The treasure I have found cannot be described in words, the mind cannot conceive of it.
Interpretation
The greatest experiences and truths often surpass our ability to articulate them.
This quote by Adi Shankara suggests that the most profound truths and treasures of existence lie beyond verbal expression and intellectual understanding. It implies that there are experiences, such as spiritual or existential insights, that are so deep and significant that they elude our capacity to fully comprehend or describe them through language.
In practice
In a speech about the nature of love, one might reference this quote to illustrate the idea that some feelings go beyond what we can articulate.
Even after the Truth has been realised, there remains that strong, obstinate impression that one is still an ego - the agent and experiencer. This has to be carefully removed by living in a state of constant identification with the supreme non-dual Self. Full Awakening is the eventual ceasing of all the mental impressions of being an ego.
Like the appearance of silver in mother of pearl, the world seems real until the Self, the underlying reality, is realized.
Give up identification with this mass of flesh as well as with what thinks it a mass. Both are intellectual imaginations. Recognise your true self as undifferentiated awareness, unaffected by time, past, present or future, and enter Peace.
As gold purified in a furnace loses its impurities and achieves its own true nature, the mind gets rid of the impurities of the attributes of delusion, attachment and purity through meditation and attains Reality.
But the jiva [living being] is endowed with ego and his knowledge is limited, whereas Ishwar is without ego and is omniscient.
There is sorrow in finitude. The Self is beyond time, space and objects. It is infinite and hence of the nature of absolute happiness.
The majority represent a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirror its own soul and mind poverty.
The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that I may love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the minds of others in order that they may love me.
The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.
What profit is there in agreeing that universal friendship is good, and talking of the solidarity of the human race as a grand ideal? Unless these thoughts are translated into the world of action, they are useless. The wrong in the world continues to exist just because people only talk of their ideals, and do not strive to put them into practice. If actions took the place of words, the world's misery would very soon be changed into comfort.
Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left.
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