A three-thousand-year-old school of Hindu philosophy and spirituality is known as Advaita Vedanta. The word “Advaita” first arose as the Sanskrit phrase Advaita which translates as “not-two.” According to Advaita philosophy, it is possible to experience moksha, or freedom, during your lifetime. Moksha is also referred to as liberation or self-realization. The greatest-known Advaita teacher was Shri Adi Shankara Charya, who lived in the year 800 AD.
A brief Sanskrit treatise called “Atma-Bodha” is credited to Adi Shankara of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. The sixty-eight verses of the book outline the steps necessary to achieve Self-knowledge or Atman awareness. According to the Vedanta tradition, Shankara created the text for his student Padmapada. The Atharvaveda includes an Upanishad with the name Atmabodha.
The path to achieving the understanding of the Atman is described in the original text’s sixty-eight verses. As taught by the Vivekachudamani, the Atma Bodha asserts that Pure Consciousness, the foundation of all things and the Ultimate Reality or Brahman, is beyond name and form and can only be attained by following the Path of Knowledge rather than worship.
What is Freedom?
Advaita defines freedom as what? Is it liberation from things like death, delusion, misery, misfortune, and this world? Advaita defines freedom as being free of thoughts. We all have two lives. We live both the life that exists in our minds and the life that we are currently experiencing. When thoughts are gone, our awareness of the now is all that is left, that is when we are free from the duality of Advaita.
Seeking Freedom
How do you then obtain that freedom? By switching the emphasis from living your life as thoughts, to living your life more in the now, you can reach that freedom.
Regular meditation is one technique to change that equilibrium. During meditation, thoughts often become less frequent, and you learn to become more accustomed to the silence that is left behind when they are absent.
Additionally, regular meditation helps you become more accustomed to the absence of thoughts, which in turn enables you to recognize and enhance the absence of thoughts in daily life.
Another strategy for reducing thinking and changing that balance is to spend time alone in nature. Even better, venture far into the wilderness, and spend several days there by yourself.
However, for you, that balance might not change with meditation or time spent alone in nature. You might find that balance through activities like gardening, dancing, yoga, singing, or athletics. The only person who can pinpoint what changed that balance for you is you.
Once more, learning about Advaita, non-duality, direct inquiry, or unified consciousness does not lead to freedom. When you do feel the absence of thoughts, you can disregard it as unimportant to obtaining freedom since your experience of the absence of thoughts does not correspond with any of the words you have learned. As a result, such phrases actually serve as impediments to achieving freedom.
The key to obtaining freedom is realizing that thoughts cannot be stated or conveyed in words. People who think Advaita’s freedom is attainable through words also frequently think that freedom will reveal hidden truths, such as the real nature of the self, and their unity with the cosmos.
For some people, the first time they notice that their ideas are absent, there are no such insights. Nothing mysterious is disclosed, and everything stays the same perhaps with the exception of how much nicer life is now. Since the absence of thoughts revealed nothing that the words you learnt said they would, you therefore disregard your glimpses of the absence of thoughts as being useless to reaching freedom.