The Mandukya Karika is the foundation stone of the Advaita lineage. Gaudapada writes in the sixth century, two hundred years before Shankara, taking the twelve short mantras of the Mandukya Upanishad as his point of departure and developing them across four prakaranas: Agama on tradition, Vaitathya on the unreality of the apparent, Advaita on non-duality, and Alatasanti on the quenching of the firebrand. Across two hundred and fifteen verses he works out the doctrine of ajativada, non-origination — the claim that nothing has ever truly come into being, that birth and death are appearances within an unborn awareness, and that the apparent world is to consciousness what dream is to the dreamer. Shankara’s Advaita, and through it the entire later tradition, descends from this text.
What follows is a representative selection from across the four prakaranas: the verses most often quoted by later teachers, the ones in which the heart of the work is most plainly disclosed. The complete two hundred and fifteen verses are available below as PDF, EPUB, and plain text.
A representative selection
1.7
Those who think of the process of creation believe it to be the manifestation of the superhuman power of God, while others look upon it as of the same nature as dream and illusion.
1.16
When the Jiva, sleeping under the influence of the beginningless Maya, is awakened, it then realises in itself the non-duality, beginningless and dreamless.
2.32
There is no dissolution, no birth, none in bondage, none aspiring for wisdom, no seeker of liberation and none liberated. This is the absolute truth.
3.27
That which is ever-existent appears to pass into birth through illusion (Maya) and not from the standpoint of Reality. He who thinks that this passing into birth is real asserts, as a matter of fact, that what is born is born again, and so on without end.
3.46
When the mind does not merge in the inactivity of oblivion, or become distracted by desires, that is to say, when the mind becomes quiescent and does not give rise to appearances, it becomes Brahman.
3.48
No Jiva is born. There exists no cause that can produce it. This is the highest truth: nothing whatsoever is born.
4.71
The Jiva that is imagined as such by the ignorant is not born. There is no cause for such imagination. The cause is itself uncaused. Nothing is ever born from a really existing cause.
4.81
That which is uncreated, unborn, free from sleep and dream, free from name and form, ever-illumined, all-knowing — there is no further duty to be performed.
4.92
All Dharmas, that is to say, all beings, are by their very nature, devoid of senility and death. Thinking themselves to be subject to senility and death, and dwelling on this thought, they appear to deviate from their true nature.
4.100
Having realised that condition which is extremely difficult to be grasped, profound, birthless, always the same, all-light, and free from multiplicity, we salute it as best as we can.