Daśanāmi Sampradaya in the context of "Dvaita"

Advaita Vedanta (/ʌdˈvaɪtə vɛˈdɑːntə/; Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त, IAST: Advaita Vedānta) is a Hindu tradition of Brahmanical textual exegesis and philosophy, and a monastic institutional tradition nominally related to the Daśanāmi Sampradaya and propagated by the Smarta tradition. Its core tenet is that jivatman, the individual experiencing self, is ultimately pure awareness mistakenly identified with the body and its senses and with thought-constructs, and non-different from Ātman/Brahman, the highest Self or Reality. The term Advaita (अद्वैत) literally means "not-two" or "one without a second," which means that only Brahman, 'the one', is ultimately real while prapanca, 'the second', 'the world' or the multiplicity of thought-constructs, is not fully real. It is commonly rendered as "nonduality," and popularly interpreted as meaning that Atman is non-different from Brahman, and often equated with monism.

Advaita Vedanta is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience. It states that moksha (liberation from 'suffering' and rebirth) is attained through knowledge of Brahman, recognizing the illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentification from body-mind and the notion of 'doership', and by acquiring vidyā (knowledge) of one's true identity as Atman/Brahman, self-luminous (svayam prakāśa) awareness or Witness-consciousness. This knowledge is acquired through Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that['s how] you are," which destroy the ignorance (avidyā) regarding one's true identity by revealing that (jiv)Ātman is non-different from immortal Brahman.

Adi Shankara (8th c. CE), also called Adi Shankaracharya (Sanskrit: आदि शङ्कर, आदि शङ्कराचार्य, romanized: Ādi Śaṅkara, Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, lit. 'First Shankaracharya', pronounced [aːd̪i ɕɐŋkɐraːt͡ɕaːrjɐ]), was an Indian Vedic scholar, philosopher and teacher (acharya) of Advaita Vedanta. While he is often revered as the most important Indian philosopher, reliable information on Shankara's actual life is scant, and the historical influence of his works on Hindu intellectual thought has been questioned. The historical Shankara was probably relatively unknown and Vaishna-oriented. His true impact lies in his "iconic representation of Hindu religion and culture," despite the fact that most Hindus do not adhere to Advaita Vedanta.

Until the 10th century Shankara was overshadowed by his older contemporary Maṇḍana Miśra, and there is no mention of him in concurrent Hindu, Buddhist or Jain sources until the 11th century. The legendary Shankara was created in the 14th century, centuries after his death, when Sringeri matha started to receive patronage from the emperors of the Vijayanagara Empire and shifted their allegiance from Advaitic Agamic Shaivism to Brahmanical Advaita orthodoxy. Hagiographies dating from the 14th-17th centuries deified him as a ruler-renunciate, travelling on a digvijaya (conquest of the four quarters) across the Indian subcontinent to propagate his philosophy, defeating his opponents in theological debates. These hagiographies portray him as founding four mathas (monasteries), and Adi Shankara also came to be regarded as the organiser of the Dashanami monastic order, and the unifier of the Shanmata tradition of worship. The title of Shankaracharya, used by heads of certain monasteries in India, is derived from his name. Tradition also portrays him as the one who reconciled the various sects (Vaishnavism, Shaivism, and Shaktism) with the introduction of the Pañcāyatana form of worship, the simultaneous worship of five deities – Ganesha, Surya, Vishnu, Shiva and Devi, arguing that all deities were but different forms of the one Brahman, the invisible Supreme Being.

Dvaita Vedanta (/ˈdvaɪtə veɪˈdɑːntə/); (originally known as Tattvavada; IAST: Tattvavāda), is a sub-school in the Vedanta tradition of Hindu philosophy. The term Tattvavada literally means "arguments from a realist viewpoint". The Tattvavada (Dvaita) Vedanta sub-school was founded by the 13th-century Indian philosopher-saint Madhvacharya. Madhvacharya believed in three entities: God, jiva (soul), and jada (maya, matter). The Dvaita Vedanta believes that God and the individual souls (jīvātman) exist as distinct realities. These individual souls are dependent (paratantra) on Vishnu (Narayana), who alone is independent (svatantra).

The Dvaita school contrasts with the other two major sub-schools of Vedanta, the Advaita Vedanta of Adi Shankara which posits nondualism—that ultimate reality (Brahman) and human soul (Ātman) are identical and all reality is interconnected oneness, and Vishishtadvaita of Ramanuja which posits qualified nondualism—that ultimate reality (Brahman) and human soul are different but with the potential to be identical. Sanyasis of the Dvaita Vedanta tradition belong to the ēkadaṇḍi order.