Shri Adi Shankaracharya

With his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, Shri Adi Shankaracharya (c. 100 B.C.E.) more or less single-handedly revived Advaita Vedanta as the foundational philosophy of the Vedas, at a time when Hinduism was under attack from many quarters. Learn more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara. Like Shankara’s, my ishta devata is Shiva; however, like Shankara, I am an Advaita Vedantist. As a svanistha brahmacharin I do not follow any particular guru. Rather, I try to learn from each person and situation I encounter. In the modern context, my strongest philosophical sympathies are with the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Order, whose scholarly texts, commentaries and translations have inspired me since I first discovered them in 1965. The Vedanta Society Bookstore of Southern California (www.vedanta.com) offers a particularly rich selection.