“Deho nāham, mano nāham” means “I am not the body, I am not the mind.” At first, that might sound strange—aren’t those exactly what define our experience? But according to Advaita Vedanta, those parts of us that feel pain, worry, fear, and confusion are not who we truly are. They're just layers—like clothes the Self puts on temporarily. The real “you” is something deeper, untouched by the rise and fall of emotions, and free from the decay and fragility of the body.
The graphic’s agonized expression captures the very thing this teaching aims to free us from: the suffering of believing we are our thoughts, our fears, our pain. But suffering becomes the catalyst for awakening. In that scream is the question: Is this all I am? And in that question lies the doorway to truth. Vedanta answers, “No, you are the Witness. The unchanging. The eternal.” To know this is to find peace—not by escaping life, but by discovering that the Self was never bound by it in the first place.
