A free library for the long study of Vedānta

This library is here to keep all of Vedānta. Every school in its own words, with none set above another.

Vedānta is the tradition the Gītā belongs to, and its schools are the ways it has been read. Three texts stand open now. The Bhagavad Gītā, read whole, with its commentators around it. A primer that lays down its vocabulary. And the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, the first of the forest books, just opened and still in draft. More of the Upaniṣads, and the Brahma Sūtras, are being prepared.

New here? One verse, read slowly, with its commentators around it. That is the whole way, and it is enough.

Enter the Bhagavad Gītā Meet the schools

Bhagavad Gītā 2.12

“Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor these kings; nor will any of us ever cease to exist.”

ŚaṅkaraAdvaita

“In all three times we are eternal in our nature as the Self. The plural is used following the difference of bodies, not with the intent of a difference of Selves.”

MadhvaDvaita

“Just as I am eternal, a fact established throughout the Vedanta, so too are you, and all these rulers of men, eternal.”

Here two of the Gītā’s teachers read one line, and they do not agree. Both readings stay open before you. The library does not decide between them. Sit with the verse.

The shelves

The library fills one text at a time. Each is set down here by how far the work has come. Each is read slowly, with its Sanskrit and a plain voice. And each is told honestly where it stands.

Bhagavad GītāEighteen chapters and seven hundred and one verses. Each verse with its Sanskrit, its plain sense, and the readings of its commentators.Complete Tattva BodhaA primer, not one of the scriptures. It is the short text a teacher often gives a student first, to lay down the vocabulary of Vedānta before the scriptures are opened. Its Sanskrit and its plain sense, the whole of it.Complete · text only Bṛhadāraṇyaka UpaniṣadThe oldest and largest of the forest books. All forty-seven sections, in Sanskrit and plain sense, with Śaṅkara’s commentary on the core sections. The cross-school reading is opening on the great verses. On the salt verse it is fully sourced. Elsewhere it is partly reconstructed from each school’s settled doctrine.In draft

The other UpaniṣadsKena, Kaṭha, Muṇḍaka, and the rest, prepared with the same care.In preparation

Brahma SūtrasThe threads that gather the inquiry. Here each school gives its reading in full.In preparation

The schools of Vedānta

The Vedānta lineages, the Śaiva and devotional streams, the Sāṅkhya-Yoga system beneath them, and the modern readers. Each is met on its own terms, and none is graded here.

Advaita Bhedābheda Viśiṣṭādvaita Dvaitādvaita Dvaita Śuddhādvaita Gauḍīya Kashmir Śaiva Varkari Sāṅkhya-Yoga Tilak Aurobindo Gandhi Vinoba

The reach here is uneven. The reading runs deepest where the commentary has come down to us most complete. In the first texts that is Śaṅkara’s. Where a school is thin on a verse, you are told so.

Meet the schools →

The whole field

Behind the texts open here stands the whole literature of Vedānta. Most of it is not here yet. The map is the measure of the road.

The shared sourceThe Upaniṣads, the Gītā, and the Sūtras, held in common.

Each school’s libraryBuilt around that source, and no two readings alike.

Into our own timeThe readers who carried the inquiry down to us.

This library is here to keep all of it, free, one text at a time.

See the whole map →

What is here descends from a long devotional reading of these texts, and the library does not pretend otherwise. What a school holds, it says in its own words. You weigh it.

Begin where you are: one verse, read slowly, with its commentators around it.

The library is free, and open to anyone who comes. It grows slowly, and it stays.