Book Description

Deeply contemplative and inspiring, this book is a compilation of two highly revered texts in Advaita (Non-Duality). The first is a commentary on the selected names of the Divine Mother from the Lalita Sahasran?ma and the second is a commentary on Adi Shankara’s Dak?i??m?rti Stotram. Lalita Sahasran?ma is a treasure house of the knowledge of Sri Vidya. Seekers of all kinds, yogis, tantrics, and non-dualists alike, are drawn to it. Each name of the Goddess is packed with profound meaning - the gross, the subtle, and the subtlest. In his commentary, Sri Srinivasa Rao focuses on 108 of the 1000 names of the Goddess, and expounds on the most hidden and subtlest of the meanings of each name. Dak?i??m?rti Stotram is a crown jewel among Shankara’s hymns with the entire Advaita doctrine packed into ten profound verses. This book is a blend of Shaiva Advaita (aka Kashmir Shaivism) and Shankara Advaita. Sri Srinivasa Rao’s penetrating vision did not see any differences in the essential message of these apparently different genres of texts. According to him, “Advaita Vedanta is not different from the Sri Vidya of the Shaiva Advaita because both culminate in the union of the finite self with the Infinite.” “The texts discussed in this book are among the serious passages in Vedanta. Sri Yellamraju has excelled in capturing the essence of the highest concepts of Vedanta in as simple terms as possible. The outcome of the study of Vedanta, as Sri Yellamraju writes in his epilogue to the Stotram, is to attain sarv?tmabhava, the experience of the self in all beings, a very egalitarian idea which is unique to Upanishadic thought.” – Dr. K. Aravinda Rao