Adi Shankaracharya

Born in 788 CE in the small village of Kaladi in Kerala, Shankara was a prodigy of almost supernatural proportions. He mastered the Vedas by age eight. When he was eight, he sought sannyasa (total renunciation) but his mother Aryamba refused. Legend says a crocodile seized his leg while he bathed in the river; he called out that she should let him take sannyasa so he could die as a renunciate. She agreed, the crocodile released him, and he left home.

He traveled to the banks of the Narmada to find his guru, Govinda Bhagavatpada, a disciple of the great Gaudapada. Under Govinda's guidance, Shankara's realization of non-dual Brahman was confirmed. By age sixteen, he had composed his monumental commentaries (bhashyas) on the principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita, works of such philosophical precision that they remain the gold standard of Vedantic exegesis.

He then embarked on a dig-vijaya, a philosophical conquest of India. Walking from Kerala to Kashmir, from Puri to Dwarka, he engaged and defeated the leading scholars of every rival school: the Buddhists, the Jains, the Mimamsakas, the Samkhyas, the Charvakas. His weapon was not force but argument: devastating, crystal-clear, irrefutable argument grounded in scripture, reason, and direct experience.

He established four mathas (monasteries) at the four corners of India: Sringeri in the south, Puri in the east, Dwarka in the west, and Jyotirmath in the north, creating an institutional framework for Advaita Vedanta that has endured for twelve centuries. He composed devotional hymns of exquisite beauty (to Shiva, to Devi, to Vishnu), showing that the non-dualist is not dry but overflows with love. He died at age thirty-two, in Kedarnath, having accomplished more than most civilizations achieve in centuries.