Mandukya Upanishad With Gaudapada's Karika and Shankara's Commentary

by Gambhirananda and Adi Shankaracharya

The Mandukya Upanishad is one of the shortest of the ten principal Upanishads, and like the other Upanishads discusses the problem of ultimate reality...The scripture is important enough in Vedanta... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 8175050225
• ISBN13: 9788175050228
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Advaita Ashrama
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.0" x 1.8" x 4.8"

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Best edition of the most important Upanishad

The Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada's Karika and Sankara's Commentary. Translated by Swami Nikhilananda. With a Foreword by V. Subrahmanya Iyer. Kolkata: Advaita Ashrama, Eighth Impression, 2006. paperback, xxxv + 320 pages. ISBN 8175050225 The Mandukya Upanisad is the shortest amongst the principal Upanisads having just twelve 12 mantras. It analyses the entire range of human consciousness in the three states of waking (jagrat), dream (swapna), and dreamless sleep (susupti). It asserts unequivocally that the Absolute Reality is non-dual (advaita) and without attributes (nirguna). It also has a unique method of approach to Truth in providing as a symbol for meditation the mono-syllable AUM - which is made up of three sounds A ,U, M - and describing its philosophical implications. Gaudapada, who is the only pre-Shankara philosopher known to us to give a rational explanation of the Advaita Vedanta, wrote two hundred and fifteen verses known as the Karika to explain the Upanishad. Sankara was later to write a commentary on both the Upanisad and the Karika. According to Swami Nikhilananda, the reason for the importance of the Karika is because: "It is only Gaudapada that has successfully demonstrated in his Karika that the non-dual Atman declared in the Upanishads as the Ultimate Reality is not a theological dogma, and that it does not depend upon the mystic experiences of the Yogis; but that it is a metaphysical rather [than] a philosophical truth which satisfies the demands of universal tests and which is based upon reason independent of scriptural authority." V. Subrahmanya Iyer, in his Foreword to Swami Nikhilananda's edition, stresses the importance of the Karika by declaring: "If a man cannot afford to study all the hundred and more Upanishads, it will be enough, it is declared in the Muktikopanishad, if he reads the one Upanishad of Mandukya, since, as Shankara also says, it contains the quintessence of all of them." The Neo-Vedantist Dennis Waite, in his 'Back to the Truth: 5000 years of Advaita,' placed Swami Nikhilananda's edition on his list of recommended reading and commented (p.508): "If you wanted to read only one book to discover the bottom line on Advaita philosophy, this would probably be it." The present edition, after a lengthy preface by Swami Nikhilananda, gives us the texts of both Upanishad and Karika in Devanagari script, a verse-by-verse English translation, and Shankara's commentary in English but interspersed throughout with transliterated Sanskrit terms and with extensive annotations. It is, in short, a scholarly text for the serious student. The book is in print at the time of writing and available from vedanta.com. For additional information see my Listmania list: Advaita and Physics agree.