Living is a skill, and Vedanta is how to learn it.
Vedanta means the culmination of knowledge. It is a wisdom with a rare capacity to catalyse self-growth and transformation, for living with clarity, peace, productivity and purpose.
Join the next short courseA new cohort opens about every four weeks
Two woodcutters, and the one who stops to sharpen his axe
Two men are given the same forest and the same tools. One cuts from dawn to dusk. The other stops every hour, sits down and sharpens his axe. By evening the second man has the bigger pile, and he is the less tired of the two. Vedanta is the hour spent on the axe: time given to the equipment we live with, which is the body, the mind and the intellect.
Veda means knowledge and anta means end, so Vedanta is the culmination of knowledge: the philosophy of life and living recorded in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and carried by a long line of teachers in India. It asks you to question what you hear and test it against your own life. People of every faith, and of none, find answers here they can work with.
Vyasa sums up what it gives in five words: self-mastery, resilience, clarity, peace and purpose.
From knowledge to understanding, and from understanding to living
The four steps are a real sequence. Most people start at the first one on a Sunday afternoon.
Study
Learn what Vedanta says about life, about the world and about you. One idea at a time, in a weekly class or a short course.
Reflect
Question it. Test it against your own experience until it is yours and you can explain it to someone else.
Apply
Bring it into your actions, your relationships and your decisions, including the ones you make under pressure.
Realise
Move towards Self-realisation, which the tradition names plainly as the purpose of a human life.
The tradition's own order is श्रवण · मनन · निदिध्यासन, śravaṇa, manana, nididhyāsana: listening, reflection and assimilation.
A class this week, a course next month, a book for the shelf
Everything below is taught by Vyasa Dass, Principal Faculty, or links to the Vedanta Academy in India where he trained. Classes are free.
Gems from the Gita
Sundays at 15:00 South African time, live on Zoom. One verse of the Bhagavad Gita, read for what it asks of an ordinary week.
Short coursesThe Bhagavad Gita, in four or six weeks
Sixty-minute classes on Friday mornings, Pacific time, in small cohorts. A new cohort opens about every four weeks.
TalksOne question from ordinary life
A public talk every two months in Durban on stress at work, a difficult relationship, raising children or success, with questions from the room.
Young peopleStories, poems and symbols
Classes for ages 8 to 16 and for older students, and a course for parents. Practical ways to handle anxiety, pressure from friends and low days.
WorkshopsHalf a Saturday
Half-day workshops for young people, for educators and for working adults, built around four techniques and hands-on exercises.
For organisationsValues-based decisions under pressure
Sessions for teams and leaders on self-management, stress, productivity and leadership, by enquiry.
RetreatsFive days with room to think
A retreat with Vyasa in Bhutan this November, and residential retreats at the Vedanta Academy in India for young people and adults.
E-learningStudy at your own pace
Recorded courses from the Vedanta Academy: the complete three-year course, a course for business, one for young people and one for parents.
“Living is an art, a skill, a technique. You have got to learn and practise it.”
Swami A. Parthasarathy, author of the books we study, and the opening idea of every classEleven books, read in order
Swami A. Parthasarathy wrote eleven books over seventy years of study and teaching. The first read is The Fall of the Human Intellect, then Governing Business & Relationships, then Vedanta Treatise: The Eternities, now in its seventeenth edition. The weekly class reads his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.
Vyasa Dass, Principal Faculty
Vyasa completed the three-year residential programme at the Vedanta Academy in India, then spent fifteen years studying under its founder, Swami A. Parthasarathy. He grew up in an established family business, so he has had to live what he teaches: leadership, responsibility, relationships and hard decisions, with the philosophy applied in the office on a Monday.
He teaches the way he talks: a scene first, one plain definition, the Sanskrit word with its meaning, and then one thing to try before next week. He counts himself in. “We are all degrees of sanity and insanity. Including the speaker.”
Free classes, kept free by the people who give back
Vedanta Community receives donations through the Vedanta Institute Durban Trust, a registered charitable trust. Every weekly class is free, and it stays free because people who have benefited give back, in money and in time. The wisdom is offered for the well-being of humanity.