1.
The seer itself, the sky-like supreme;
ever-shining and changeless, one alone and unborn;
stainless, all-pervading, nondual:
thus I am that eternally released. Om.
2.
I am the seer, pure and unchanging.
By my very nature, there aren't any objects to me.
Before and behind, above and below, everywhere is
the all-pervading reality, unborn and abiding as the Self.
3.
Birthless, deathless, and accordingly ageless,
immortal, self-luminous, and all-pervasive, I am nondual—
neither cause nor effect, impeccably pure,
and ever content in complete liberation. Om.
Introductions
In the post-war years, western and western-inspired scholarship, notably that of Paul Hacker and Sengaku Mayeda, has tended to show that the only surviving independent work that can with safety be ascribed to Śaṃkara is the Upadeśa Sāhasrī or Thousand Teachings in both its prose and verse parts—though it would be incautious to suppose that there was finality in this judgement...
The independent works other than the Upadeśa Sāhasrī are not safe guides to the doctrine of the historical Śaṃkara, while the Upadeśa Sāhasrī itself is. Hence its importance today as a relatively compact statement by Śaṃkara of his own view, eminently suitable as an introduction to the inherently more diffuse work of the commentaries...
It is, however, not certain that either the prose or the verse parts of the Upadeśa Sāhasrī originally constituted a unity. The whole work is very possibly a compilation of short pieces that originally stood on their own...
Of the verse part, Chapters I, XVII, XVIII and XIX appear from their dedicatory verses to have been separate works originally. Chapters II to XVI, also, are most probably a compilation of works that were originally separate, as it is hard to explain the fact that they stand in ascending order of length as being due to mere chance...
~Alston
The Upadesasahasri consists of two parts, one in verse and the other in prose. The verse or Metrical Part (Padyabandha) comprises nineteen chapters (prakarana). Manuscripts indicate that the two parts were regarded as independent works, as it were, and studied or commented upon separately. They also suggest the possibility that any single chapter could be selected, copied, and studied apart from the rest. This means that reading of the text may begin anywhere.
~Mayeda
Sankara’s manner of exposition does not present us with the usual but avoidable additional difficulty which is obscurity of expression. He wrote magnificent works, both in prose and verse; and all of them are marked by depth of thought and lucidity of language.
Among his major works are the great commentaries on what are known as the three canons of Vedanta, viz., the principal Upanishads, the Bhagavad-gita, and the Brahma-sutra, and such independent manuals as the Upadesasahasri and the Vivekachudamani.
The quintessence of the philosophy of Sankara is stated in the following words which constitute a half-verse in Sanskrit; ‘‘The Absolute Spirit is the reality; the world of appearance is illusory; the so-called individual soul is the Absolute itself, and no other.”
~Mahadevan
