- Lived:
- c. 700–750 CE (traditional dating 788–820; both contested) · born Kaladi, Kerala; died, by tradition, at Kedarnath in the Himalayas — aged about thirty-two
- Tradition:
- Advaita (non-dual) Vedānta — the classical Hindu school built on the Upanishads
- The Big Idea:
- You are not a small thing inside reality. You are reality itself, mistaking yourself for a small thing — and liberation is simply seeing this, the way lamplight shows a feared snake to be a rope.
- In their words:
- "Brahman is real; the world is appearance; the self is nothing other than Brahman." (A verse the tradition has always used as his signature, though it comes from a later summary of his teaching.)
- If you remember one thing:
- He read the scattered poetry of the Upanishads as one ruthless argument — you are That — and built it into the system that became the intellectual summit of Hindu thought.