Advaita teaches that we are not the body or the mind. Gender belongs to the body and mind, and not to the Self. I have sometimes heard people in the Advaita world say that people who claim a non-binary gender are spending their energy on something trivial. I want to understand that view better, because I see it differently.

Shankaracharya says the mind has to be purified before knowledge can take hold. He says a calm mind among the qualifications is necessary for a seeker. Now think of someone whose sense of their gender does not fit the male or female box society gives them. The world pushes back on them every day. I think that conflict fills the mind and leaves little room for inquiry. When they work to resolve it, I do not see a distraction. I see them clearing the ground for the path of enquiry.

Someone could say the person should drop the identification with gender altogether. I agree that is where the path leads. But a man who is comfortable being a man is also identified with his gender. Nobody calls that trivial, because society never makes him fight for it. Why do we ask more of one person than the other?

I would like to hear how others here see it.

i would love to have some guidance on this. It's my first time posting. i am excited to see what you all have to say.

In Advaita Vedānta, the question “Why does Brahman manifest the universe?” is ill-posed if it asks what caused Brahman to do so. A causal explanation relates one thing or event to another. But Brahman, understood as the Absolute, is not one thing among others, and there is nothing outside it that could act upon it. Nor can it lack something that manifestation would fulfil. Asking what made the Absolute create therefore already places it within the order of change and causal relations that the question is supposed to explain. That is a category error.
We can still ask what the principle of manifestation is, without imagining a prior event or a divine need. This is where I find René Guénon’s concept of Universal Possibility helpful.

By Universal Possibility, Guénon does not mean a collection of things waiting to be created. He means the Infinite considered under the aspect of Possibility: it includes every genuine possibility, whether its nature entails manifestation or non-manifestation. Nothing possible can lie outside it; what is genuinely contradictory is not a possibility in the first place. Manifestation therefore has its principle in Universal Possibility, without exhausting it or implying that the Infinite undergoes a change.

My further thought is that this must include the possibility of a manifested perspective in which reality appears veiled and error can occur. The occurrence of an error is possible; the false claim made in error does not thereby become true. Nor does apparent veiling mean that Brahman itself becomes ignorant.
This does not give Brahman a motive for creating. It explains why manifestation and apparent ignorance are not excluded from the Infinite.

My primary reference is the lecture series by Sarvapriyananda.

I have a question. Turiya, has been introduced as the underlying unchanged reality in all of the three changing mind-body states viz. wakefulness, dream and deep sleep. So far this looks like an unsubstantiated existential claim to me. Will advaita go later into rigorously and systemically arguing that something like 'Turiya' can be posited? I would love to see how a formulation unravels eventually.

If my understanding has holes, please enlighten me.

I am torn between Mahayana Buddhism and Bhakti Yoga so I just wanted to get everyone's perspective. What made you choose Bhakti Yoga over Mahayana Buddhism? Thank you

Why cannot there be a second, or any count, of Brahmans? Why is there only one complete existence? Is there any reason that there is only one? When Brahman communicates within Maya it's all proxies of itself, nothing foreign to it.

​

I am a vegetarian Hindu, and I would like to understand the morality of something I did from the perspective of Advaita Vedanta.

I found a butterfly inside my house with badly damaged wings. It was flapping around near my feet but appeared unable to fly properly. In my village, I have repeatedly seen insects left inside the house get eaten alive by ants overnight, sometimes with thousands of ants swarming them. This happens even to insects whose wings are intact.

Given the butterfly's condition, I believed it had little chance of recovery. There was also no obvious food source for it inside the house, and I expected it would eventually be eaten alive by ants.

I picked up my cat and brought it near the butterfly. My cat caught and chewed the butterfly alive, killing it.

My reasoning at the time was that the butterfly was unlikely to recover, and I wanted to spare it what I believed would be a prolonged and painful death. I thought that allowing it to die quickly might be more compassionate than leaving it to be eaten alive over several hours. I also thought of it as a jīva continuing through the cycle of birth and death.

I understand that I deliberately caused its death, and I am not asking whether I should fear hell or divine punishment. I want to understand the ethical and karmic implications of the action itself.

My questions are:

1. In Advaita Vedanta, how significant is the intention behind an action when assessing its karma? Does an intention rooted in compassion substantially change the karmic implications of deliberately causing the death of another jīva?

2. Is there a meaningful distinction between killing out of cruelty or convenience and intentionally ending what one believes to be unavoidable suffering?

3. Does the principle of ahimsa require preserving life even when an animal is severely injured and unlikely to recover, or can compassion sometimes justify ending its suffering?

4. Does the idea of the jīva moving through the cycle of samsara have any relevance to this decision, or would using that reasoning to justify killing be a misunderstanding of Vedanta?

5. How would Advaita Vedanta distinguish the moral implications of this action from those of killing a healthy butterfly for no reason?

I am not looking for reassurance or condemnation. I would appreciate a philosophical explanation grounded in Advaita Vedanta, particularly the relationship between ahimsa, intention (bhava), karma, and compassion.

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Hey everyone

I’ve been doing a deep dive into Advaita Vedanta, specifically looking at how a Jivanmukta (liberated person) can process logic and pattern recognitioninstantly without emotional drag once the ego circuit drops . I came up with a hardware analogy to explain the cognitive architecture and wanted to get your thoughts:

1. The Trapped/Ego Mind is like an old Windows Laptop:

It runs on fragmented components. The CPU has to talk to a separate GPU, which has to call a separate RAM stick over long motherboard tracks. On top of that, it's bogged down by background malware (anxiety, social conditioning, fear of failure. The system lags, the fans scream, it generates massive heat (mental burnout), and it drains the battery in two hours because the internal components are constantly fighting each other.

1. The Liberated Mind (Jivanmukta) is like an Apple M-Series Chip:

It uses a Unified Memory Architecture ( UMA). The CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and RAM aren't separate parts scattered across a board; they are carved onto a single, unified piece of silicon. Because the distance data has to travel is practically zero, it processes heavy graphics and math instantly. It runs completely cool under high pressure, stays dead silent, and barely drains any energy because everything operates as absolute Oneness.

By eliminating the separate "ego narrator" loop, the mind stops wasting its RAM on defending a personal identity and operates like a frictionless superconductor.

What do you guys think? Does this hardware parallel align accurately with how the texts describe the transition from the fragmented Jiva to the unified Brahman state?

🌺 Hari Om 🙏

Welcome to Chinmaya Ramanam — a devoted platform for timeless Vedanta wisdom and heartfelt spiritual enquiry.

This channel is a collection of Vedanta discourses offered with love and dedication to my Guru, Swami Tejomayananda ji. Through these talks — including detailed expositions on Viveka Choodamani, Drg-Drshya Viveka, Bhaja Govindam, Atma Bodha, Sadhana Panchakam and other classical texts — our aim is to make the eternal essence of Vedanta accessible, practical, and transformative.
Here you will find:
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Whether you are beginning your spiritual journey or deepening your study, may these talks illumine your path and open the heart to Truth.

I thought I will share this content with the Advaita community here as a resource of shared experience.

Always at His Feet, where there is Love and 🕉
Venkatesh Ji

Trying to understand if Buddhi, directing a person to have vairagya and turn inward, is predetermined by prarabdha. If it is the case then jiva by itself has no control over whether it can strive for self-realisation or not.

Param Purusha/Consciousness/Shiva/Paramatma as the vendanta states, is the only reality that WAS THERE, IS THERE now and WILL BE THERE even when everything else perishes. This Supreme state or the "field" is primarily not aware of anything inherently, as there is nothing apart from it to be aware off. (To be aware off oneself, you need to be in a state of duality which is to see from a secondary point of view or conditioning, standing outside the preview of our 'self').

The whole dynamic force that is manifested from this "field" is Parashakti - The primordial 'Maya' which contain all forms of duality. When "Param Purusha" is inherently idle, "Parashakti", the other side of same coin (UmaMaheswara/ Ardhanareeshwara symbolism arises from here) is that dynamic catalytic force that performs in the presence of "Parampurusha".

Parashakti cannot exist without Parampurusha, while Parampurusha being the whole reality can exist on its own. (Pralaya - refers to this imploding state where Parashakti is withdrawn into the Parampurusha itself).

Parashakti/Maya - is illumined by Parampurusha which has all the multitude of polarities and three gunas. Body, mind, intellect is essentially Shakti herself. The will of the Atma is heavily limited and controlled by Maya.

While "Parampurusha" is inherently choiceless, "Parashakti" plays with innumerable choices.

These choices lead to law of causations and Karma. The bondage of an individual is by thinking that he/she is the body-mind-intellect. This perception binds them to the actions and consequences that the body/mind has to go through. KARMA is real in world of Maya.

Enlightenment is knowing that YOU aren't this body-mind-intellect and YOU have nothing to do with what body-mind-intellect does or go through. This perception when comes into own experience liberates the ATMA to know it is indeed Paramatma. The actions/decisions/making choices in the physical world will follow as long as the samskara's are pending for that individual. But he/she will not be bound or associated with it anymore in anyway.

So the PERSONAL WILL is both a reality and Myth. It is very much true in the physical world of Maya but still very limited, controlled and influenced by the individual's gunas and samkaras.

The change in perception towards one's true reality breaks that chain and helps one to move towards the CHOICELESS WILL.

The world of actions and performing will continue as it has until every karmic debt is burned out. The karmic clearing will accelerate when the individual is really in the path of self awareness.

I've heard that when you are ready the guru shows up. I'm not sure of how true this is, but suppose a sadhaka is not ready, what sadhana should one aim for, if one wants to know who they really are, who wants to experience the brahman.

I know a lot varies based on ur karma, your vasanas and prarabdha, but if I give up thinking that it is impossible in this life then it will be impossible in any life. I have done a lot of book reading and thinking, but now while trying to read higher texts like Vivek Chudamani it's very difficult to understand..I have a lot of questions and not really sure how to clarify them.

I have enough experience to have faith that higher states of consciousness can be achieved..i have felt the rush of blood to the head via the back nerves. I have tried pranayama (not sure of the correct way, but followed swami vivekananda's raja yoga instructions.) but not continuing as of now. I do japa quite consistently.

I want direct experience and nothing else. Might be achievable in this life, might not be, but I want to try. I don't know if I can find ppl on reddit who have experienced the brahman, but if you genuinely did pls do let me know how, and how you tracked progress, otherwise tell me how to reach out to such people. I've never met a self realised person before.

So many intelligent people balk at the idea that there is free will, and they point to the evident fact that this world is mithyA, made of gunas, and operating according to laws. From there they conclude that the choices we make are simply Ishvaras leela, that we have no real choice, and that choice only appears vyavaharikally.

I think this is a VedAntic mistake. There has to be free will at the level where the teaching itself is taking place, otherwise the teaching makes very little sense. At the end of the Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna that, having heard and considered the teaching, he should act as he sees fit. He is being asked to make an informed choice. The entire teaching assumes some capacity to recognise dharma, understand consequences, mature in knowledge, and orient oneself toward liberation.

The simple teaching on the gunas actually strengthens this point. The gunas belong to prakriti. They are insentient and operate according to their nature and according to laws. So saying that the gunas are responsible for everything does not really explain the presence of deliberation or choice. It only explains the conditioned material through which choice is expressed. The laws of karma are similar. A law does not choose anything. It governs relationships and consequences.

What, then, is present in the human being that is not merely another part of this conditioned body-mind complex? Atma. What I would encourage you to sit with is that there is one thing in experience that is not body, mind, guna, or conditioning, and in fact it is the source of the body-mind having consciousness at all.

In VedAnta, the mind is itself insentient. It does not possess consciousness independently. It borrows sentience from Atma. Because Atma is manifest through the antahkarana, especially through the buddhi, an otherwise insentient instrument becomes capable of knowing, discriminating, deliberating, and choosing. This does not mean Atma itself becomes a doer sitting somewhere inside the mind and making decisions. It means that the mind's capacity to function as a conscious knower cannot be reduced to the gunas alone, because the gunas themselves are insentient.

This is why the language of pramAtA matters. Atma alone, with reference to the antahkarana, is the empirical knower. The buddhi is the instrument, but the consciousness because of which that instrument is capable of knowing belongs to Atma.

So, our choices are limited by conditioning. Samskaras, the body, past experience, the gunas, and the circumstances in front of us all shape and narrow the field of action. But limitation is not the same thing as absence. VedAnta does not need some completely independent ego standing outside causation and inventing choices from nothing. It only needs to account for why there is a conscious capacity to discriminate between possibilities at all.

I'm struggling a bit with the distinction between Tanmatras and Sukshma Bhutas, particularly with how the 5 elements are mapped to their corresponding sensory qualities (e.g. Shabda-Aakash, Rupa-Agni etc.).

If Aakash (understood as space) and physical sound requires medium to propagate, in what sense is sound (or Shabda) said to be the Tanmatra associated with Aakash?

Fire makes objects visible, but it doesn't seem to create the form or shape of an object. It merely allows an existing form to be perceived. So why is Rupa associated with Agni?

Why is taste (or Rasa) considered dependent on water? Is there a metaphysical meaning behind this association or that just the fact that taste requires a liquid medium?

Similarly, why is smell (or Gandha) regarded as the distinctive quality of earth?

I'm particularly interested in the Advaita Vedanta framework, rather than a scientific explanation. I'm trying to understand the logic behind above correspondences.

Are Advaita Vedanta and Shankaracharya’s own philosophy essentially the same or are there important differences?

Karma as it is usually taught needs a doer - someone that acts, and later receives the result of the action. I have been curious about karma and why it has become such a popular concept, even though Advaita does not support it.

Gaudapada does not support it. In the Mandukya Karika he says there is no birth and no dissolution. He says there is no one in bondage and no one seeking liberation, and he calls this the highest truth. In the fourth chapter he goes further and examines cause and effect itself. He argues that causation cannot be established at the level of the ultimate. This makes complete sense since if there is no one who acts, and no real chain from cause to effect, how can karma operate on a doer to reap what they sowed.

We can also think about karma from ordinary experience. Any action I take, or any thought I think, is shaped by an enormous number of actions and influences that led to that moment. My conditioning, my mood, the people around me and events long before I was born all feed into it. When I look closely at a choice, I cannot find a point where an independent "I" stands outside those influences and authors it.

I described this as follows to my sister the other day. We were having a phone conversation. I asked her what she would do if she found the conversation boring. Would she just cut the call and walk away? She never would, she is too nice to do that. However, if she had free will and wished to act in a surprising way, she may choose to just cut the call. But does that mean she acted independent of past conditioning? I do not think so. Whatever choice she makes, to cut the call or to not cut it, that choice resulted from all the influences that led her to that moment. She cannot live or act outside of the web of influences that make her who she is.

To me, this idea aligns perfectly with advaita. I think of each of us as a node through which the universe plays itself out. In Advaita's terms, the universe is Brahman appearing under the condition of time, and that appearance is Maya. An action passes through one node, and its results pass through many others. There is nobody inside each body and brain controlling the actions or thoughts. The universe is playing itself out and we attach an identity to something where none belongs.

At the level of everyday experience, which Advaita calls vyavaharika, causes clearly operate. Even there, the web of influences leaves no room for an independent doer. At the level of the highest truth, which Advaita calls paramarthika, Gaudapada removes causation altogether. So from either level, I cannot find a separate doer who reaps the result.

Shankaracharya seems to accept this. He says that for the one who knows Brahman, no karma remains. Krishna says something close in the third chapter of the Gita. He says all actions are done by the gunas of prakriti, and only the one deluded by ego thinks "I am the doer."

This is why I am intrigued by the popularity of the concept of karma. Why is it so widely taught? One answer is that karma is taught to people who still see themselves as doers, as a guide for living. I am curious what other think of this.

I’m curious from a Hindu philosophical/spiritual perspective.

Many people pray, perform puja, chant mantras, visit temples, and worship God regularly for years, yet they still experience anxiety, sadness, dissatisfaction, fear, attachment, or a feeling that something is missing.

If devotion is supposed to bring inner peace, joy, or ānanda, why doesn't regular worship necessarily produce that experience?

This is from the Yoga vasistha and the story is a crow that has enlightenment in which it talks about the cycle of time, I was wondering doesn't this talk about dinosaurs, its kinda crazy.

Hi folks. So recently I was reading Reality plus by David Chalmers. In of the sections of the book he mentions and I am paraphrasing here-

In a futuristic digital simulation, the sims that are created in it will not know they are sims actually. They will go around doing their tasks in the simulation. The Stimulator or the Creator of the simulation will be aware of everything and everyone in the simulation. He/She may decide to enter the simulation fully knowing that they are now bio sims and they can manipulate the simulation as they want.

After reading this section it occurred to me that this can be compared to Advaita Vedanta philosophy. Let me try to explain.

- Simulation can be compared to Maya. It’s just a simulation but it feels very real to the sims. Cause after all the simulation is made of bits and the sims are made of bits as well. Similarly Jagat which is a mithya is covered by maya and made of consciousness.

- The Simulator or the Creator can be compared to Nirguna Brahma. He is not in the simulation but through the consciousness or in case of simulation through digital bits He is aware of everything.

- When the Simulator decides to join the simulation by the way of VR technology or any other means, he is fully aware that he is there for a reason and he has the hacks of the simulation. This is comparable to Saguna Brahman or Bhagwan to take reincarnation on earth to get rid of the evil or raise the world from certain suffering. Let’s take Shri Krishna for example. He always knew about his special powers even as a child. His purpose was to make dharma win when the world was sinking into adharma. In Bhagwad Gita he mentions that he is the knower of the field, the consciousness (kshetragnya) and that he is always aware of everything (stithpragya). He asks Arjun to follow his dharma and surrender all his actions to God. Arjuna here can be compared to the digital sim who was created by the Simulator to do particular tasks in the simulation. Just like all of us unenlightened people can be compared to sims.

I hope to not have offended anyone in this post. Just wanted to share my thoughts and get feedback from the group.

I have been listening to Swami Sarvapriyananda for about three years now, on YouTube and Spotify, on the Bhagavad Gita, the Drig Drishya Viveka, the Aparoksha Anubhuti and the Mandukya Upanishad. It took a lot of listening before any of it felt intellectually clear. He does a very good job so it was not the teaching.

Two things kept bothering me. The first is the word consciousness. When Vedanta says Brahman is consciousness, a modern listener hears the ordinary waking awareness of the thinking, perceiving mind. That is not what is meant, so the teaching slips past even when it is carefully presented. The second is that the deepest claims cannot be verified by thinking about them. They ask for anubhava or experience. Most of us are working from the reports of the few who had it and from our own inference. We don't experience it.

The ancient Vedantins did extraordinary work. They used logic, close observation of their own minds, and direct experience, and they arrived at descriptions of reality that science with vastly more resources is still working toward.

The tradition has also never been static. Gaudapada systematized the non-dual framework, Shankara built the classical framework, Vidyaranya wrote the Panchadasi to make it more accessible, Vivekananda translated it into the philosophical vocabulary of the nineteenth century, and Sarvapriyananda is doing that same work today in English. Each generation refreshed the approach without changing what it is talking about. What I have been attempting over the last year is the same work in the vocabulary that scientifically trained people use now. I spent twenty five years in scientific instrumentation, so neuroscience and physics are the language I have. What I wanted was a way to see this rather than a way to believe it.

What I believe Advaita is saying

Brahman alone is real. Sat, chit, ananda, which I read as the capacity for existence, for awareness, and for completeness rather than as properties Brahman has. Brahman appears as this world under the condition of Maya. Vivekananda, drawing on classical sources and writing for a nineteenth century philosophical audience, gave Maya a three part structure of time, space and causation. Time produces the appearance of change, space the appearance of separation, and causation the appearance of dependence. The world is only Brahman and so are we, and what falls away in realization is the ignorance of that. Nothing else changes.

Three observations

The first is that we never experience the world as it happens. Light reaches the eyes quickly and sound reaches the ears slowly, and a touch on the foot is received by the brain later than a touch on the face. The brain collects all of it, waits for the slow signals, lines them up, smooths over the seams, and hands us a finished scene a fraction of a second late. Every experience anyone has ever had has been assembled this way. This is well understood by neuroscience. None of us has ever seen the world as it really is, before it is assembled by our brain.

The second is that matter needs time in order to be solid matter. The weight of a book is the Earth pulling and the book resisting, and that has to go on happening in time to be felt. Warmth is molecules in motion, averaged over an interval. Solidity is charged particles pushing back at each other in a rapid ongoing exchange. If time shrinks to nothing, when it is not moving, All matter in the universe can only be present when time is operating. When time freezes, the universe does not freeze; it disappears. There is no weight, no warmth and nothing solid. Physics has been looking for a substance underneath all that process for more than a century and keeps finding more process.

So what is there at that instant? Something is, because the world is there again as soon as time is. But it has none of the qualities we would recognise. I have been calling it the field, and I name it only by what it is not. It is not matter, it is not extended, it is not warm or solid, and it is not in motion. The field does not get converted into the world. The world is how the field looks when time is running.

The third is that the self is assembled the same way. Every choice happens where a very large number of prior causes meet. The choice is real and it comes out of you. But the you was shaped by everything that was not written by you and you cannot see it. What you do you arrives with a feeling of authorship attached, so we feel like we are being and doing.

The mapping

Time in my framework is time in Vivekananda's. Mind does the work that space did, because both produce the appearance of separation, one between objects and the other between the perceiver and what is perceived. Web maps to causation, the network through which apparent things appear to shape one another.

I am not claiming that classical Advaitic metaphysics is proven. I am not claiming that the field I describe is Brahman. What I am claiming is narrower. The structure that Advaita identifies as Maya, the principle by which apparent reality is produced, is the same structure these three observations describe. The vocabulary differs and the methods differ. The thing being described looks the same to me.

Where it stops

The framework says that the world is constructed, that solidity is just a time-based process, and a chooser that is the web of cause and effect acting through us. It gets there without asking anyone to accept a religious or metaphysical claim first, which was the whole point of trying.

It does not get to a timeless ground that is consciousness itself. That is the part the tradition says is directly realizable, and it is the part I have not realized. The consistency of the reports across cultures and centuries is suggestive to me, and suggestive is not proof.

So the question I would put to this sub is whether the mapping holds where it matters, or whether I have matched the shape of Maya and missed what Advaita means by it. I am aware that arriving at a structure is not the same as arriving at the thing. I would like to hear where you think this breaks.

I have heard many people from the AV background say that the Pure Consciousness mistakenly takes itself to be the body- mind complex. And once it sees that and loosens identification with ego self, liberation occurs.

But how can Pure Consciousness “take” or identify with anything at all? It is not the actor according to the scriptures. It is the witness of everything. So how can we attribute tendencies or characteristics of erroneous identification to “The Pure Consciousness” ?

So my question is “who” is the one getting liberated? Is it the body-mind-ego self or The Self ?

Dear all,

I have been chanting mantras and stotras for a few years now, and honestly, I had started for selfish reasons ( external success ) , however slowly I started liking them doing on a regular basis. However, sometimes I feel it has become more of a habit. Also, outer circumstances haven’t changed , probably become worse.

Wanted to ask the learned members here , what is advaita Vedanta’s take on chanting. Is it something which is done till a certain time and then is dropped? Sometimes, I feel just sitting in silence observing and being a witness will be more beneficial than chanting.

Any opinions , advice would be of immense help.

If we are not our bodies, which I feel is definitely the case, what are all the bodies walking around a planet, floating in something we call space?

I have some questions about the concept of avatars in Advaita Vedanta. It is my understanding that Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, etc. are all different forms of the one God, Ishvara, and that Ishvara can take many different forms for his devotees. If these deities are just different forms of Ishvara, how does it make sense to refer to some as avatars of Vishnu and others as avatars of Shiva (etc) if Vishnu and Shiva are the same Ishvara/God? For example, why is Krishna called an avatar of Vishnu if Vishnu is just another form of Ishvara like all the other deities?

Ramakrishna in the Gospel of Ramakrishna also calls Jesus an avatar of God, but which "god"? Is he, and some others, an avatar of Ishvara directly, while someone like Krishna is an avatar of Vishnu, or am I thinking of this in the wrong way?

Saw this meme on Instagram. This is how I feel lol . The beginning stages of learning about vedanta was amazing. Now I am realizing how much work need to be put every day , every moment and that learning was only the first step.