A collection of quotes and teachings from Vakya Vritti of Adi Shankaracharya
I bow down to that Pure Consciousness Divine – a shoreless ocean of happiness, which is All-pervading (Vishnu), the Beloved of Shri, the all-knowing Lord of the Universe, assuming endless forms and yet ever-free, having an inscrutable power to become (apparently) the Cause of creation, maintenance, and dissolution of the universe.
I bow down to that Pure Consciousness Divine – a shoreless ocean of happiness, which is All-pervading (Vishnu), the Beloved of Shri, the all-knowing Lord of the Universe, assuming endless forms and yet ever-free, having an inscrutable power to become (apparently) the Cause of creation, maintenance, and dissolution of the universe.
Who else can be the individual Self (Jiva) other than
yourself, that asks me this question, “Who am I ?”. There is no doubt about it.
You alone are the Brahman.
Just as the perceiver of a pot is ever distinctly different
from the pot and can never be the pot – so too, you, the perceiver of your
body, are distinct from your body and can never be the body – this you firmly
ascertain in yourself.
Similarly be sure that you are not the complex of the gross
and the subtle-bodies, and intelligently determine, by inference, that you, the
‘seer’, are entirely distinct from the ‘seen’.
‘I am He’, the One
because of whose presence alone the inert entities like the body and the
senses, are able to function through acceptance and rejection.
‘I am He’, the One changeless, Innermost Self that moves the
intellect, etc., as a magnet does the iron filings.