The traditions often address the same broad question: what is Brahman, what is the individual self, what is liberation. The Concepts area opens each of these as a concept, framed as the question itself. Within a concept, the distinct answers are kept separate: some are one commentator’s own position, held in his tradition’s terms, while others are questions more than one commentator takes up, sometimes reaching the same conclusion and sometimes not. The Atlas calls each of these a sense of the concept, so that different formulations are never blurred into one.
A shared question is not a shared doctrine. When two commentators appear under the same sense, that records that both address it, not that they agree; the disagreement, where it exists, is visible in their own words. Every sense rests on actual commentary passages, quoted exactly and linked to the sūtras they come from, and each page names the commentators whose passages it includes. Where a commentator does not appear under a sense, that reflects the passages included so far, not a judgment about his teaching.
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