Sage Goudpada: ~ To establish the truth of Non-duality by sheer reasoning alone.+

Sage Goudpada: ~ To establish the truth of Non-duality by sheer reasoning alone. He begins by defining "What is real?" "What is unreal?" etc, because that is the right way to understand and assimilate.   (Manduka Karika)

Existence is nondual. Nonduality cannot be described through words for all uses of language fail to express it. Nonduality is sought to be indicated by mentally negation of duality (all attributes and characteristics).

Sage Sankara says:~ How can the talk of diversity, dvaita, apply to the Supreme Reality which is one and homogeneous, Advaita? Who has ever observed diversity, dvaita, in the unmixed bliss of the state of profound sleep?

Sage Sankara says only through direct knowledge of non-duality that one be enlightened.

Sage Sankara’s opponents accused him of teaching Buddhism in the garb of Hinduism because his non-dualistic ideals were a bit radical to contemporary Hindu philosophy. However, it may be noted that while the Later Buddhists arrived at a changeless, deathless, absolute truth after their insightful understanding of the unreality of samsara, historically Vedantins never liked this idea.

Although Advaita also proposes the theory of Maya, explaining the universe as a "trick of a magician", Sage Sankara and his followers see this as a consequence of their basic premise that Atman is real. Their idea of Maya emerges from their belief in the reality of Atman, rather than the other way around.

Sage Sankara was a peripatetic orthodox Hindu monk who traveled the length and breadth of India. The more enthusiastic followers of the Advaita tradition claim that he was chiefly responsible for "driving the Buddhists away". Historically the decline of Buddhism in India is known to have taken place long after Sage Sankara or even Kumarila Bhatta (who according to a legend had "driven the Buddhists away" by defeating them in debates), sometime before the Muslim invasion into Afghanistan (earlier Gandhara).

Although today's followers of Advaita believe Sage Sankara argued against Buddhists in person, a historical source, the Madhaviya Shankara Vijayam, indicates that Sage Sankara sought debates with Mimamsa, Samkhya, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, and Yoga scholars as keenly as with any Buddhists. In fact, his arguments against the Buddhists are quite mild in the Upanishad Bhashyas, while they border on the acrimonious in the Brahma Sutra Bhashya.

The Vishistadvaita and Dvaita schools believe in an ultimately attributed Atman. They differ passionately with Advaita and believe that his attriubuteless Atman is not different from the Buddhist Sunyata (wholeness or zeroness) — much to the dismay of the Advaita school. A careful study of the Buddhist Sunyata will show that it is in some ways metaphysically similar to Atman. Whether Sage Sankara agrees with the Buddhists is not very clear from his commentaries on the Upanishads. His arguments against Buddhism in the Brahma Sutra Bhashyas are more a representation of Vedantic traditional debate with Buddhists than a true representation of his own individual belief. :~Santthosh Kumaar