There is no creation, no destruction, none bound, none seeking, striving, gaining freedom. Know that this is the supreme truth.

—The Garland of the Guru’s Sayings, verse “Bhagavan 28,” p. 234; i.e., Ramana Maharshi’s translation of a key verse from Gaudapada’s Karika

This is, in a word, the ajata teaching: not-a-thing has ever come into being, and so not-a-thing can ever go out of being.

This means that you, in particular, have never been born nor can you die. Nor have you ever been such a one with a life to lead, a life that is taking place between birth and death.

Because you’ve never been born, because you cannot die, and because there’s no such thing as “your life,” you cannot actually be a seeker: one who is “bound,” who then “seeks” and “strives,” and who, in the end, attains total “freedom.” There’s never been this one in the first place, and therefore there’s never been such a narrative or a path period. “All this” is a fiction, a dream, a soap bubble.

It’s not, then, that what Gaudapada is saying amounts to “no teaching at all.” Instead, it is the “final teaching” or, as translated here, “the supreme truth” insofar as it’s inviting one to “just be” or to “just be still” or to “let one’s fictional jivahood die.” This truth is, in fact, supreme because it’s the last thing one can say before all falls into silence. 

One could, of course, say that mauna—or nondual silence—is the final teaching, but isn’t that saying too much?