This blog post is not a review of the book
Adi Shankaracharya: Hinduism’s Greatest Thinker by Pavan K
Varma is an incisive book that is both a biography of the Hindu seer and an
exploration into and an exposition of his philosophy of Advaita Vedanta.
It is a great introductory book for a reader interested in
understanding Hinduism and its complexities; it is not a book for the
jingoistic, ultra-nationalistic proponents and followers of the political
ideology of Hindutva.
Shankara (788-820 CE) brought a sense of purpose and direction
to Hinduism which it had lost for several centuries because of its dogmatic
following of ritualistic orthodoxy that increasingly emphasized differences
amongst its adherents rather than the grand oneness of its message. It rapid
decline led to the birth and growth of offshoots such as Buddhism and Jainism,
which took their basic tenets from Hinduism but infused it with a distinct
egalitarianism and inclusiveness.
Shankara redefined the practice of Hinduism by emphasizing
upon its inherent intellectual strengths. He gave it a monastic order by
establishing branches in four different parts of India. He traversed the length
and breadth of India twice in a life that was woefully short (he died when he
was 32-years-old).
The four peeth that he established to preserve and propagate
Hindu religion – in Sringeri (south), Puri (east), Dwaraka (west) and Joshimath
(north) – combined the worship of Shiva and Shakti. Shankara was deeply
influenced by the three basic texts of Hindu philosophy – the Upanishads, the
Brahma Sutra, and the Bhagavad Gita. And instead of rejecting the five
principle schools of Hindu religion – Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Sankhya, Yoga, and
Purva Mimamsha – that preceded Advaita Vedanta, Shankara utilized the essence
of their teachings to solidify the philosophy of Advaita Vedenta.
As Varma says,
“Shankara displayed an intellectual adroitness
that assimilated many existing traditions without diluting his unwavering and
fundamental thesis on the primacy of Brahman. He did not accept the dualism of
Purusha and Prakriti of the Sankhya school, but many of the features of the
quiescent and omnipresent Purusha are reflected in the grandeur of his concept
of Brahman. He did not endorse the notion of a personal god in the Yoga school,
but he accepted the physical and meditational aspects of the discipline of
yogic training. He did not agree with the atomistic plurality of the
Nyaya-Vaisheshika school, but he borrowed from its rigorous system of logic and
reasoning. He decried the mechanical karmakanda or ritual exercises of the
Purva Mimanshaks, but accepted that such rituals, if performed in a spirit of
detachment, help to prepare the individual in the journey towards
brahmanubhava. He may not have agreed with every aspect of tantric practice,
but he saw merit in adopting those that, he believed, were conducive to the
ultimate realisation of Brahman.”
More pertinently to the continuing malaise of caste in Hindu
religion, Shankara attempted (albeit without success) to not disregard the
significance of caste distinctions in the pursuit of the Brahman. Varma notes,
“As we have seen, this was vividly demonstrated in his meeting with a chandala,
a person of the lowest caste, in Banaras. The sheer disjoint between his belief
that Brahman pervades all, and, the discriminatory social practices of the day,
must have struck Shankara, motivating him to unreservedly embrace the chandala,
and declare emphatically in his Manishapanchakam: ‘He who has learnt to look on
phenomenon in this non-dual light is my true guru, be he a chandala or a
twice-born man. This is my conviction.’”
Shankara also brought together the intellectual and the
ritualistic aspects of Hindu religion. Advaita Vedanta not only propounded the
philosophy of monism and non-dualism, it also brought together the six systems
of Hindu worship: Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, Ganapatya, Saura and Kaumara (or
Kapali). He propagated the four goals of Hindu religion: dharma (right conduct)
, artha (pursuit of material well being) , kama (the pursuit of the sensual)
and moksha or salvation.
There are some aspects of Shankara’s life that need closer
veracity, especially those that require acceptance of an other-worldly
realisation of the divinity. In his recent work Two Saints Speculations around
and about Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Ramana Maharshi, Arun Shourie has attempted
an extensive research-based explanation of their “other-worldly” experiences.
Shourie’s treatise is a helpful understanding of such experiences through
neuroscience.
“…the studies document beyond any doubt that spiritual
practices and pursuits greatly alter the relative strength of neuronal
connections and the rhythms of their firing. The practices perceptibly change
‘the amount of real estate’ in the brain that is devoted to different
functions. These results document what the sages have been saying for
centuries, that the mind can be altered by working on the mind. It now turns
out that the brain – as a physical organ – also can be altered by working on
the mind, an alteration that will have further consequences for the way the
mind works in the next moment or round. They also confirm that working on the
body entails major changes in the brain as well as the mind. A lemma of this
latter set of results is that the sorts of extreme austerities that our saints
had practised – Sri Ramanna for three-and-a-half years, Sri Ramakrishna for
twelve years – would have had drastic effects on their brains and minds, and,
one can surmise, could have triggered some of the experiences…”
Shankara explains it simply, “When and to whomsoever the
notion of the personal ego conveyed by “I” (aham) and the notion of personal
possession conveyed by “mine” (mamah) cease to be real, then he is the knower
of Atman.”
This blog post doesn't claim to be a review of the book (in fact, GAB doesn't ever do a review of any book that's featured on the blog), but is meant to give an idea about the book. In this context, it may also be said that Friedrich Max Müller in 'The six systems of Indian philosophy says, "A friend of mine, a native of India, whom I consulted about the various degrees of popularity enjoyed at the present day by different systems of philosophy in his own country, informs me that the only system that can now be said to be living in India is the Vedanta with its branches, the Advaitis, the Madhvas, the Ramanujas, and the Vallabhas. The Vedanta, being mixed with religion, he writes, has become a living faith, and numerous Pandits can be found to-day in all these sects who have learnt at least the principal works by heart and can expound them, such as the Upanishads, the Brahma-Sutras, the great Commentaries of the Akaryas and the Bhagavad-gita."
Reproduced below are two extracts from the book that I found deeply insightful:
Nasadiya Sukta
This hymn, perhaps the first recorded rumination in Hindu
philosophy on the origins of the universe, is remarkable for its eclectic tone
and tenor. There are no certitudes; no injunctions for obeisance; no religious
commands or call to ritual. There is awe, wonderment, but, above all, there is
query, an emphasis on the need to probe, to go beyond conventional categories
of thought to the realm of speculation, and an invitation to ideation. The
questions signify an impassioned yearning for truth, but this yearning is
willing to accept that the answers may need to embrace negation even as they
seek to find the right assertion, and that, in this process, the path to truth
can be many things but not simplistic or dogmatic. This wonderfully
contemplative passage in the Rig Veda must have been written some two millennia
before the birth of Shankara , but it indicates the foundational beginnings of
a philosophical legacy that he would ultimately inherit .
The etymological meaning of Veda is sacred knowledge or wisdom.
There are four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama, and Atharva. Together they constitute
the samhitas that are the textual basis of the Hindu religious system. To these
samhitas were attached three other kinds of texts. These are, firstly, the
Brahmanas, which is essentially a detailed description of rituals, a kind of
manual for the priestly class, the Brahmins. The second are the Aranyakas;
aranya means forest, and these ‘forest manuals’ move away from rituals,
incantations and magic spells to the larger speculations of spirituality, a
kind of compendium of contemplations of those who have renounced the world. The
third, leading from the Aranyakas , are the Upanishads , which , for their
sheer loftiness of thought are the foundational texts of Hindu philosophy and
metaphysics . Because they come at the very end of the corpus
The authors of the Upanishads are not known, nor do we have
their exact chronology or date. It is certain that initially they were, like
all Hindu texts, orally transmitted from generation to generation, and only
reduced to text in classical Sanskrit sometime around 600 to 400 BCE. The Upanishads
do not constitute a single volume; in fact, the exact number is not known
either, but by common consensus, there are about twelve principal Upanishads
attached to the Sama, Yajur and Atharva Vedas. Shankara wrote commentaries on
ten of the principal Upanishads: Isha, Kena, Katha, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya,
Taittiriya, Aitareya, Chandogya, and Brihadaranyaka.
But, as the Aranyakas and Upanishads show, as does the hymn
on creation from the Rig Veda referred to earlier, there was, also from the
very beginning, an equally strong strand that sought to understand the origins, meanings and purpose of life, and to explore what could be the one unifying
force underlying the bewildering multiplicity of the universe . This strand was
less taken up with ritual and divinities and the practice of religion and more
with the philosophical substratum underlying the practice of religion. These
two strands crystallised in time into two distinct schools: that of karmakanda, which privileged the paraphernalia necessary for the practice of religion,
including all the rites and rituals, and jnanakanda which gave primacy to the
pursuit of knowledge as the path to moksha.
Maroof Shah
While in Srinagar, N. N. Vohra, the Governor of Jammu and
Kashmir, arranged for me to meet Maroof Shah, reputed to be a scholar of
Kashmir Shaivism, and of Hindu philosophy. The reputation, I soon found out,
was entirely justified. I spent an afternoon discussing with him the
intricacies of Shankara’s thoughts and their overlap with Kashmir Shaivism.
Maroof, a diminutive man with a heavy Kashmiri accent, works, improbably enough,
in the state veterinary department. Philosophy, however, is his passion.
According to him, Shankara’s Advaita, and Kashmir Shaivism, have more
similarities than differences. Both are non-dualistic; both believe that
Brahman is the only ontological reality; both accept that the world is real at
one level but illusory and impermanent at the real level; and, both argue that
ignorance is the cause for our mistaking the ephemeral for the real. The
difference is only on emphasis. Kashmir Shaivism, especially as elaborated upon
later by Abhinava Gupta, believed that Shiva was Brahman incarnate, and his
potentiality to create the phenomenal world was due to the power of Shakti
within him. The worship of Shakti, along with its tantric associations, thus
became one of the key distinguishing features of Kashmir Shaivism and were
taken on board by Shankara.
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