Brahman

===Brahman as a teleological concept===
''Brahman'' and ''Atman'' are very important teleological concepts. [[Teleology]] deals with the apparent purpose, principle, or goal of something. In the first chapter of the [[Shvetashvatara Upanishad]], these questions are addressed. It says:

{{Blockquote|
<poem>
"People who make inquiries about brahman say:
What is the cause of Brahman? Why were we born? By what do we live? On what are we established? Governed by whom, O you who know Brahman, do we live in pleasure and in pain, each in our respective situation?
</poem>
|[[Shvetashvatara Upanishad]]|Hymns 1.1<ref name="poliv">Patrick Olivelle. (1998).[https://archive.org/download/TheEarlyUpanisads/The%20Early%20Upani%E1%B9%A3ads.pdf The Early Upaniṣads] New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.</ref>}}

According to the Upanishads, the main purpose/meaning of anything or everything can be explained or achieved/understood only through the realization of the Brahman. The apparent purpose of everything can be grasped by obtaining the ''Brahman'', as the ''Brahman'' is referred to that when known, all things become known. 
{{Blockquote|
<poem>
"What is that my lord, by which being known, all of this becomes known?" 
Angiras told him, "Two types of knowledge a man should learn, those who know Brahman tell us — the higher and the lower. The lower of the two consists of the Rgveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda (...), whereas, the higher is that by which one grasps the imperishable (Brahman)."
</poem>
|[[Mundaka Upanishad]]|Hymns 1.1<ref name="poliv" />}}

Elsewhere in the Upanishads, the relationship between Brahman & all knowledge is established, such that any questions of apparent purpose/teleology are resolved when the Brahman is ultimately known. This is found in the [[Aitareya Upanishad]] 3.3 and [[Brihadaranyaka Upanishad]] 4.4.17.

{{Blockquote|
<poem>
Knowledge is the eye of all that, and on knowledge it is founded. Knowledge is the eye of the world, and knowledge, the foundation. Brahman is knowing.
</poem>
|Aitereya Upanishad|Hymns 3.3<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.consciouslivingfoundation.org/ebooks/13/CLF-aitareya_upanishad.pdf|title=English translation of Aitareya Upanishad|website=Consciouslivingfoundation.org|access-date=26 January 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://esamskriti.com/essays/Aitareya-Upanishad.pdf|title=Aitareya Upanishad : Transliterated Sanskrit Text Free Translation & Brief Explanation|author=T.N. Sethumadhavan|website=Esamskriti.com|access-date=26 January 2019}}</ref>}}

One of the main reasons why Brahman should be realized is because it removes suffering from a person's life. Following on [[Advaita Vedanta]] tradition, this is because the person has the ability and knowledge to discriminate between the unchanging (Purusha; Atman-Brahman) and the ever-changing ([[Prakriti]]; maya) and so the person is not attached to the transient, fleeting & impermanent. Hence, the person is only content with their true self and not the body or anything else. Further elaborations of Brahman as the central teleological issue are found in Shankara's commentaries of the Brahma Sutras & his [[Vivekachudamani]].

In [[Brihadaranyaka Upanishad]] 3.9.26 it mentions that the atman 'neither trembles in fear nor suffers injury' and the [[Isha Upanishad]] 6-7 too talks about suffering as non-existent when one becomes the Brahman as they see the self in all beings and all beings in the self. The famous [[Advaita Vedanta]] commentator Shankara noted that [[Sabda Pramana]] (scriptural epistemology) & anubhava (personal experience) is the ultimate & only source of knowing/learning the Brahman, and that its purpose or existence cannot be verified independently because it is not an object of perception/inference (unless one is spiritually advanced, thereby it's truth becomes self-evident/intuitive) & is beyond conceptualizations. But he does note the Upanishads themselves are ultimately derived from use of the various pramanas to derive at ultimate truths (as seen in Yalnavalkya's philosophical inquires). All [[Vedanta]] schools agree on this. These teleological discussions inspired some refutations from competing philosophies about the origin/purpose of Brahman & [[Avidyā (Hinduism)|avidya]] (ignorance) and the relationship between the two, leading to variant schools like [[Kashmiri Shaivism]] & others.