature. A forest fire sweeps through,
devastating and violent. But look again — the same forest that burned is the
one that regrows, nourished by the very ash of what was lost. Nature has no
existential crisis about this. It simply IS. It does not cling to a particular
form. It is the expression of an intelligence far deeper than form. The
Vedantic teaching asks: can you relate to your own life with the same quality
of intelligence? Can you be the awareness that includes all your changing experiences
without being trapped inside any one of them?
Or consider the ocean and its waves. Every wave is
distinct, has its own shape, its own force, its own moment of cresting and
crashing. But no wave is separate from the ocean. This is the essential image
of our existence. We are each a wave — unique, real, beautiful in our
particularity — and simultaneously, we ARE the ocean. The tragedy of human
life, as Vedanta sees it, is that waves spend their brief existence believing
themselves to be separate from the water.
About
This Series
Over the next nine blogs, I will walk with you
through the complete arc of Atma Bodha and Swami Nikhilananda's Bhashya. We
will explore what Atma Bodha actually is and where it sits in the vast map of
Vedic knowledge. We will examine the architecture of a human life as understood
by this tradition — its stages, its vocations, its purpose. We will look
carefully at the nature of ignorance (ajna) and how Maya weaves the spell of
apparent separation. We will explore the cosmology that underpins this teaching,
the five layers of the self, the meaning of liberation — not as death, but as a
living freedom called Jivanmukta.
Each blog is written from the inside — from my own
encounter with these ideas, not from a position of having arrived anywhere, but
from the honest and sometimes humbling practice of inquiry. If you read a
passage and think 'but that doesn't fit my experience' — good. That friction is
exactly the place to look.
All I ask is that you bring the same spirit
Nachiketa brought to the house of Death: a sincere desire to know, above
comfort, above approval, above the fear of what you might discover. Because
what you will discover, if Shankaracharya is to be believed — and I am
increasingly convinced he is — is something infinitely more vast and more
peaceful than anything you have been looking for in the outside world.
📖
Learning Aspect
The most urgent question is not 'What should I do
with my life?' but 'Who is it that is living?' Every tradition, every sincere
seeker, every moment of genuine quiet has gestured toward this inquiry. Atma
Bodha is one of the most precise and beautiful maps ever created for this
journey. The map, however, is not the territory. We must walk.
🌿
Connecting Theme to Self
