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CHAPTER II
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The third position' is thus logically invalid although it is posited to exist somehow. Instead of bifurcating the entire course of reality into two compartments, viz., brahman, and the illusory universe which is sadasadvilakṣaṇa, and then investing brahman with the character of 'identity' (abheda, advaita) and relegating 'difference' (bheda) to an intrinsically illusory universe, it would perhaps be a more straightforward course to treat 'identity' and 'difference' as two complementary aspects of the entire concrete nature of reality. This procedure saves also the needlessly involved and paradoxical dialectic which initially treats the notions of sat and asat as contradictory and eventually combines them in a 'third position' which cannot but be contradictory but yet is believed to be somehow existent. As if these surprises are not enough Sankara springs upon us yet another surprise by asserting that the difference-ridden illusory universe is mysteriously grounded in the identity-ridden real absolute.
These incongruities, however, do not deter Sankara from converting the entire drama of reality into a grand monologue of the lonely absolute.
B. The Philosophy of Becoming (Change) or Difference
So far an attempt has been made to survey Advaitism as the most thorough-going instance of the philosophy of being or identity, the first among the five ontological approaches indicated in the previous chapter. A further attempt may now be made to review Buddhism as the unparalleled instance of
