“Brahman (the existential substratum) is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self.”

—  Adi Shankara

Original: (hi) Brahma satyam jagat mithyam, jivo brahmaiva naparah

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Adi Shankara 19
Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century 788–820

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“Brahman the Absolute alone is real; this world is transient (mithya is anirvachaneeya, cannot be defined, cannot be translated as unreal), but the jiva or the individual soul is not different from Brahman.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Refer to current Sringeri Shankaracharya discourses in Telugu and Tamil (two different pravachans). Do not blindly translate "Mithya" as Unreal. Do not misrepresent what Adi Shankaracharya preached in Sanskrit to his students and world using useless English translations.
Alternative translation: Brahman is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self.
Translation in Global Encyclopaedia of Indian Philosophy (2010), by N.K. Singh and A.P. Mishra, p. 16.

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“Seeking Brahman in world transactions,
Seeking Brahman in all JIva forms,
Feeling Brahman in body and sense experiences,
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“The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism”

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Context: The more superficially one studies Buddhism, the more it seems to differ from the Brahmanism in which it originated; the more profound our study, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish Buddhism from Brahmanism, or to say in what respects, if any, Buddhism is really unorthodox. The outstanding distinction lies in the fact that Buddhist doctrine is propounded by an apparently historical founder, understood to have lived and taught in the sixth century B. C. Beyond this there are only broad distinctions of emphasis. It is taken almost for granted that one must have abandoned the world if the Way is to be followed and the doctrine understood.... but nothing could be described as a 'social reform' or as a protest against the caste system. The repeated distinction of the 'true Brahman' from the mere Brahman by birth is one that had already been drawn again and again in the Brahmanical books.

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“I saw the Indian Brahmans living on the earth and not on it, walled without walls, and with no possessions except the whole world.”

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Different translation: In India I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth, but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything but possessed by nothing. quoted in The Transition to a Global Society (1991) by Kishor Gandhi, p. 17, and in The Age of Elephants (2006) by Peter Moss, p. v

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