Adi Sankaracharya is most famous for his Prasthanatraya Bhashya - commentaries on Brahmasutra, Upanishads, and Bhagavad Gita.
Besides that, Sankara has written numerous hymns on various deities.
List of complete works of Adi Sankara, to the extent available on records, is enclosed as a file here.
Scholars after scholars have examined these commentaries and derived various aspects of Adi Sankaracharya’s teachings from these commentaries. But, commentaries by their very nature allow a commentator to only explain the teaching of the text on which the commentary is being written.
Hence, one can say that there is a kind of limitation on the part of any Acharya to impart direct instructions to people while writing commentaries.
To overcome this limitation, various Acharyas have written independent works called ‘Prakarana Granthas’, where relevant teachings extracted from the scriptures are directly imparted to the students.
One such small Prakarana Grantha written by Adi Sankaracharya is ‘Sadhana Panchakam’.
As the name denotes, Sadhana Panchakam is a text consisting of five stanzas imparting teachings related to how a person must perform Sadhana (spiritual effort) in order to attain the highest goal of Moksha.
The instructions are considered to be very precious and priceless, and contain the principles of the practice of Sadhana. For this reason the text also goes by a second name, Upadesha Pancharatnam, meaning “Five precious gems of advice or teaching”.
Further, the instructions are not in a haphazard order, but presented in a logical sequence, in the order in which they have to be practiced.
This sequential format of the text gives it its third name, Sopana Arohana Nyaya, which means “A Logical Climbing Ladder in Sadhana”.
The first 24 steps (Verses 1-3) take us sequentially through the Four Stages of Life.
1. Brahmacharya Stage: Studentship life Steps 1 to 4
2. Grihastha Stage: Householder’s Life Steps 5 to 8;
3. Vanaprastha Stage: Retirement life Steps 9 to 12;
4. Sannyasa Stage: Renunciation life Steps 13 to 24.
This is followed by the next 16 steps (Verses 4-5) in which four distinct topics are taken up to take us to the highest Goal of Self-Realisation:
5. Practice of Tapas - Voluntary Austerity Steps 25 to 28;
6. Practice of Titiksha - Steps 29 to 32;
7. Final steps to realization - Nirvikalpa Samadhi - Steps 33 to 36;
8. Freedom from all bondage - Jivanmukti - Steps 37 to 40.
