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PRABUDDH JEEVAN
and Moral Tranquility are aids to the disposition on which a speculative life is possible.
(4) The longing for liberation (): This is the last condition mentioned by the Vedanta. This means that the motive of philosophy is a longing for Moksa; there should be a strong feeling of the nothingness of life and a keen desire to be relieved of this: `from the non-existent, to the existent, from darkness to light, from death to immortality' as the Brahadaranyaka says, should be the longing of the philosophic mind.
The Brahman: There is only one Reality and that is Brahman: the self is identical with it. Śankara agreed with Gauḍapada in the interpretations of the Upanisads except that Buddhistic (Negative) tendencies in the latter were absent in him, though yet by some he was called the Hidden Buddhist (a) due to his doctrine of Māyā. Brahman is the cause from which the world begins, and the world as we experience is nothing but names amd forms (14). Śankara justifies the Ultimate Reality of the Brahman by saying that the Upanisads state that all other things originate from Brahman, and so Brahman cannot be derived from anything else, otherwise it would lead to an infinite regress. Again the world is orderly, and so it canont be supposed to have originated from a non-intelligent principle. The Brahman is immediately experienced by us in our consciousness of our Self. Even when we try to deny the Self we affirm it. It is pure intelligence, pure being, pure blessedness. We realise it in dreamless sleep in waking life we identify the self with various illusory objects.
The world is Māyā or Illusion. As such it is the sport of Isvara. From the ultimate point of view there is no Isvara, but phenomenally he exists just as we separate individuals exist.
MAY 2014
Knowledge: Atman is the ultimate Reality. Its existence cannot be doubted. According to Buddhism (Yogachara school) the self is series of mental states. But then how can we account for Memory and Recognition? This self according to Sankara cannot be known by thought. It cannot be proved, for it is the basis of proof. It is a Postulate.
Knowledge comes to us through Perception, Inference and Scripture.
What we know is objects and not mental states. Sankara is not a Subjective Idealist, or Absolute Idealist; objects known are to him phases of spirit.Atman is the final fact, the final object-transcending the subject and the object.
In an act of knowledge, we get cognitions that are self-luminous. Error is due to the Intellect being clouded by passions and prejudices. The empirical tests of Truth are practical, corresponding with the nature of things. What is contradicted is not truth. Deams are contradicted by waking experience, the latter by Insight into Reality(); and therefore we reject the former in relation to the latter.
Really only the One exists. He, Brahman, is the material as well as efficient cause of the world. The cause and the effect are not different; the effect being only an illusory imposition on the cause.
The above constitute the central thoughts in the teaching of Sankara. He was so greatly revered that he was regarded as a divine person, an incarnation of God, and his disciples and disciples of disciples tried to build a rational system on his own lines, in a way stronger even than was done by him. What is generally reffered to as the Advaita Vedanta is Sankara's system as strengthened by the later developments of his disciples and disciples' disciples.
The Ultimate Reality and the Mechanism of
Exoteric and Esoteric Vedanta : The Lower Knowledge and Higher Knowledge: Para Vidya is absolute truth. Apara Vidya is empirical truth. This latter is not illusory, but only relative. It leads us ultimately to the Para Vidya. Sankara's metaphysics has two forms which run parallel in the teachings of Vedanta in all its aspects-Theology, Cosmology, Psychology, the Doctrine of Transmigration and Liberation (Eschatology). Thus in Theology, we have the lower, attributepossesssing Brahman, and the higher attribute-less Brahman - the Saguna and Nirguna. Then there is the doctrine of creation and that of the unreality of pluralistic Universe. There is from the lower point of view a plurality of Jivas or individual souls, but from the higher point of view the One Brahman Reality with which the soul is identical. There is the lower Knowledge which says that the Brahman is an object of worship and talks of the rewards which the worshiper is to get, and higher Knowledge of the Nirguna Brahman and the idea that he who knows the Parama Brahman becomes Brahman, and does not stand in need of anything like heaven at all.
In fact we have in Sankara three kinds of existence: (1) Ultimate Reality (e), (2) Empirical Existence (f), and (3) Illusory Existence (प्रतिभासिक सत्ता) as the perception of a snake instead of a rope [To be continued]
