The Formless Reality
“Na punyam na papam na saukhyam na duhkham…
(I have no merit or demerit, no pleasure or pain…)
The profound silence of their communion was deepening, not as an absence of sound, but as a dense, vibrating presence. With the intellect, ego, and mind thoroughly negated, the young Shankara was no longer operating within the familiar boundaries of human psychology. He was venturing into the very architecture of existence, addressing the invisible but heavy chains that bind humanity to the wheel of life: the laws of action and consequence.
Human existence is fundamentally driven by a relentless pendulum swing. On one side is the pursuit of virtue (punyam) and the desperate grasping for pleasure (saukhyam). On the other is the dread of sin (papam) and the frantic flight from pain (duhkham). This dualistic struggle is the engine of the world. We believe that by accumulating merit, we will secure happiness, and by avoiding demerit, we will escape suffering. We define our worth by our actions, carrying the heavy ledger of our good and bad deeds upon our backs, lifetime after lifetime. This is the inescapable web of Karma.
Yet, with a serene and terrifying absolute, Shankara severed this web.
“Na punyam na papam…” I have no merit, no demerit.
To the orthodox mind of 8th-century India, a society built meticulously upon the pursuit of righteous duty (dharma) and the accumulation of spiritual merit, this statement bordered on heresy. But Shankara was not advocating for immorality; he was pointing to a reality that exists far above the realm where morality operates.
He understood that action – and the karma it generates – belongs exclusively to the instruments: the body, the speech, and the mind. The hands steal or give to charity; the lips utter lies or sing hymns; the mind harbors malice or cultivates compassion. But the true Self, the Atman, performs no action whatsoever. It is the silent, motionless Witness.
Imagine the sun shining in the sky. Its light falls equally upon a saint deep in meditation and a thief committing a crime. The sun enables both actions, yet it is completely untouched by the virtue of the saint or the sin of the thief. The sun accumulates no karma. In the exact same way, the pure consciousness of the Atman illuminates the activities of the mind and body, but it is never stained by them. By resting in his true identity as the Witness, Shankara was stepping entirely off the karmic treadmill.
“…na saukhyam na duhkham…” no pleasure or pain.
If the Self does not act, it cannot be the recipient of action’s fruits. Pleasure and pain are the immediate, sensory, and emotional consequences of our karmic ledger. They are the weather patterns of human experience. We spend our lives building fortresses to protect ourselves from the storms of sorrow, only to find that the fortresses also lock out the gentle breezes of joy.
Shankara recognized that pleasure and pain are merely ripples on the surface of the mind. They require a nervous system to be felt and an ego to claim them as “mine.” When the mind and ego have been recognized as mere passing clouds, who is left to suffer? Who is left to rejoice?
He was guiding awareness to a dizzying, weightless height. He was describing a state of absolute equanimity. The Atman is like the vast, pristine expanse of the open sky. Clouds of agonizing grief may drift across it, followed by brilliant, colorful clouds of euphoric joy. The sky holds them all, provides the space for their existence, but is fundamentally unaltered by their passing. When the storm breaks and when the rainbow fades, the sky remains exactly the same.
In this moment of profound surrender, Shankara was declaring himself to be the sky.
He was unraveling the ultimate illusion: that we are bound by our history, tainted by our mistakes, or elevated by our triumphs. In the realm of the Absolute, there is no ledger. There is no judgment. There is only a radical, breath-taking purity that has never been compromised. The young ascetic was glowing with the freedom of absolute neutrality, a state where the frantic need to run toward the light and flee from the dark simply vanishes.
Sin and virtue, joy and sorrow – these are but shadows dancing on a wall. The light that casts them remains forever pure.
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