Brahman, the ground of everything

Brahman is the name for ultimate reality in Hindu philosophy: the single ground from which everything arises, by which it is sustained and into which it returns. It is not a thing in the world but what the world rests on.

In the Upanishads, the central teaching is that brahman is one with atman, the self within each person.

What does the word brahman mean?

Brahman comes from a root meaning to grow or expand. In the Vedic hymns it first meant the power of a ritual utterance, the prayer or formula that made a ritual work. Over time it came to mean the power behind everything, and then reality itself.

It is easy to confuse with related words from the same root:

What do the Upanishads say about brahman?

The Upanishads, from roughly the seventh century BCE onward, make brahman their main subject. The Taittiriya Upanishad describes it as satyam jnanam anantam brahma: brahman is truth, knowledge, the infinite. The Chandogya Upanishad says sarvam khalv idam brahma: all this is brahman.

Four short sayings, the mahavakyas, are taken as summing up the teaching. Each one joins the self and brahman, as in aham brahmasmi, I am brahman. That identity is explored on the page about atman, the self in the Upanishads.

The Upanishads also name brahman’s sound. The Mandukya Upanishad is a short meditation on Om, the syllable chanted at the start of many classes, as a symbol of brahman, and the Bhagavad Gita calls Om the one syllable that is brahman.

How do Hindu schools understand brahman?

The Brahma Sutras of Badarayana, usually dated somewhere between the last centuries BCE and the early centuries CE, tried to set the Upanishads’ teaching in order, and every school of Vedanta wrote commentary on them.

Advaita Vedanta, taught by Shankara around the eighth century, holds that brahman alone is real and is without qualities, nirguna. The world of many separate things is maya, the world as appearance. Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita holds that brahman is a personal God with qualities, saguna, and that souls and the world are real parts of that God. Madhva’s Dvaita keeps God, souls and the world eternally distinct.

Do Buddhists and Jains believe in brahman?

No. The Buddha did not teach a single ground of reality, and Buddhist texts present Brahma, the god, as a powerful being who is still inside the cycle of rebirth. Buddhism did keep the word in one place: the brahmaviharas, the four divine abodes of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity, the source of loving-kindness meditation.

Jain philosophy has no creator and no universal ground. Its universe is uncreated and eternal, made of countless individual souls and non-living substances.

How does brahman show up in a modern yoga class?

Mostly through Om. When a class chants Om, it is using the syllable the Upanishads take as brahman’s name. You may also hear a teacher say that everything is connected, which is a loose, modern echo of the Upanishadic idea.

You do not need any belief about brahman to practise. It is useful to know the word, so that a reading from the Gita or the Upanishads at the end of class makes more sense.