Vivekachudamani: The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination
A bilingual edition in Sanskrit and English
Attributed to Adi Shankara. Transcribed and Translated by John Richards.
First edition, 2022. Dundee: Evertype. ISBN 978-1-78201-169-9 (paperback).Click on the book cover on the right to order this book from Amazon.co.uk!
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cittasya śuddhaye karma na tu vastūpalabdhaye | vastusiddhirvicāreṇa na kiṃcitkarmakoṭibhiḥ ‖ 11 ‖ |
11. Action is for the purification of the mind, not for the understanding of reality. The recognition of reality is through discrimination, and not by even tens of millions of actions. | |
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arthasya niścayo dṛṣṭo vicāreṇa hitoktitaḥ | na snānena na dānena prāṇāyamaśatena vā ‖ 13 ‖ |
13. The realization of the truth is seen to depend on meditation on statements about what is good, not on bathing or donations or by hundreds of yogic breathing exercises. | |
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deho’hamityeva jaḍasya buddhiḥ dehe ca jīve viduṣastvahaṃdhīḥ | vivekavijñānavato mahātmano brahmāhamityeva matiḥ sadātmani ‖ 160 ‖ |
160. “I am the body” is the opinion of the fool. “I am body and soul” is the view of the scholar, while for the great-souled, discriminating man, his inner knowledge is “I am God”. | |
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The Vivekachudamani (Sanskrit Vivekacūḍāmaṇi) is an introductory treatise within the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Hinduism, traditionally attributed to Adi Shankara of the eighth century CE. It is in the form of a poem in the Shardula Vikridita metre, and for many centuries has been celebrated as a prakaraṇa grantha (‘teaching manual’) of Advaita. Vivekachudamani literally means ‘the crest-jewel of discrimination’. The text discusses key concepts and the viveka or discrimination or discernment between real (unchanging, eternal) and unreal (changing, temporal), Prakriti and Atman, the oneness of Atman and Brahman, and self-knowledge as the central task of the spiritual life and for Moksha. It expounds the Advaita Vedanta philosophy in the form of a self-teaching manual, with many verses in the form of a dialogue between a student and a spiritual teacher. The Reverend John Henry Richards, MA, BD, was an Anglican priest born in 1934 who was ordained a deacon in Llandaff in 1977 and a priest there in 1978. He served in Maesteg, Cardiff, Penmark, and Stackpile Elidor until his retirement in 1999, and died in 2017. He is known for his English translations of the medieval Latin De Adhaerendo Deo, as well as of the Ashtavakra Gita, the Dhammapada, and the Vivekachudamani, which he put in the public domain and distributed on the Internet in the late 1990s. |
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