Traditions / Advaita Vedanta / Vivekachudamani
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Advaita Vedanta · classical text

Vivekachudamani

The Crest Jewel of Discrimination

Translator: Charles Johnston (1867–1931), 1925.

Source: Quarterly Book Department, New York

Licence: Public Domain. Charles Johnston's translation, first serialised in The Theosophical Quarterly (1925) and collected as the title work of The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom and other writings of Sankaracharya (New York: Quarterly Book Department, 1946; copyright not renewed at the US Copyright Office). Strict public domain. Lightly modernised by Soul Spirit Self.

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Shankara's most famous prakarana grantha. A systematic teaching on viveka — the discrimination between the real and the apparent — set as a dialogue between teacher and student. Among the most widely-studied introductions to Advaita.

From the text

The Vivekachudamani is the great pedagogical work attributed to Shankara. Five hundred and eighty verses long, it sets out the entire path of jnana yoga as a dialogue between a teacher and a sincere student who has come asking for liberation.

Where Shankara’s commentaries are dense and technical, the Vivekachudamani is generous to the seeker. It moves from the qualifications required for the path, through the discrimination between the eternal and the transient, into the analysis of the five sheaths, and finally into the recognition of the Self as nondual awareness.

[ A representative selection. The full Vivekachudamani runs to five hundred and eighty-one verses, developing Shankara’s account of the discriminating intellect as the path to self-knowledge. The complete Madhavananda translation is at the source linked above. ]

On the qualifications for the path

The first qualification is discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal. The second is dispassion towards the enjoyment of the fruits of action here and hereafter. The third is the sixfold accomplishment beginning with calm. The fourth is the longing for liberation.