section_path: Bhashya (commentaries)/Classical commentaries/Śaṅkara (c. 800 CE)
section_name: Śaṅkara (c. 800 CE)
paragraph_text: Śaṅkara (c. 800 CE)
  
  The oldest and most influential surviving commentary was published by Adi Shankara (Śaṅkarācārya). Shankara interprets the Gita in a monist, nondualistic tradition (Advaita Vedanta). Advaita Vedanta affirms on the non-dualism of Atman and Brahman. Shankara prefaces his comments by stating that the Gita is popular among the laity, that the text has been studied and commented upon by earlier scholars (these texts have not survived), but that "I have found that to the laity it appears to teach diverse and quite contradictory doctrines". He calls the Gita "an epitome of the essentials of the whole Vedic teaching ". To Shankara, the teaching of the Gita is to shift an individual's focus from the outer, impermanent, fleeting objects of desire and senses to the inner, permanent, eternal atman-Brahman-Vasudeva that is identical, in everything and in every being.