Shankara on Gaudapada's Acosmic Doctrines

In several passages in Śańkara’s Commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kärikäs and in the Nineteenth Chapter of the verse section of the Upadeśa Sahasrī we find ‘acosmic’ doctrines buttressed by theoretical arguments as well as by upanishadic quotation. They are associated with a world-view in which the external world is reduced to the ‘oscillation’ of the mind (citta-spandana).

In some places the Self is represented as imagining the individual soul, who then proceeds to imagine his own private worlds, a waking-world which recurs, and dream-worlds which differ from the waking-world and from each other.

From the waking standpoint, it is clear that dreams are illusory. But for their part, the dream-worlds exhibit all the characteristics of the waking-world, including a kind of Alice-in-Wonderland time-space-causation framework of their own.

More important still, from Śańkara’s point of view, is the fact that they contain a distinction between physical and mental (external and internal) and between real and unreal. This parallel between the (admittedly) false dreaming-worlds and the waking-world is used to bring home to the mind the falsity of the latter. Both worlds are the mere play of false ideas consequent upon ignorance of the true nature of the Self.

And a critique of the whole conception of causality is developed, aimed partly at refuting the natural and common conviction that dream-experience is an illusory ‘effect’ arising from waking-experience conceived as a real cause. In these passages there is a tendency to emphasize the irrational and spontaneous character of the experiences of both the dream and the waking states.

Outside the above-mentioned two works, Śańkara rarely if ever attacks the notion of causality, or establishes the irreality of waking-experience from the parallel with dream. He inherited this line of teaching from Gaudapāda, who was himself largely indebted for it to Mahāyāna Buddhist teaching. If Sankara made little use of it outside his commentary on Gaudapāda’s Kārikās, it may be that he considered it suitable only for a particular kind of pupil. 

It has been argued that he was initiated into Advaita as a pupil of a Teacher of Gaudapāda’s line and that he later gradually emancipated himself from the acosmic and subjectivist views of Gaudapāda under the influence of other traditional Vedanta teaching.

Whatever be the truth here, he and his great pupil Sureśvara express a reverence for Gaudapāda which they nowhere retract, so that the texts in which he expresses the kind of views we more specifically associate with Gaudapāda deserve to be represented.

~Alston, Creation, p.244

Shankara on Creation Texts

The texts of the Upanishads that are most obviously of benefit to man are those which teach him that he is identical with the Absolute, for the knowledge accruing from them is said to result in the 'fruit' of 'immediate intuition of truth' and 'immortality' and 'eternal freedom from fear'.

Such knowledge is not only 'fruitful' but final and uncontradictable. Once it is gained, it is inconceivable that there either should or could be any further knowledge to add to it, further it, modify it or correct it. 

This cannot be said of the knowledge accruing from the creation-texts, which consequently carry less authority when they conflict with the great metaphysical teachings about the true nature of man as one with homogeneous Consciousness, the sole existent reality.

Further, if the creation-texts had been relating anything true, they would not have disagreed amongst themselves as to the details of creation. The texts that teach that the creation of the world took place on the analogy of some worldly kind of creation, such as the production of pots of showing that effects are non-different from their material cause.

And there is the further principle of exegesis that all the texts can be reconciled and combined into a single view.

According to this principle, the supreme texts of the Upanishads like 'That thou art', which affirm the identity of the individual soul with the Absolute, may be taken as fundamental, while all the rest of the texts of the Veda can be taken as auxiliaries to understanding these.

Some parts of the accounts of creation are plainly mythological, as when 'speech' is spoken of as 'desiring food' or 'food' is spoken of as 'running away'. These again should not be taken as statements of fact but as indirect aids to certain phases of the process of coming to understand the great truth that the individual soul is none other than the supreme Self

In the same way, the doctrine that, having created the world, the Absolute 'entered' it as the principle of life and consciousness is not to be taken as a statement of historical fact, but as a pictorial representation of the truth that the Absolute is already manifest in the world-appearance, in the sense that it is the only reality in it.

Both the doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the ‘entry’ of the Absolute into its own creation have to be viewed in a wider context and seen as part of the process of gradually conveying to the pupil a notion of his own true nature by the method of false attribution and subsequent denial.

Alston, Creation, p.231

Shankara on Bliss

Śańkara was a good deal less exuberant than his later followers came to be in his references to the Absolute or the Self as bliss.

This may be illustrated from the case of the famous work called 'The Crest-Jewel of Wisdom', attributed to him but now known to have been composed centuries after his death by some member of his school.

Of the 580 verses of the 'Crest-Jewel' almost a tenth refer in one way or another to the topic of bliss, whereas in Śańkara's one independent work of guaranteed authenticity, the Upadeśa Sahasrī, there is only one appearance of the term bliss (ānanda), and the Absolute is regularly described as 'Being-and-Consciousness-only (sac-cin-mātra)' and not according to the later formula 'Being-Consciousness-Bliss (sac-cid-ānanda)'.

Nevertheless, the Upanishads do speak of the Absolute as bliss, and this note is not absent from Śańkara's genuine texts:

-the bliss of the Absolute available in dreamless sleep when nescience is absent

-under the influence of nescience, the bliss of the Absolute manifests in fragmentary and temporary form as worldly joy

-the bliss in the 'ether of the heart' enjoyed by those who realize the true nature of the Self

-the bliss of the Self is permanent, and, unlike that derived from objects, not dependent on activity

-the bliss of the Self is not anything experienced like an object

~Alston, Absolute, p.260

Shankara on Satyam Jñānam Anantam Brahma

What Śaṅkara means here is that of the string of four words in the nominative case in the Upanishad text ‘satyam jñānam anantam brahma’, Brahman (brahma) is the subject and the other three words constitute three separate predicates applied to it.

...

In other words the phrase represents in contracted form three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute, ‘The Absolute is Reality’, ‘The Absolute is Knowledge’ and ‘The Absolute is Infinity’. We are not being confronted with the statement that the Absolute has three separate characteristics, but with three separate statements of the nature of the Absolute.

...

Śaṅkara regarded the definition of the Absolute at present under consideration as concerned with the nature (svarūpa) of the Absolute, no words have power to characterize it positively. To do this is beyond the power of words.

...

Śaṅkara was only concerned with words in so far as they can be used to promote immediate experience (anubhava) of the Absolute.

...

All the various modifications of Being have a beginning and an end, but Being itself undergoes neither birth nor destruction. Hence the purpose of the present Taittirīya Upanishad text in ‘characterizing’ the Absolute as ‘Reality’ is the negative one of excluding all its apparent modifications.

...

However, if the matter were suffered to remain there, we would be left with the Absolute constituting the material cause of the world of effects or modifications.

...

If the Absolute is ‘Knowledge’, then it cannot be a material cause in the same sense as the material causes we observe in the world, which are invariably objects of our knowledge and therefore not themselves knowledge.

...

Similarly, if the Absolute is ‘Reality’ and ‘Infinity’ it cannot be ‘knowledge’ in the sense of a particular act of cognition or any factor of such an act, such as the knowing subject conceived as agent in the act of knowing.

...

Each of them, however, when taken as modified by contiguity with the others, still refers to the Absolute and indicates its nature negatively by marking it off from what it is not. It is that which is not unreal, not non-conscious and not finite, and that is the most we can say about it.

~Alston, Absolute, p.213

Shankara on Defining the Absolute

In the case of a unique entity like the Absolute, definition is achieved not by marking it off from others of its class but by marking it off from everything else whatever. And from this other points arise.

When we mark a particular individual off from others of its class by mentioning the particular characteristics which it has but they do not have, we 'characterize' it. We treat it as a substance having such and such attributes which we can enumerate.

But the phrase 'Reality, Knowledge, Infinity' is not a 'characterization' (viśeṣana) of the Absolute but merely a 'definition' (lakşaņa) of it. 

Where there is characterization, the empirical characteristics attributed to the individual characterized must belong to it as attributes. But where there is only definition, it is enough if the characteristics merely serve to debar the mind from thinking of anything other than the unique entity being defined.

They may indicate the whole nature (svarūpa) of the unique entity negatively, by debarring the mind from all else, without characterizing it positively as a substance possessed of such and such attributes. They may thus 'define' it, in the Indian sense of the term, while leaving it transcendent.

Śańkara admits that the words 'Reality, Knowledge Infinity' do, formally speaking, attribute characteristics to the Absolute. But he claims that the purpose of the phrase is not to attribute empirically knowable attributes to the Absolute, but only to mark if off from anything that has empirically knowable characteristics.

~Alston, Absolute, p208

Shankara on Adhyaropa and Apavada

The most profound knowledge of God is that which recognizes the utter inadequacy of all finite conceptions, and this can only be reached by the ‘Via Negationis’, the path of the negation of all the finite.

But only a few courageous souls can face the aridity of this path from the outset, and for minds of a devotional cast the ‘Via Eminentiae’ may be more appropriate, the path in which laudable characteristics that fall within human comprehension are ascribed positively to the deity, but with the clear recognition that they are but imperfect indications of His nature, since He transcends finite comprehension.

According to a third path, the ‘Via Causalitatis’, the mind fingers, as it were, the various causal principles that it can conceive as operating in the world, and attempts to mount through speculation of this kind to some conception of the deity as the first cause, and yet as that which lies beyond any causal principle that can be determinately conceived and from which all such principles proceed as effects.

According to a fourth path, the deity is sought to be perceived as the light present within the human intellect, illuminating its knowledge of truth.

According to a fifth path, the mind tries to mount up from things that are good and desirable for some particular end to that which is itself the supreme end, lying beyond all particular ends, and which is desirable for its own sake, the highest value and supreme good

Something parallel to, though not identical with, these various paths can be found in Śaṅkara’s texts. As we have already seen, he gives preference to the path of negation and regards it as indispensible for the final knowledge which confers liberation from ignorance and death. ...How tentative, for Śaṅkara, all positive conceptions of the Absolute are.

Śaṅkara conceived the upanishadic wisdom as consisting essentially in negation. The Absolute cannot be denoted through speech, and negation is the fundamental process which leads to ‘viveka’ or discrimination of the true nature of the Self from that with which it is falsely overlaid, the highest goal of the Advaita discipline.

The process Śaṅkara has in mind is not one of brute reiterated negation but of a gradually ascending series of successive affirmations.

The texts of the Upanishads are not exclusively negative. They give many and varied positive accounts of the Absolute and of its relation to the world and the individual, which alternate with passages in which all empirically knowable qualities are denied.

The various positive accounts of the Absolute are only approximations which have the function of bringing it down, so to speak, into the universe of discourse, so that the student can acquire some idea of it which can be corrected in the light of subsequent negations.

If the opening passage of Chapter III of the second Book of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad teaches that the five great elements that emanate from the Absolute are a reality, then the Absolute can initially be conceived as the cause from which they proceed. 

But the purpose of the passage as a whole is not to teach that the Absolute is the cause of the world. The aim, rather, is to present the Absolute first in the guise of the cause of the world so as to give the student some idea of it.

When some conception of the Absolute is once in his mind, then it can be purified by the later text ‘Not thus, not thus’, which negates all empirically knowable characteristics of the Absolute, including that of being the cause of the world.

As we have already seen, Śaṅkara did not invent this method of interpreting the texts, but inherited it from earlier Teachers such as Gauḍapāda and Draviḍa. It is known as the method of false attribution and subsequent denial (adhyāropa and apavāda).

~Alston, Absolute, 165

Summary of Shankara's System

The fundamental principle of Shankara’s teaching is that the pure, innermost ‘Self’ is the ultimate reality. This Self (which must not be confused with the ‘ego’) is a spiritual kernel of the same kind as Brahman or Godhead, the ultimate reality.

When a man overcomes ignorance or ‘avidya’ (the word has a very wide connotation which will be explained later) and grasps intuitively that the Universe is merely an external phenomenon, and realises the identity between the Self and Brahman he becomes a ‘liberated’ soul waiting only for his final liberation from the body by death.

The Self or Brahman cannot be described because it has no ‘qualities’ in the ordinary sense though it is sometimes said to be of the nature of pure being pure consciousness and pure bliss.

The material universe of forms and things is grounded in Brahman, but its formation therefrom cannot be described or formulated.

It functions on the basis of the law of ‘karma’ that is of cause and effect; but its ultimate cause is Brahman which has created the material world and started the process of change that we see occurring in that world, all creation is, however, ‘Maya’ or the power of illusion. 

Within the realm of maya the universe exists and can be conceived as a creation of Brahman, who can also be conceived as a personal God; though from the standpoint of ultimate reality even a personal deity is a product of maya.

The causal law itself is ultimately unintelligible, because it is an illusory concept of name and form. There is no more essential difference between effect and cause than between a moulded pot and the clay from which it is made.

The world as caused by Brahman is an illusory superimposition (adhyasa) of phenomenon on the basic reality—like a rope which is mistaken for a snake or the mirage-lake seen on the desert sand.

It follows logically therefore that Shankara should urge the renunciation of transitory things and the acquisition of ‘right knowledge’ as the only means of attaining ‘liberation’.

~Y. Keshava Menon, "The Mind of Shakaracharya" 

Shankara on Name and Form

The explanation follows the line not of the ancient texts that proclaimed that the objects of the world came forth from the texts of the Veda, but the sceptical line of the teachings of Uddālaka. Objects are illusions, entirely dependent on their names.

They are the mere illusory appearance of a plurality of isolated units in the Absolute that results from the arbitrary activity of naming. In this sense, the object is entirely dependent for its existence on, and therefore identical with, its name.

And the name, too, is an illusion. For all modifications of sound are reducible to the one basic sound, OM. And... the syllable OM itself is ultimately reduced to the Absolute, which has no empirical features and certainly does not consist of a plurality of four component elements like the vocalized syllable OM.

So what we have here is not a theory of the creative power of sound in which words are regarded as the subtle vibrations from which gross objects come forth, but a resolute reduction of all plurality to illusion on the lines of Uddālaka.

A similar view is also found at Extract 17, where Śaṅkara reduces all words to the principle speech (Vāc), and reduces Vāc to the Absolute. In this case, what was originally a doctrine describing creation is reduced to a doctrine of illusion.

~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Creation', p.154

Shankara on Vedic revelation

Can any means of knowledge reveal the Self, since to do so is to make the Self an object for a knowing subject. You cannot know anything as an object until you are separate from it and it is standing over against you as an object ready to be known.

Vedic revelation and critical reflection, therefore, as applied to the Self, are primarily negative in character. They do not yield determinate knowledge of the Self as if it were an object:

their function, rather, is to negate that which impedes the self-manifestation of the Self in its true form as infinite consciousness.

Shankara on Cause, Effect, and the Absolute

Śaṅkara is entirely on common ground with the Sūtras when he defends upanishadic monism by declaring not only that the effect is real before its production, but also that it is real before and during manifestation, and even that its future existence is real now and subject to apprehension by a yogin.

It is real, however, not in itself, but only as the cause, as the pot is real not qua pot but qua clay. The doctrine of the Sūtras that the objects come forth from, and return back to, the Absolute is defended.

But at times Śaṅkara goes back behind the doctrine of the Sūtras to certain texts of the old Upanishads and maintains that the effect is strictly nothing over and above the cause. As we already know, if the cause is said to be identical with the effect, this means that the effect has the nature of the cause, while the cause does not have the nature of the effect.

This, however, is to reduce the effect to the cause. If the world has an intelligible structure, and curds can only be obtained from milk and not from clay, this means that a certain power or predisposition to evolve into curds must be in the milk.

But Śaṅkara declares that all objects are non-different from the ‘powers, (śakti) or predispositions from which they proceed, while the powers, in turn, are non-different from the substances in which they lie, and the substances themselves are traceable finally to the great elements from which they proceed and into which they will eventually dissolve back, so that the whole world, beginning with the primordial element ether, is reduced to a mere inexplicable appearance arising on the face of the Absolute, while causality, law and intelligibility still reign within the appearance.

Śaṅkara transforms the older doctrine of Sat-kārya Vāda, the mere doctrine of the reality of the effect before its manifestation, into an instrument for affirming, yet again, the transcendence of the Absolute, which triumphs ultimately over all predicates attributed to it by the human mind.

~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Absolute', p.126

Shankara on the Deeper Levels

The circumstance which prevents man from realizing his own true nature as pure Consciousness is attachment to the forms set up by nescience, and the deeply rooted habit of taking them for real.

The purpose of all religious practices, when viewed in the context of the path to liberation, is to weaken the hold of the illusory forms by developing a counter-awareness of deeper levels of reality hidden beneath the more superficial forms.

These ‘deeper levels’ of reality are themselves ultimately illusory from the very fact of being accessible to the understanding and will of man. They are, according to the rather drastic formula of Śaṅkara’s Commentary on Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā II.4, ‘false because seen’. 

Nevertheless, the contemplation of the Lord as manifest under illusory forms relieves the mind of its burden of attachment to the grosser and more oppressive phases of the world-appearance, in particular to the objects of crude sense-enjoyment. Thus it prepares the soul for the final rejection of all forms as illusory,

~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Creation', p.82

Shankara on the Unmoving Mover

The view that the Lord, though pure Consciousness in his true nature, is somehow at the same time an active being manipulating his power of Māyā, is appropriate and useful for the development of the religious consciousness, which is a necessary preliminary before the final stages of the spiritual path for most people. But if it is taken as the final truth, it will imply that the Lord is an agent and is subject to change and is consequently Himself phenomenal.

The stricter usage, therefore, is to reserve the terms Hiraṇyagarbha, Brahmā or Prajāpati for the world-soul and to use the term ‘Īśvara’ (the Lord) to denote pure Consciousness as Witness and that by whose Light the world-soul and all living beings carry out their powers of activity and knowledge within the phenomenal world.

Within the world-appearance there are deities or powers which carry out their cosmic functions owing to the presence within them of the Light of the Lord, who is Himself a motionless, actionless Witness.

So Śaṅkara says, ‘Thus the lordship, omniscience and omnipotence of the Lord exist relative to the limitations and distinctions of nescience only, and in reality there can be no practice of rulership or omniscience on the part of the Self, in which all distinctions remain eternally negated in knowledge’.

Nevertheless, precisely because He is thus pure Consciousness (cit), He is the only effective root of all activity and knowledge, for He is that which alone exists. Thus, although He is in the true sense bereft of all form, body, organs or action, He is in fact the effective controller of the world-display.

For ‘The cosmic powers take up and lay down their activities in a controlled way through the mere proximity of the Lord as actionless Witness’.

Thus the Lord, though without bodies and organs of His own, carries out activities through the bodies and organs of the deities or cosmic powers. The conception of unmoving mover is illustrated by the analogies of a magnet and a king, both of which cause directed activity in others by their mere presence.

~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Creation', p.80

Shankara on the Absolute as Lord

We have already seen that the texts teach the existence of the Absolute as ‘that from which all this comes forth’. But did they imply that this Being is actively involved in the creation and control of the world, or is it merely conceived as an actionless divine ground on which the world manifests through nescience?

Śaṅkara’s answer is that from the standpoint of the highest truth there is no plurality and no world and no Creator, and only the divine ground exists, if even the notions of existence or ground can be applied to it.

But from the standpoint of nescience the world of duality is a fact. And from that standpoint it is a grievous error to believe that the world-process goes on through the operation of any blind force and without the conscious support and control of an omniscient and omnipotent Lord.

To correct this error, the upanishadic texts speak occasionally of the Lord (īśa, etc.) and imply that He is the efficient and material cause of the universe, the Inner Ruler and Divine Magician who spreads forth the whole world-appearance under His own conscious control as a mere illusion.

~A J Alston from 'Shankara on the Creation', p.8

Shankara on Avidya (nescience)

If, says Śaṅkara, you demand to know to whom this ‘not-being-awake-to-the-Self’ (aprabodha) belongs, we reply, ‘To you who ask this question’.

If you were awake (prabuddha) to this, you would see that in truth no nescience exists anywhere for anyone. 

Śaṅkara argues in a rather similar way in his Gītā Commentary. First he asserts that nescience does not afflict the true Self. 

Then he brings forward a pupil who wants to know what it does afflict if it does not afflict the Self. It afflicts, he is told, whatever it is perceived to afflict.

To ask further ‘What is that?’ is a useless question, since one cannot perceive nescience at all without perceiving the one afflicted by it. 

Śaṅkara so conducts the remainder of the argument that the pupil has to admit that, because he cannot help perceiving the one afflicted with nescience, he cannot himself be the one afflicted with nescience.

Thus bondage is an illusion and enlightenment does not imply any real change of state. Enlightenment does not so much destroy nescience as reveal that it never existed.

~A J Alston fom 'Sankara on the Absolute' p.88