aumdada maya studios

Śaṅkara admitted that there were several different lines of approach which the mind could take in its advance towards knowledge of the Absolute, before the final leap into the abyss of transcendence.

For him, the full significance of the upanishadic texts could only be seen when they were viewed collectively as constituting an affirmation of the self in various finite forms that had to be corrected and purified of all empirical elements through negation.

But the path that ends with transcendence begins with affirmation. Our experiences in this world imply a positive ground lying behind the world-appearance as its basis and support.

Metaphysical enquiry seeks for ‘Reality’ as the self-existent principle that appears from the standpoint of nescience as the first cause.

It seeks for ‘Knowledge’ as the inmost unchanging Witness present within the human mind and illumining it with its unchanging light while the passing images come and go.

And it seeks for ‘Infinity’ as the principle of beatitude or bliss in which there is no division, duality, limitation or suffering.

The famous Advaitic definition of the Absolute as ‘Being-Consciousness-Bliss’ (sac-cid-ānanda) does not appear in Śaṅkara’s certainly authentic works.

But it is appropriate to deal with Śaṅkara’s doctrine of the Absolute as Bliss here, as the Upanishads do also describe it as ‘Consciousness-Bliss’ (vijñānam-ānandam), and the formula ‘Reality-Knowledge-Bliss’ is already found in Śaṅkara’s direct pupil Sureśvara.

[The formula there is satya-jñānānanda. The transition from the upanishadic ‘jñāna’ to the familiar ‘cit’ of ‘sac-cid-ānanda’ probably occurred long after Śaṅkara’s day. Prakāśātman (? tenth century) still adheres to the upanishadic ‘jñāna’, speaking of ‘satya-jñānānanda’.]

~Alston, Absolute, pp204-207

Saturday, July 12, 2025

On Shankara: Schools of Advaita

The anecdotes about Śaṅkara’s pupils contained in the traditional biographies hardly seem worthy of credence today, but it is clear that we do have some of the actual works that were written by his direct pupils and early followers.

The Vārttikas (verse sub-commentaries) on his Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Taittirīya Upanishad commentaries attributed to his personal pupil Sureśvara are clearly genuine, as is the short general summary of Advaita doctrine called the Naiṣkarmya Siddhi by the same author.

There are grounds for thinking that the Śruti Sāra Samuddharaṇa attributed to Troṭaka was indeed the work of a personal pupil,and the same could be said of the short Hastāmalaka Stotra.

But the case of the Pañcapādikā, a large-scale sub-commentary on the Brahma Sūtra commentary which was probably never completed and of which only a fragment beyond the part on the first four Sūtras has survived, is more dubious.

Sureśvara and the author of the Śruti Sāra Samuddharaṇa, then, were direct pupils of Śaṅkara, and the author of the Pañcapādikā was either a direct pupil or an early follower.

Sureśvara, though a much more independent and inspired author, did not depart enough from the main line of Śaṅkara’s teaching to stand out as the founder of a particular branch of Śaṅkara’s school.

The author of the Pañcapādikā, however, was a more systematic thinker than either Śaṅkara or Sureśvara. He was more concerned with definition than Śaṅkara, and less keenly aware than Sureśvara that the empirical means of knowledge and proof are due to fade away completely under the floodlight of spiritual illumination.

Another important contributor to post-Śaṅkara Advaita Vedanta was Maṇḍana Miśra, who, as we have seen, was probably a younger contemporary of Śaṅkara.

More important than the opposition between Vācaspati and Prakāśātman, however, is the opposition between Gauḍapāda, Śaṅkara, Troṭaka and Sureśvara on the one hand and (with Maṇḍana added) all the writers of the school who followed them on the other.

Advaita Vedanta, which in the hands of Gauḍapāda, Śaṅkara and Sureśvara had remained basically a system for raising the student above the realm of individual experience through the instrumentality of the upanishadic texts administered by a Teacher who enjoyed an intuitive conviction of their truth, tended amongst Śaṅkara’s followers after Sureśvara and Troṭaka to become a group of competing speculative systems, in the formation of which hypothetical reasoning (tarka) unchecked by practical experience (anubhava) was given free rein.

We know that Śaṅkara’s teaching has survived in its pure form as there are men who have attained enlightenment through it even today. In a sense, too, Śaṅkara’s later followers who ‘intellectualized’ the doctrine were only performing again the service previously performed by Gauḍapāda and Śaṅkara themselves, that of restating the upanishadic teaching in language intelligible to men of their own day

As philosophy in India grew more abstract and complicated, the Advaitins of Śaṅkara’s school kept pace. But the starting-point of any enquiry into Advaita Vedanta must surely be the work of Śaṅkara himself. And the glance we have taken at developments in his school after his death should be enough to convince us of the need for adhering very strictly to his own texts of proven authenticity, and for avoiding the temptation to seek light on his views from the writings of his followers after Sureśvara.

~Alston, Absolute, pp62-67

On Shankara: Gaudapada and Madhyamika Teaching

The Teacher who best represented this tradition in the eyes of Śaṅkara was Gauḍapāda, author of four ‘Books’ of ‘Kārikās’ (mnemonic verses) on the short Māṇḍūkya Upanishad. Unlike the authors of the Brahma Sūtras, Gauḍapāda insists very strongly on the illusory or phenomenal character of the world, and claims that in this he is only following an earlier tradition for the interpretation of the upanishadic texts.

Three important principles used by Gauḍapāda and Śaṅkara for the interpretation of the upanishadic texts are, however, found in the earlier Mādhyamika teaching.

First, there is the principle that the transcendent is conveyed indirectly by attributing empirical characteristics to it that are subsequently denied.

Secondly there is the principle that ‘The enlightened ones (Buddhas) taught the spiritual truth through resort to two standpoints, that of the surface-truth (saṃvṛti-satya) and that of the final truth (paramārtha)’ and ‘One cannot teach the supreme truth except on the basis of the surface-truth’.

And thirdly the principle that, on the basis of the distinction between the two truths, the traditional texts may be divided into those, called nītārtha, which express the fundamental truth in terms of negations, and the rest, called neyārtha, which are not to be taken literally at their surface value but have to be interpreted as indirectly supporting the fundamental texts.

We may say, then, Gauḍapāda clearly considered that Buddhist dialectic, Buddhist methods of textual interpretation and Buddhist yoga were all powerful aids in attaining practical realization of the ancient upanishadic wisdom.

Why is it, then, that Gauḍapāda warmly acknowledges his debt to the Mahāyāna, while Śaṅkara is hostile to Buddhism in every aspect and explains most of Gauḍapāda’s references to Buddhism away? The answer to this question seems to lie in historical developments that occurred between the time of Gauḍapāda and Śaṅkara.

The mystical Inspiration that sustained the Mahāyāna Teachers of earlier centuries seems to have waned, and the leading Buddhist thinkers of the new period, speaking generally, tended to abandon the higher knowledge in their enthusiasm for the problems of logic and epistemology.

The typical Buddhist for Gauḍapāda was the author of the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra or Nāgārjuna: the typical Buddhist for Śaṅkara was Dharmakīrti, and mutatis mutandis one might compare the transition from the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra to Dharmakīrti to the transition from St Bonaventura to Kant.

And one is still left wondering whether Śaṅkara had any opportunity for studying the earlier Mahāyāna texts in sufficient depth to enable him to realize the extent of Gauḍapāda’s borrowing. Did he have any access at all to the earlier texts from which Gauḍapāda was quoting? Or was he dependent for his statement of Buddhist positions on contemporary Buddhist sources, eked out by an astute use of scraps of earlier Buddhist doctrine retained in Brahminical oral tradition?

After all, his prime concern was the protection of upanishadic Advaita from the attacks of Buddhist and other opponents of the Veda of his own day, and not the restitution of ancient Buddhist texts in the manner of a modern philologist.

The truth, Śaṅkara goes on to say, is ‘intuitively savoured only by those exceedingly venerable monks of the Paramahaṃsa order who have given up all desires for anything external, who depend on nothing outside their own Self, who have risen above the whole system of caste and stages of life (āśrama) and who are solely preoccupied with the knowledge proclaimed in the Upanishads. And this truth… has been formulated in four chapters of verses by one (i.e. Gauḍapāda) who followed the true tradition. And even today it is only they who teach it and no one else’.

~Alston, Absolute, pp34-44