Māṇḍūkya Kārikā

A treatise of some 215 verses in four chapters, the earliest surviving systematic work of Advaita Vedānta, attributed to Gauḍapāda, whom tradition makes the teacher of Shankara's teacher. The first chapter comments on the short Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, which maps the syllable Om onto three states of the self, waking, dreaming and dreamless sleep, and a fourth (turīya) that underlies them all. The second chapter argues that waking experience is unreal in the same way as dreams, since both are perceived as objects and both have a beginning and an end. The third defends non-duality: individual selves relate to the one self as the space inside pots relates to space itself. The fourth, the 'quenching of the firebrand', develops the doctrine of non-origination (ajātivāda), that nothing is ever really born, using the image of a whirling torch that seems to draw circles of fire. Its Buddhist vocabulary, especially in the fourth chapter, has long been noted and debated.

It is the most uncompromising statement of non-dualism in Indian thought, and a compact way into Advaita's analysis of waking, dreaming and deep sleep.