Śaṅkara’s reading of the Brahma Sūtras presents them as a carefully reasoned architecture for Advaita Vedānta, in which Brahman alone is ultimately real. Brahman is described as nirguṇa, beyond all attributes and distinctions, pure existence-consciousness-bliss, and the unchanging ground of all that appears. Teachings about a qualified, personal Lord are treated as belonging to the empirical level, useful for devotion and meditation but not the final purport of scripture. The Upaniṣadic declarations such as “ekam eva advitīyam” are taken as the key to the Sūtras’ intent, affirming a single, non-dual reality underlying the apparent multiplicity of the world.

Within this framework, the individual self is interpreted as none other than Brahman, its apparent limitation arising from avidyā and the conditioning of body, mind, and other adjuncts. Terms such as jīva and ātman, when used for the empirical person, refer to this consciousness as seemingly confined by ignorance, yet in truth untouched and identical with Brahman. Statements like “tat tvam asi” are read as revealing this pre-existing identity once all superimposed attributes are negated. The sense of individuality and agency thus belongs to the realm of appearance, not to the ultimate nature of the self.

Śaṅkara further understands the world as mithyā: provisionally real for practical dealings, yet not ultimately real when measured against Brahman. The power that makes this manifold appearance possible is described as māyā or avidyā, through which name and form arise while Brahman itself remains unchanged. Creation is therefore seen as an apparent transformation, comparable to a rope being mistaken for a snake, where the substratum never actually becomes something else. Scriptural accounts of creation and cosmology are read as pedagogical devices, superimpositions meant to guide the seeker gradually to recognition of the non-dual substratum.

Liberation, in this vision, consists in the removal of ignorance through knowledge rather than the performance of ritual action. It is not the acquisition of something new or a journey to another realm, but the clear recognition that one has always been Brahman. Practices such as ritual, devotion, and meditation are granted an important preparatory role in purifying the mind and making it fit for this knowledge, yet they do not themselves produce the final realization. The Brahma Sūtras, as Śaṅkara interprets them, thus function to demonstrate the coherence of the Upaniṣadic teaching, to show that all its central statements converge on non-duality, and to support the claim that knowledge of Brahman alone brings an end to bondage.