Who Are You? - Swamy Yogananda Saraswati

Around the age of seven, Sankara left his native village of Kaladi (now in Kerala) to reach Omkarnath on the banks of the Narmada where the great sage Sri Govindapada lived in a cave. Before taking Sankara as a disciple, the sage asked him, "Who are you?" A question so simple in appearance, but to which the young Sankara answered with ten stanzas of a very deep import.

In this work, famed as the Dasasloki, or "The Ten Stanzas," Adi Sankara reveals his innate knowledge of the Self by expounding the real meaning of the pronoun "I" in the light of Vedanta.

Conforming himself to the renowned Vedantic process of negation, the Acharya refutes one after another all the wrong ideas and the false doctrines about the Self. When the non-Self is completely eliminated by proper inquiry, that which remains in the ultimate state is the true Self whose nature is eternal, pure, conscious, free and non-dual. And that Self is verily Brahman.

Superimposition and Denial

In accordance with the traditional method of Vedanta, the transcendent Truth is revealed by means of superimposition and its subsequent denial. At first, the Self is described as the animator of the body, senses and mind, as though the psychosensory system pertained to it, but later it is defined as free from all that and attributeless.

Buddha

© Tattvaloka (November, 2000) published by Sri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Mahaswamigal Education Trust of Sri Jagadguru Sankaracharya Mahasamsthanam, Dakshinamnaya Sri Sharada Peetham, Sringeri 577 139, Karnataka. Reprinted with permission.

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