48 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
little book, big wisdom, April 7, 2002
This review is from: Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination (Paperback)
Shankara was a 7th century hindu mystic/saint. he founded a number of monastic orders in his short life,[32 yrs], and showed remarkable spiritual talents and insights from a very early age. this book is a true classic in the field of the jnani yoga tradition. his directives are clear, succint, and leave no doubt in the readers mind he knew where of he spoke. i wouldn't say this should be your entry level book into the advaita philosophy but if the idea of your oneness with brahman, the impersonal ground of being, appeals to you and you're ready for the genuine article, then this little book is for you and will reward your careful study. i'll be quiet now and let the master have the last word with a few quotes from the book: "when the vision of Reality comes, the veil of ignorance is completely removed. when our false perception is corrected, misery ends." and "the self controlled man is illumined when he enjoys eternal bliss. he is entirely merged in Brahman. he knows himself to be the unchangeable reality". and, "teachers and scriptures can stimulate spiritual awareness. but the wise disciple overcomes ignorance by direct illumination, through the grace of God". and, "the treasure i have found cannot be described in words, i am one with Brahman".
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A must for those on the spiritual path, March 8, 2007
This review is from: Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination (Paperback)
Shankara's Vivek Chudamani is a classic text orignally written in Sanskrit and is a must of anyone on the spiritual pathway to enlightenment (Hindu/Buddhist pathways). It makes you take a hard look at your beliefs and practices, social norms and customs and helps you separate the wheat from the chaff. Swami Prabhavananda and Christoper Isherwood have done an excellent job of translating it into English. The translation is easy to read, although the material is by no means a light read and is meant for someone who is serious about the pathway. It is a great book to read again and again as your awareness grows.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Definition/Description of God, October 4, 2007
This review is from: Shankara's Crest Jewel of Discrimination (Paperback)
We are currently witnessing a spate of atheistic and agnostic, generally scientistic, denials of the existence of God (Often perceived as appropriate responses to the ongoing onslaught of machinations of the fundamentalist media). Alongside these inceasingly popular books, we have a lengthening list of works which approach religion and the objects of its concern from a phenomenological standpoint, materlialistic analyses tracing what amounts to a "natural history" of God, or God as conceptually conceived. How can one adopt the pretense of attempting to study God when one's attention is focused on the ever shifting sands of temporal/material existence, where the mind is kept ever flirting with one image, or illusion, after the next?
I beg all of the authors of these books to turn now to this venerable masterpiece - The Crest Jewel of Discrimination, which gives a precise and comprehensive description of the nature and existence of God: ". . . beginningless, endless, immeasurable, unchanging, one without a second . . . pure existence, pure consciousness, eternal bliss, beyond action, infinite, omnipresent . . . cannot be grasped since it is transcendent . . . cannot be contained, since it contains all things . . . without parts or attributes . . . subtle, absolute, taintless, indefinable, beyond the range of mind and speech . . . reality itself, established in its own glory, pure, absolute consciousness, having no equal, one with a second . . ." This extract may serve the prospective reader as an example of the succint yet comprehensive analysis given here. The book is, as always in the style of Sankara, eloquent in its spare and direct rendering and clarification of the most obsessively mystifying, often abstruse and yet essential subjects. The translation here, of 1947 vintage, is justly celebrated.
Wisdom is revealed on every page - remarkably, every question the devoted seeker might ask is answered in detail and, best of all, the reader can carry this diminuative treasure trove anywhere - the ultimate distillation of Truth in a mere 150 pages.
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