Mystical systems
Brahman
Direct answer
Brahman is the Sanskrit name for the ultimate reality in the Upanishads and Vedanta: the one ground from which all things come, in which they stand and to which they return.
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At a glance
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Atman, Advaita Vedanta, Upanishads, Apophatic Theology
Brahman is the Sanskrit name for the ultimate reality in the Upanishads and Vedanta: the one ground from which all things come, in which they stand and to which they return.
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What is brahman in Hinduism?
Brahman is a neuter noun and names no person. The Upanishads describe it as what everything comes from, lives by and goes back to, and say that it cannot be seen or grasped as an object. One line of teaching speaks of it only by negation, neti neti, not this, not this. Another gives it positive marks, calling it reality, knowledge and the infinite.
Three words are easily confused with it. Brahma, with a long final vowel, is the creator god. A Brahmin is a member of the priestly class. The Brahmanas are texts on ritual. Vedanta also separates brahman without qualities, nirguna, beyond all description, from brahman with qualities, saguna, which is God as worshipped.
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What sets Brahman apart
Brahman is defined in the texts by two opposite methods and both are kept. One strips every quality away, since anything that can be named is limited. The other heaps up the highest terms, being, awareness, bliss. The schools divide on which is final: for Shankara the qualityless is the truth and the personal God a lower view of it, while for Ramanuja brahman is the personal God, and to call it without qualities means only without faults.
- Grammar: a neuter noun in Sanskrit, from a root meaning to grow or swell
- Earliest sense: in the Vedic hymns, the sacred utterance and its power
- By negation: neti neti, not this, not this, in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
- Positive marks: reality, knowledge, the infinite, in the Taittiriya Upanishad
- Two aspects: nirguna, without qualities, and saguna, with qualities
- Systematic text: the Brahma Sutras, credited to Badarayana
Often mistaken for something else: Brahman is the neuter absolute; Brahma is the masculine creator god; a Brahmin is a member of the priestly class. Old books that spell the class Brahman add to the muddle.
The story behind Brahman
The word comes from a root meaning to grow or swell. In the early Vedic hymns it means the sacred utterance and its power. By the oldest Upanishads, before about 500 BCE, it had come to mean the reality behind the whole world. The Brahma Sutras, credited to Badarayana, set the teaching in order, and Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva each wrote a commentary on them giving a different account of how brahman stands to selves and to the world.
Why Brahman matters
Brahman is the central term of Vedanta, and mixing it up with the god Brahma or the Brahmin class garbles almost any account of Hindu thought.
How to read Brahman
Philosophers use it for the absolute as the Upanishads teach it; devotional schools identify it with a personal God such as Vishnu or Shiva.
Brahman in practice: an example
A reader meeting the phrase all this is brahman in the Chandogya Upanishad can ask which school's reading of the sentence a given teacher follows.
Where readings of Brahman go wrong
The tradition itself says that words fall short of it, so any definition, this one included, is a pointer and not a description.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- brahman meaning, what is brahman, brahman hinduism, brahman vs brahma, nirguna brahman
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What is brahman in Hinduism?
It is the ultimate reality taught in the Upanishads: the single ground of all that exists. Schools of Vedanta describe it differently, some as beyond all qualities and some as a personal God possessed of every perfection.
What is the difference between Brahman and Brahma?
Brahman is the impersonal ground of everything and is a neuter word. Brahma is a masculine name for the creator god, one of the deities. A Brahmin is something else again: a member of the priestly class.
What does nirguna brahman mean?
It means brahman without qualities: reality as it is in itself, beyond every name and form. Advaita Vedanta sets it beside saguna brahman, brahman with qualities, which is the same reality approached as God in worship.
