World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 820

has a dependent existence, or is subject to change or contradiction, must ipso-facto, be unreal. The unreal for Sankara, therefore is not only that which is absolutely non-existent, or illusory, like a skyflower, but also that which is ordinarily believed to be real. Though not absolutely non-existent or illusory, the objects of our common experience are certainly neither self-existent or immutable. They are all effects of some cause or the other, and have as such a beginning, as well as an end. An effect or changing thing has no nature of its own which it can be said never to part with. Śankara, therefore, maintained that no effect is a real thing. World and its objects are dependent on cause, hence changing. What is finite cannot be selfexistent. It must be an effect of something101 and hence, unreal. In this sense, world is called Māyā or Unreal. Thus Māyāvāda should be understood as asserting that the external world of our waking experience has its limited and conditioned reality in the sphere of the Vyāvahārika experience and cannot 'usurp' the reality of the Paramarthika experience. Thus, Māyāvāda is not illusionism, we may call it certain kind of relativism. Sankara, upholding Māyāvāda, maintained the non-duality of Brahman. He points out the truth that there is unity behind diversity. There is unity between Brahman-world and man. Prof. Hiriyanna rightly pointed out that 'the unity of the Absolute Brahman may be compared to the unity of painting, say of a landscape. Looked at as a landscape, it is a plurality, hill, valley, lake and streams, but it's ground-the Substance of which it is constituted is one, viz., the canvas.
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