Grace is a deeply resonant idea across traditions. For many, it’s the thread of hope during illness, tragedy, or despair — that something or someone might intervene, relieve, protect. In the devotional traditions, this takes the form of surrender to a higher power. In Christianity, grace is often the love of God made manifest. In Sufi poetry, it’s the Beloved’s silent touch.
But what happens to grace in non-duality?
If there is no separate God, no worshipper and worshipped, then what is grace? Who gives it? Who receives it? Can it still hold meaning?
This isn’t a theoretical question for me. It surfaced again recently not in meditation, but in the face of a painful local incident — a pet brutally killed in a moment of madness. And it opened the gates to older, more piercing questions:
Where was grace during Auschwitz? Or the Partition? Or in the slow, painful deaths of spiritual masters?
I’m not offering answers here. But I do want to share a set of teachings that helped shift the way I now approach the question — not by removing it, but by reframing its foundation.
📘 Teachings That Shifted the Lens
Several teachings from Advaita Vedanta helped reframe this question — I share two of them below:
Kathopanishad 1.2.23 — Grace as the Precondition for Realization
Swami Tejomayananda and Swami Sarvapriyananda both offer lucid commentary on this key verse:
“This Self cannot be attained by study, nor by intellect, nor by much learning. It is attained by him alone whom It chooses — to him this Self reveals Its own nature.”
At first glance, this sounds like pure duality: the Self “choosing” someone. But both teachers clarify that this isn’t a personal God arbitrarily selecting favourites. Instead, grace here is the unfolding of conditions that make realization possible.
Not an act of divine intervention, but the quiet removal of ignorance.
Not given from without, but arising from within.
Bhagavad Gita 18.58 — Grace as Alignment with Truth
Swami Tejomayananda comments on this verse:
“If you take refuge in Me alone, you will overcome all obstacles by My grace.”
Again, it seems dualistic. But in Advaita, “Me” refers not to a deity with personality, but to the Self — the unchanging consciousness in all beings.
Grace, then, is not reward or rescue. It is the natural result of aligning one’s identity with truth. To surrender to this truth is to step out of resistance, and into harmony with what is. The more the resistance drops, the more the veil lifts. That lifting is grace.
So What Landed in Me?
First, that my earlier notions of grace were inseparable from duality. There had to be someone “up there” who acted on behalf of someone “down here.” But non-duality doesn’t offer that structure.
And yet, it does not deny grace — it redefines it.
In the vyāvahārika (everyday or transactional) realm, grace may still appear as a helping hand, an inner shift, a saving moment. But from the pāramārthika (absolute, non-dual) lens, grace is not an act, but the removal of ignorance. The apparent separation between seeker and sought dissolves, and what remains is truth shining in its own light.
This helped me appreciate a verse I once heard in a Bhakti context — that complete surrender leads to a dissolving of the duality itself. That at the very height of surrender, “God” and “I” are not two. In that moment, bhakti and jñāna converge.
So can both be true? Can grace be both a bhakti path and a jñāna pointer?
Maybe.
And Yet: The Paradox Remains
It would be neat to end with a wrapped-up insight — “this is what grace means.” But the truth is, the questions persist.
I don’t fully know how to reconcile grace with suffering.
The mind wants a system, an answer, a moral equation.
But Vedanta doesn’t offer moral closure. It offers metaphysical clarity.
Does that comfort the heart? No, not always.
And yet, something shifted. I no longer feel the need to force a resolution.
What I am learning is to live with the paradox.
To let outrage and śraddhā coexist.
To hold space for both confusion and clarity.
Not because the paradox will one day “resolve,” but because living with it may be the most honest sādhanā.
A Closing Teaching
“There are three things which are rare indeed and are due to the grace of God — namely, a human birth, the longing for liberation, and the guidance of a true teacher.” – Vivekachudamani, Verse 3
Maybe that’s where grace begins.
Not in the fixing of the world.
But in the gentle ripening of the seeker.
🔗 References
- Swami Tejomayananda on Kathopanishad 1.2.23
- Swami Sarvapriyananda on Kathopanishad 1.2.23
- Swami Tejomayananda on Bhagavad Gita 18.58
Simply Vedanta 