Shankara & Advaita Vedanta
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346,865 views Premiered Feb 14, 2021 #Shankara #Advaita #Vedanta
The much requested video about Shankara is finally here.
Sources/Suggeested Reading:
Deutsch, Eliot (1973). “Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction”. University of Hawai’i Press.
Deutsch, Eliot & Rohit Dalvi (2005). “Essential Vedanta: A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta”. World Wisdoms Books.
Suthren Hirst, J.G. (2005). “Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta: a way of teaching”. Routledge.
“The Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada’s Karika and Sankara’s Commentary”. Translated by Swami Nikhilananda. 1987. Advaita Ashrama.
“Brahma Sutra Bhasya of Sankaracarya”. Translated by Swami Gambhirananda.1972. Advaita Ashrama.
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Transcript
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in the vast category of what we call hinduism there is a huge diversity when it comes
0:06
to everything from practices to beliefs but in any case among this incredible diversity of
0:12
different schools of thought ideas and ritual tendencies there is perhaps no
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school of thought or philosophy more famous or admired really in the western world
0:23
than what is known as advaita vedanta advaita which means literally not two is a non-dualistic
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interpretation of the vedas and especially the upanishads and has become one of the most important
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and influential philosophical and religious intellectual currents in the history of indian
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thought we talked about advaita briefly in my previous video about
0:48
vedanta but in this video i want to dive deeper while a dwight de vedanta is a diverse
0:54
school in itself that can't really be boiled down to a single central figure per se and there
1:00
are arguments that it dates back further in history still advaita vedanta is
1:05
primarily associated with a certain figure by the name of shankara also sometimes
1:11
endearingly called adi shankara or shankaracharya who is also often considered to be its founder
1:19
so let's spend a few minutes talking about this massively important figure his understanding of advaita through his
1:26
interpretation of the upanishads and through him also the larger
1:32
school of advaitha vedanta generally
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[Music]
1:54
shankara is an almost legendary figure at this point he is often considered the founder of
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the school of advaitha vedanta however some will argue that the non-dual or advaita interpretation of the upanishads
2:07
existed since before his time which we can see for example in the writings of gaudapada
2:12
who were supposedly the teacher of shankara's own teacher this argument is convincing enough but i
2:18
still think that it isn't entirely inaccurate to call him the founder of advaitha vedanta on the basis that his
2:25
writings and teaching has become so successful that he functions as the instigating figure of advaitha as we
2:32
know it today with all of that said however trying to reconstruct a comprehensive biography of shankara is
2:40
almost impossible we have very little to go by when it comes to contemporary
2:45
archaeological or trustworthy evidence for his life we do have traditional accounts of his
2:51
life written centuries after he died which are often used in this context but
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all of these accounts are so called hagiographical what this means that is hagiography is
3:03
that they are stories told from the point of view of revering the person in question
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how geographies are the kind of life stories we find told about great saints or prophets of history
3:15
often characterized by miraculous and incredible stories to showcase the great power or stature of an individual
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rather than being an accurate retelling of historical events aside from the hydrographical sources we
3:28
can also use the authentic writings of shankara himself as well as records by his students
3:34
to try and get an idea of who he was as a historical person all of these sources are problematic in
3:41
different ways but it's basically all we have to go by so when i do tell biographical information in this
3:48
video you should always keep this in mind and thus also take it with a grain of salt we have basically nothing to go by when
3:55
it comes to the life of shankara so his biography is basically entirely up for debate even such a basic
4:01
thing as dating is contested some have suggested that shankara lived between
4:06
788 to 820 a.d others think that he lived centuries before
4:13
many scholars today will argue and i think we can be safe in assuming that shankara probably lived sometime
4:19
around the year 700 a.d he was from a brahmana
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family that is the highest priestly caste in the varna system of social structure in
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india the famous caste system many accounts state that he was from the kerala region
4:36
in south west india and that at a very young age he would leave his home and family to
4:42
become a sanyasin a wandering ascetic as a brahmana he would have studied the
4:49
veda scriptures and was later taught vedanta in particular under a teacher by
4:54
the name of govinda it is this teacher that in turn is said to have been taught by the famous
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proto-advaitan gowdapada nonetheless shankara clearly became somewhat of a master or teacher
5:06
himself as he started to wander all around india gathering students and disciples of his own as he
5:13
debated with philosophers from various schools of thought around the subcontinent apparently defeating all of them with
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his very impressive rhetorical skills we can't hear any of these debates today of course but a lot of that skillful
5:26
rhetoric can certainly be found in the writings that are attributed to shankara he seems to have written quite a lot and
5:33
judging from the texts that have survived he was a master of sanskrit argumentation and style
5:39
there is some disagreement on which of the writings attributed to shankara should be considered authentic
5:45
but generally scholars tend to agree that we can be safe in assuming
5:50
that at least the great commentaries that he wrote are should be attributed to shankara
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himself this includes a great commentary also known as abashia on the brahma sutras as well as a
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commentary on the bhagavad-gita and several of the most important upanishads
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there are also many other texts attributed to shankara including prose works as well as for
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example hymns to different gods but they are more controversial when it comes to
6:19
authenticity but still based on those writings that are considered authentic by most
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scholars that i mentioned we can use them to still reconstruct a pretty good idea about the personality and ideas of this
6:33
great hindu sage more than this is hard to say when it comes to the life of shankara a life that was very
6:40
eventful but short because indeed another one of the most recurring themes in the different
6:45
biographical material is that shankara died at a very young age at the age of 32 and certainly he seems
6:54
to have accomplished quite a lot in that short amount of time shankara can be a very hard person to
7:00
pin down we should remember that what we call hinduism today hadn't really developed into the form
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that we know it as today back in shankara's lifetime and so it can be very hard to place
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within a specific pocket in that sense some have speculated that shankara was a
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shaivite that is shaivism is the tradition of hinduism where shiva is worshipped as the primary
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deity but other aspects of his writings suggest a familiarity and and
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a great understanding of the vaisnava tradition as well that is the tradition of worshiping vishnu as the
7:38
primary deity but again none of these traditions were fully developed at this time it was still pretty young and so in my
7:45
opinion it's pretty anachronistic to try and place shankara within one of these specific categories
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also i think we shouldn't get too bogged down in details like that now it's a very modern obsession i'll be
7:57
i think a very worthwhile one to be so focused on the historical
8:02
person in question rather than focusing on what arguably is more important which is of course what
8:08
he taught what he came to represent and symbolize for later developments both in
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advaithas particularly but also in hinduism more generally the context in which he lived and worked
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is of course very important for getting a comprehensive view of where his ideas figure into the wider picture and
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in that sense the question of shaivism versus vaishnavism is actually pretty significant not so
8:34
much in the sense of what tradition shankara himself belonged to if any but rather to point out that devotional
8:41
worship known as bhakti was becoming a significant movement at the time of shankara's life bhakti
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is the devotional worship of a deity through rituals like puja aspects which we very strongly
8:55
associate with hinduism today bhakti this particular form of religious
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practice and belief would eventually eclipse the earlier vedic rituals almost entirely but
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during shankara's life this was still a pretty new movement only one among a multitude of schools of
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thought philosophies and traditions that make up the historical and intellectual context
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of shankara's environment in fact the intellectual environment in which shankara writes and
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teaches is a very diverse one filled with various schools and thinkers competing
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as well as influencing each other sometimes we talk about what is known as the six orthodox schools of
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hindu philosophy and while this simplified things to a degree the movements included on that list were
9:44
very significant during shankara's time all of them debating which of the various means of gaining knowledge known
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as pramana was the most legitimate the schools of nyaya and vaishesika placed an emphasis on
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reason and logic arguing that brahman and truth could be reached by
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reason alone others like the purva memsa school considered scripture
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that is the vedas to be the primary or only way of reaching true knowledge and emphasize the importance
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of the vedic rituals aside from these so-called orthodox schools of philosophy usually
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only those schools that are connected to the vedas as scriptures and what we call hinduism today there are
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also other significant movements like buddhism and jainism that were flourishing at the time too
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the former of which had a particularly strong standing in society and probably influenced shankara a lot
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shankara as we have seen spent much of his life traveling around the indian subcontinent
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meeting with various representatives of these various schools of thought he would meet with
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buddhists with jains with the representatives of the nyaya and vaishyazuka schools and so on
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and he would debate them and argue with them over who had the right means to true knowledge
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even in the writings of shankara this form of argumentation is present as well this was the main form
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of writing prose or treatises at the time and shankara also uses this technique of trying to
11:19
first present the opinions of his opponents so he will say this is what the buddhist
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says this is the objection of the nyaya scholars this is the and so on and so on and at the final
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section he will present the vedantin which is his own position and which he of course considers to be
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the right one in terms of doctrinal alignment or philosophical alignment shankara took influence and pointers from many of
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these different philosophical schools but from one perspective we could say that shankara was particularly close to
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the school known as purva mimsa especially in the sense that he emphasized
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that scripture was the only valid means of knowledge when it comes to knowing
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the brahman but what was this truth that was to be reached in other words what is the philosophy of
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shankara the school of thought that is associated with shankara and which is sometimes
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considered to have been founded by him is referred to as advaita vedanta
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or non-dual vedanta advaita literally translates to not two and the
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reason why will become pretty clear soon advaita vedanta is characterized by
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the idea that the absolute reality known as brahman is the only thing that truly exists
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in the words of eliot dutch quote brahman the one is a state of being it is not a
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he a personal being nor is it an it's an impersonal object brahman
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is that state which is when all subject object distinctions are obliterated
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brahman is ultimately a name for the experience of the timeless plenitude of
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being brahman is a concept that is recurring in the vedic scriptures especially in the upanishads but
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descriptions or references to it often presents very different and sometimes even contradictory statements
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which has lent itself to many different interpretations but to shankara and advaita vedanta all
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is the brahmana there is nothing which is not the brahmana the one brahman is the very
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reality of the world that we experience an unfathomable oneness in which multiplicity
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is ultimately an illusion this is often expressed by shankara and many others through the vedic quote tatvam asi
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you are that or thou art that this phrase has also been interpreted in
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various ways but to shankara and his followers it is read quite literally you meaning the person or self with
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which you identify are that meaning the brahman literally you are the brahmana everything is the
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brahmana quote brahman is real the world is illusory the self is not different from brahman
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shankara's stance seems to be pretty straightforward it is a very staunch monism but let's unpack the nuances and
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complexities of what all of this actually means shankara begins his brahma sutra basia
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that is his commentary on the brahma sutras with an assumption that is the starting
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point for understanding him and advaita vedanta generally that is
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that the self that we identify with and the way that we look on the world the
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way we conceive of the world around us is ultimately based on a false assumption or a misunderstanding
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when we say the word i like in i am hungry or i am sad we are confusing the mind and
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the body with the actual self it is my body that is hungry
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not the eye to which i am referring similarly it is the mind that is
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sad or feels emotions not the actual self that which we are actually referring to
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when we use the word i the actual self stands beyond these
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things it experiences them but as things other than itself or as beings thinks outside
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of itself all of us think that we are these various things i am a human being i am the son of so-and-so
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i am swedish but all of this is ultimately based on a misunderstanding it's all
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false and similarly when we look on the world around us we also conceal a bunch of different things
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separate objects like it's a tree outside that's a rock this is a chair but again
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this is all false the true self which we are actually referring to when we use the word i
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is none of these things it's not the body it's not the mind it's none of these
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conceptual things these individual components that we apply to it the actual
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true self which is known as the atman is according to shankara in fact
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completely identical to the brahman the absolute reality
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similarly again if we look at the world around us the tree is not a tree the rock is in
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fact not a rock and this chair is not a chair it's all just brahman so our
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view of ourselves and the world around us is fundamentally skewed this is the reason we are doomed to be
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reincarnated and are trapped in the wheel of samsara this basic human condition or the reason
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for it is called avidia meaning ignorance however ignorance doesn't really capture
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what shankara is trying to say with the word it isn't really a passive lack of
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knowledge that is at play but an active misunderstanding another word used by shankara which
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perhaps functions a little better to explain it is aviyasa meaning superimposition
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we are superimposing things onto the one brahman actively misidentifying ourselves and
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the world as something else or as something independent when it is all just brahman ultimately quote owing to an absence of
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discrimination there continues a natural human behavior in the form of i am this or
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this is mine this is avidya it is a superimposition of the
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attributes of one thing on another the ascertainment of the nature of the real entity by separating the
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superimposed things from it is vidya knowledge or illumination one allegory that shankara loves to use
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to explain this idea is the famous example of the snake and the rope
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suppose you're walking along some road and suddenly you see a snake lying before you naturally you get scared and concerned
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over the danger that it may pose but you then carefully look a little closer and you realize that what you
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thought was a snake was in fact only a rope you had identified the rope as being a snake
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which also caused you distress this is how avidya and alvasa work
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we think that what we see is the snake but it is really only the rope in this case it is really only the
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brahman and this is an important detail to keep in mind often when we talk about advaita
18:30
or shankara we place a huge emphasis on this word maya which is then translated as
18:36
illusion and that the world is seen as this grand illusion but this can very easily be misunderstood
18:43
shankara doesn't actually use the word maya as much as we often like to think and when he does use the word it is
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basically used interchangeably with the word avidya and while it is
18:55
somewhat legitimate to translate it as illusion it doesn't really mean illusion in the
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regular sense of how we understand that word shankara was actually a realist he
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didn't deny that the world was ontologically real or claim that it was some phantom or a simulation to use a modern
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example what is illusory about the world is the superimposed concepts that we apply to
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it when we conceive of it as being something other than the brahman just like in the snake and rope example
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when one realizes that the snake was in fact a rope the rope doesn't just disappear into
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nothingness we are just giving a new perspective on the actual reality of the rope it
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wasn't a snake that was the illusion but it's still something it's still a rope quote there could be no non-existence of
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external entities because external entities are actually perceived an external entity is invariably
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perceived in every cognition such as a pillar wall a pot a piece of cloth it can never
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be that what is actually perceived is non-existent and again returning to the snake and
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rope example quote when it is determined that it is nothing but the rope alone
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then all illusions regarding the rope disappear and the non-dual knowledge that there
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exists nothing else but the rope becomes firmly established shankara isn't presenting a existential
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nihilism something that he actually accuses the buddhists of doing perhaps inaccurately so but what he is saying is
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that the illusion is when we can see of anything in our experience as being anything other
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than the brahman and since brahman is very much real in an ultimate sense this means
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that the world we experience is also real as long as it is understood as being simply the brahman and nothing
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else in other words it is the constructs that we create about the world that is the illusion but the brahman is
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the reality of the world and since the brahman is real in that sense and and so far as it is the brahman the
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world is absolutely real the goal of life to shankara like for so many hindus
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is to reach liberation or moksha from the cycle of rebirths and according to him this can only be
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achieved by reversing the misidentification of things and to realize knowledge of brahman
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here he differs from many other schools of thought within hinduism at the time especially the purvamsa school by
21:27
denying the central role of rituals and practices for reaching liberation now he doesn't
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necessarily deny the usefulness of rituals but he is claiming that their rewards are only
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temporary instead liberation is only reached through knowledge known as jnana to know
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the brahmana is to be liberated but knowing the brahmana is not like knowing any object in the
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world in this sense the brahman can't be known in fact
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knowledge of brahman is not knowledge of brahman as an object for brahman is different from the
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known and above the unknown rather it is being brahman knowing brahman not as an
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object but as being identical with one's true self that is self-reflexive consciousness
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beyond subject object duality this is liberation our true state from which all
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superimpositions have finally been removed if knowledge has a function it is to
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remove these superimpositions not to produce some new result it is from the notion of this basic human
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condition of ignorance misunderstanding and superimposition and with the goal of being liberated
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through knowledge of oneself as being the same as the brahman that shankara
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and advaita then presents its further ideas and positions quotes
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and the realization of brahman is the highest human objective for it completely eradicates all such
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evils as ignorance etc that constitute the seed of transmigration
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therefore brahman should be deliberated on but how is this salvific knowledge
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reached according to shankara well the answer here is pretty simple it is reached through scripture to
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shankara the only pramana or source of knowledge when it comes to the brahman is scripture
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namely the vedas in contrast to many other schools of thought he denies the legitimacy of things like
23:30
sense perception or even reason as ways of reaching true knowledge now that isn't to say that he denies
23:36
these things completely sense perception and reason are useful tools for understanding the conventional
23:43
world of multiplicity but when it comes to reaching knowledge of the brahman scripture is the only way to do it and
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correct interpretation of scripture at that quote the realization of brahman results
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from the firm conviction arising from the deliberation of the vedic texts and their meanings
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but not from other means of knowledge like inference etc in order for scripture to be interpreted
24:07
correctly according to shankara he also here of course places a huge emphasis on the importance of having a
24:14
vedantan teacher to relay these this knowledge to the student and here he also allows
24:21
for a certain reason in terms of religious matters in other words through correct interpretation of the
24:27
vedic scriptures by an accomplished non-dualist teacher the seeker can realize knowledge of
24:34
one's true self as being none other than the one brahman and thus reached liberation through this
24:40
state of non-dual consciousness this very heavy scripturalism of shankara is one thing that might be
24:46
pretty surprising to a lot of people today another area in which this comes to the surface is in shankara's requirements
24:53
for who is even allowed to enter into the study of advaita or the brahman while there is some disagreement among
24:59
scholars on this in many of his writings including the treatise a thousand teachings
25:04
shankara seems to think that only individuals belonging to the highest brahman caste are eligible as pupils
25:11
shankar of course lived in a context where the caste system was a fact of life and this played a role in how he conceived
25:18
of his teachings and who it was aimed at at the very least shankara requires the people to have
25:24
studied the vedas deeply which immediately disqualifies the lowest shudra caste as well as for example
25:31
women in a general sense again there are different interpretations of this and shankara's writings
25:36
do sometimes allow for various readings but it seems clear that he took it for granted that a
25:42
student of advaitha was a male of the brahmana caste the important subject of shankara's firm
25:49
grounding in his religious and intellectual environment carries over to other aspects of his teachings as well
25:56
as i mentioned in the beginning the bhakti movement of devotional worship to a personal deity
26:02
was becoming very popular in shankara's day and indeed one of the main sources of
26:08
vedanta and a text on which shankana has commented is the bhagavad-gita
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a bhakti text centered on the god krishna which again also is an avatar of vishnu and
26:19
shankara's relationship with devotion or bhakti and religious worship generally is a very complex question on
26:26
which a lot has been written and speculated later critics of shankara such as
26:31
ramanuja and mavacharya viewed shankara's advaita vedanta as essentially denying the importance or
26:38
legitimacy of ritual worship by of course claiming the absolute identity between the individual self and
26:45
the brahman but the situation also appears to be a lot more complicated than that
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indeed shankara frequently employs devotional and theistic language in his writings
26:56
talking about ishvara or the lord often translated also as god as for example being the creator of
27:03
the universe and worthy of praise and worship much interpretation has gone into understanding how this fits with his
27:10
general ideas of non-duality many will say that shankara's talk about the lord is only a kind of preliminary
27:16
language bound to the world of superimposition which only conceal or obscure his true
27:22
doctrines of advaita or non-duality in this interpretation ishvara or the lord who is often
27:29
identified as visnu becomes a kind of second god who is bound to the world of illusions
27:35
but that is ultimately as unreal as anything else in the conventional world but in many of shankara's writings this
27:41
position doesn't really seem to hold he appears to use terms like
27:46
brahman ishvara supreme self etc interchangeably revealing a more complex
27:53
picture of the role of the lord and its relationship to brahman and to the world of misidentification
27:59
sometimes when talking about the doctrines of advaita vedanta and shankara there is talk about two
28:06
forms of or you can say two ways of talking about brahman on the one hand there is nirguna brahman
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that is brahman without attributes this is the absolute form of brahman that is beyond all conceptions
28:19
and on the other hand there is saguna brahman brahman with attributes often also identified with
28:25
ishvara or the lord or god the relationship between these two can be obscure and there is
28:32
disagreement on this question as well the important question here becomes that the scholar eric lott puts it
28:38
quote are they two distinct brahmanas or merely two aspects of one brahman of course no one
28:44
would argue that shankara conceives of two actual brahmanas as that would completely contradict the very basics of
28:51
his system the question rather is is saguna brahman or the lord
28:56
a different epistemological concept bound by the world of multiplicity and disappearing along with it
29:03
or are they in fact referring directly to the same thing without distinction as mentioned a lot of the writings of
29:10
shankara seems to suggest or imply that the lord is in fact completely identical to
29:16
the brahman but shankara also sometimes seems to be defending the practice of worshipping or of
29:23
devotion to the lord or to god against its critics or its enemies which seems
29:29
to go against the idea that shankara only viewed worship as preliminary or as unimportant
29:35
which a lot of his critics later would accuse him of in the tradition of advaita vedanta especially today
29:41
the idea of ishvara or god or visnu or any of the gods is often implemented as simply being a
29:48
certain expression of the brahman as being the same as brahman but representing different relationships
29:54
that we can have with this ineffable source while this has been a standard position among
30:00
adwaitans that doesn't necessarily mean that it is the position that shankara himself proposes
30:06
but i think the wisest thing for me to do here is to leave this discussion to people who are a lot
30:12
more qualified to talk about it there is disagreement among scholars on how the idea of the
30:17
lord should be understood or read in the teachings of shankara and i'm not going to attempt to to solve
30:24
that problem here there are a lot more smart people people who are smarter than me who can answer
30:29
this question a lot better but a good takeaway here is that all of this talk about the lord
30:35
either as cause or as an object of worship containing different attributes all of this is often provisional for
30:43
there to be a lord there must be something to be ruled over and since the world as such is only the
30:49
result of misidentification this means that when there is no world there is no lord as such either at the
30:57
end of the day all of this talk only functions within a discussion about the world of name and
31:02
form the world of superimposition and illusion shankara's main points and the
31:08
whole purpose of advaitha is the affirmation of the non-dual nature of reality
31:14
that there is only the brahman and all else is false attribution so whatever is said about god or worship
31:21
or rituals as valuable as they may be at the end of the day it is all relative
31:27
and only bound to the conventional world the goal after all is to go beyond this
31:33
and realize one's own total identity with the brahmana that everything is
31:38
in a sense a single oneness this point is what is always affirmed by shankara just in many
31:45
different ways another example that he likes to use to explain this kind of situation
31:52
is another famous parable of the clay pot the clay pot example is taken from
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the upanishads where we find the quote by knowing a lump of clay all things
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made of clay are known what does this mean well think of various things made of
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clay including a pot maybe a sculpture or just a simple lump of clay we may think
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that all of these things exist the pot the sculpture and so on but when we look closer they are all
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simply made of one thing that is clay so when we are looking at the pot
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what we are actually looking at is clay when we are looking at the sculpture
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what we are looking at ultimately is clay it is only our minds
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that conceptualize this clay into various things i see clay in one shape and i
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call it a pot i see it in another and it is a sculptured statue but these are only mental constructions
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that are all just referring to one single thing that is again clay
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so this is what the brahman is like again in philosophical language what truncate
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is saying here is that the effect pre-exists in the cause something
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cannot come from nothing thus the brahman as cause is really what the world as effect
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consists of this philosophical position of the effect pre-existing in its cause
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which shankara held in opposition to other schools at the time is known as satkarigavada quote
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our ordinary experience tells us that milk clay and gold are taken by people in
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order to produce out of them curds jars and ornaments respectively
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no one who wants curds will expect to have it out of clay nor will anyone expect to have jars out
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of milk this means that the effect exists in the cause prior to its production for had the
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effect been really non-existent before its production there is no reason why curds could not
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be produced out of milk alone or jars out of clay besides all the
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effects being equally non-existent anything might come out of anything else but if we
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understand the brahmanan world relationship only through this allegory of the clay
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pot we may get the false impression that the brahmana actually changes
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since the clay when it is formed into these different things it does change it takes different shapes
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but the brahman does not function like this the brahman is completely unchanging and static this is why we
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need that other example that i mentioned also the snake and rope example remember
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the snake was only misidentified as being a snake it was only really the rope the rope
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didn't ever change into the snake it was only the result of a misidentification of the reality
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of the rope which was due to avidia or ignorance after all from one perspective the
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conventional world is absolutely not brahman the world consists of
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various attributes concepts and things and multiplicity and none of this
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applies to the brahman which is one without attributes and completely unchanging
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this is what shankara is talking about when he uses another one of his favorite phrases
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which is neti neti or not this not this as expressed in the upanishads
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for example quote there is no other or better description of brahman than this that it is not this not this that is
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whatever we may think see or talk about it is always based on distinction
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definition and multiplicity in other words the world of superimposition and brahman
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can be none of this but from an absolute perspective it is of course all the brahman yet only
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if understood that brahman is the true reality of whatever is conceived not that the
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particular features of our mental constructs ever correspond to the nature of brahman as such when we
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think of the conventional world we always see a bunch of things or concepts
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which means multiplicity inevitably but as we have seen anything that we conceive is really only a mental
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construct a superimposition based on ignorance avidia
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the same is true for ourselves when i think of myself i think of a bunch of different things
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as i said in the beginning of this discussion i may consider myself to be a human being or as having a
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body or experiencing various thoughts or feelings but to advise the vedanta the further we
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investigate who this actual self this i really is we start to penetrate into the
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inevitable conclusion that just like all things in the world i am really nothing
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i am just a silence that simultaneously is all things this is the atman
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the true self atman which i've already mentioned before is one of the most central concepts in
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all of vedanta including for shankara of course
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when talking about the individual cell for the soul the term jiva or jivatman is often used
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but even this concept based as it is on individuality and therefore difference is ultimately not true in the ultimate
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sense quote the individual soul is not directly the highest atma
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because it is seen to be different on account of the upadhis nor is it different from the atma
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because it is the atma who has entered the jivatman in all the bodies
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we may call the jiva as a mere reflection of the atman our true selves our
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true reality is realized when we break beyond the subject object duality
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and into the pure consciousness that is the atman the self the real self quote
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the self is not absolutely beyond apprehension because it is apprehended as the content
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of the concept i and because the self opposed to the non-self
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is well known in the world as an immediately or self-revealing entity the atman or self is not a thing
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it's not an object that can be experienced or grasped in any way the atman is pure
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subjectivity it's pure awareness and consciousness it's not something that we
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are aware of it is the very act of being aware and not just individually either it is a
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kind of universal self the atman is not just my consciousness or your consciousness
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but consciousness itself which we all share in the ultimate oneness of existence
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to the adwaitan thinkers this is the most self-evident reality that is immediately proven by its own
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qualities quote the knowledge of the atman is self-revealed and
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is not dependent upon perception and other means of knowledge in other words it is clear to all of us
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that we are aware right now since you are currently listening to me speak and
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in an argument that very much reminds us of what descartes would famously say a couple of centuries later
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the sage vidyaranya stated quote no one can doubt the fact of his own existence
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where want to do so who could the doubter be this is the atman our true self which is
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the pure state of consciousness and awareness it is one timeless spaceless and most
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importantly to advise the vedanta in particular it is not different from the brahman
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indeed this is after all the main point of advaitha vedanta the atman is identical to the brahman to
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the absolute reality the actual true self is identical to absolute reality
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thus we have come full circle we started from the standpoint of avidia maya and aviyasa ignorance and illusion
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based on superimposition and misidentification and we have returned back from that to
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the essential conclusions of the entire system the absolute oneness of all reality and
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its essential identity with brahman shankara's position on reality and his interpretations of the
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vedas stands pretty clear it's right there in the name advaita
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not to to shankara there is no multiplicity there is only one there is only oneness
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quote when duality is perceived to be illusory and atman alone is known as the sole
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reality then it is clearly established that all our experiences ordinary or religious verily pertain to
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the domain of ignorance then one perceives that there is no dissolution i.e destruction
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that which is non-dual advaitha can never be said to be born or destroyed that it should be non-dual
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and at the same time subject to birth and death is a contradiction in terms at my very core at your core at
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the core of everything is nothing but the one absolute reality there is no difference between any of us
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this is non-duality in its most clear and strict form shankara is of course a very
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profound thinker and his teachings have had a vast impact on the intellectual climate
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of india and really on the rest of the world in a direct sense it is said that he
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opens several mafas or monasteries and religious centers where his lineage has survived to this day
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he also taught students directly who carried his legacy forward but even aside from this his ideas have
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spread across the world and has indeed become one of the most significant and influential schools of
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thought in all of what we call hinduism there would appear many critics of shankara in later
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periods even within the school of vedanta itself for example the thinker ramanuja
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was very critical of some of shankara's monistic ideas and instead favored a kind of compromise in his own
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system which is known as vishishtadvaita or qualified non-dualism
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something that we will dedicate a future video to and while western scholars of the last few centuries
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have often over emphasized the importance of shankara and advaita vedanta in hinduism
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largely for example was adapted to a much larger degree by the
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vaishnavites historically there's still no denying that advaita and shankara
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stands as one of the pillars of this vast tradition of vedanta but also of hinduism in a much
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more general sense shankara is a very popular figure today both in his native india but also in the
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western world and around the world globally as i've mentioned his
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the way that he's presented today is often removed from a lot of his historical religious and intellectual
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environment and context but still the core ideas that he presents of non-duality
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is one that is very popular and influential to many modern religious movements as well
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again very impressive for someone who supposedly only lived for 32 years i'll see you next time
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description you
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