We have started the Vedantasaara of Sadananda, which is a traditional textbook introduction to the system of Adwaita Vedantanth.

My plan was to go to the foundational texts of Vedantah, which are the Upanishads and we shall do that but this text

this is the way a traditional student of Vedantantha in India would be introduced to Adwaita

Vedantra. So I thought we should take that route. One big advantage of this is it gives

you key definitions. Later on when when we talk about what is Brahman, what is Maya, what is the Jiva, the sentient being, what do you mean by enlightenment, what exactly is the meaning of the sentence that thou art?

What is the process, the methodology of Vedant, all these things are so clearly defined here.

So it's very useful as a foundation.

As a point, it's not an end, but it's a beginning.

And the disadvantage is, of course, that don't take it too seriously because this is a

systematization after thousands of years of philosophizing on the Upanishads.

The sources are the Upanishads.

So each Upanishad, you will find a different approach to the same message.

But when we have the basics at our disposal, we can understand the Upanishads better and also

enjoy the differences. Without this set of definitions, what happens is one might get confused.

Each Upanishad with its own terminology, its own approach, its own take on spirituality and enlightenment.

All right. So last time we started and we did the first verse of this text. Traditionally all these texts start with an invocation called

Mangalacharana, which is an auspicious invocation. Usually a salutation to the guru, salutation to God.

And here we saw it was actually a salutation to Brahman, the ultimate reality of the universe.

And in the first verse itself, you can see how much he has packed in.

He's packed in the central teachings of Avedvedana, basically.

There is one more verse, the second one, which is an invocation, a salutation to the guru, to his guru.

So we shall proceed with that.

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