Karanam Aravinda Rao, Friday, September 4, 2015 9:47 am

Advaita and Personal Morality

There is an argument against advaita that because a j~nAnI (i.e. a realized person), is said to go beyond good and evil (as per several upanishadic statements), there can be a situation where there is no check on his behavior. The results of good or bad deeds (called puNyaM and pApam) do not touch him, and consequently his going to heaven or hell is ruled out. So a person who attains the knowledge of Brahman can indulge in any action and get away. Besides, he will be a bad role model for others and probably dangerous to society, because he will lead many others on his path.

The general advaita theory is that a j~nAnI, who has come through a twin process of emotional discipline and logical enquiry into scriptures, does never fall back to such a stage. However, Vidyaranya, the well known exponent of advaita seems to concede the point that a j~nAni may indulge in yathechChA-charaNam, i.e. indulgence in desires. A long discussion on this is found in chapter 4 of Vidyaranya’s ‘Vedanta Panchadashi’.

Vidyaranya initially dwells on the degree of reality of external objects, chitta-vRRitti-s and so on and then comes to the ethical question of self-control and the way to get over duality and the desires arising out of it. He discusses the limitation of yoga-samAdhi first. There can be a temporary cessation of duality and quietening of activities prompted by the three guNa-s, but at the end of the samAdhi there is an immediate relapse into duality. True Realization, on the other hand, happens after a person becomes ‘shAnto dAntaH, samAhitachittaH’ i.e. after achieving control of the senses and the mind and after concentrating the mind on the Brahman. A seeker has to go through a lot of personal discipline before attaining realization – the sAdhana chatuShTaya – the four fold disciplines. He then goes beyond religion in the sense that he no longer needs it as a sAdhanam – a tool for self purification. He similarly goes beyond the varNa and Ashrama, in other words, the social norms and stratifications. As a seeker he followed the ‘dharma’ or duties prescribed to those levels as part of the same self purification. These are all the upAdhi-s, the limiting factors which gave identity to him, dictated his conduct within a system and helped him in his quest. Realization results in dropping of all the limiting and identifying factors, for, he remains a sAkShi – a witness – to his bodily activities necessitated by bodily needs. There is no activity caused by rajas or tamas and not even of sattva which is a divine quality.

Vidyaranya says in this context: ‘After reaching the destination shastra has to be discarded like a torch(4-45), ‘discard the shastra like one discards the husk after getting the grain(4-46), and ‘stop indulging in dialectics, as it is a waste of breath(4-47). These statements are apt to be misunderstood and can lead to a situation of spurious and amoral Vedanta discussed above. Vidyaranya immediately denounces this situation in subsequent stanzas.

The realized person is of two types: a man of action and a man of renunciation. A man of action is called karma-yogi (described in the chapter 3 of the Gita) and the man of renunciation is called a j~nAnI. Both are needed by the society. Arjuna in Gita and king Janaka, whom we see in the Upanishads, are examples of karma-yogi-s. After attaining the knowledge of Brahman they continue their upAdhi-dharma – duty assigned to them socially. All realized persons in society cannot necessarily renounce action, as they have to play their social role. If it were not so, the rulers would be forever forbidden from attaining the supreme knowledge. The ruler who attains such knowledge is called rAjarShi – a ‘saint- king’ in the Gita, and that is an ideal situation. Such men of action perform karma without the kartRRitwa bhAvanA – or the feeling of doership. Their activities are for loka-sa~Ngraha – the well-being of society – as the Gita calls it. Karma-yogi is an example of ‘karmaNykarma yaH pashyet” i.e., one who sees actionlessness in action. His activities continue because of the upAdhi, like a potter’s wheel which has been given an initial rotation or like an actor playing his role.

Sage Vidyaranya, whom we are talking about, was himself a karma-yogi who inspired the establishment of the Vijayanagara empire, served as a minister, fought battles against the invading sultans and later became a saMnyAsi i.e. a monk to head the Vidyaranya peetham.

The j~nAnI (the second type shown above), is a person who is described in the context of j~nAna yoga in the Gita – a person who has renounced action by accepting saMnYsa-Ashrama (by becoming a monk) and has confined to actions ‘just to run the body’ – ‘sharIrayAtrA-mAtra-cheShTaH’ as Shankara says in the commentary on the Gita. He serves as an example of the pinnacle of human achievement, and as a role model for society.

The above two types have to move hand in hand to guide the society, one by serving as a role model in the practice of morality and the other serving as the person enforcing the morality or implementing dharma. In one minor digression, Shankara (in the commentary on Gita 4-1), talks about the role of the above two by saying – brahma-kShatre parirakShite jagat paripAlayitum alam, which means that if the j~nAni and the ruler are well guided, they would easily protect the whole world.

The argument against advaita is that both the above types are likely to be drawn back by force of habit and by the resurgence of desire on viShaya-s, the objects of love and hate. Etymologically, viShaya is something which binds – derived from the root ‘ShI~n = to bind. It binds the senses to objects and for a person of imperfect realization the senses will get the better of him. Vedanta teachers call him (Vidyaranya does not employ the word) an ‘ArUDha-patita’, literally, ‘one who has attained and fallen’, i.e. a fallen man. Having reached a level where he can stay firm in the bliss of Brahman, he wants to settle down for a fraction of human bliss. We may recall how the taittirIya Upanishad describes different levels of bliss, starting from the human context, taking the maximum human bliss as a measure, and going up to the bliss of gods, and finally to the bliss of Brahman. But the realized person is already at that level as he has gone beyond desires (akAmahataH) and is no longer longing for bliss of any type. He is the very nature of bliss, as he is not different from Brahman.

The fallen j~nAnI, who had earlier gone beyond his upAdhi, the limits set by the social ego, wants to return to his social ego. It is like the ocean trying to become a wave, in the language of Vedanta. He may do so, says Vidyaranya, but he cannot call himself a j~nAnI, and he cannot claim to have gone beyond the cycle of birth and death. Realization is not a mere intellectual input, but it is a transformation of self, where the individual ego gets dissolved into pure consciousness and any deviation from that state disqualifies the person. Such a person is called a ‘vrAtya brahma-niShTha’ (one who has knowledge of Brahman, but who is outside the pale of morality) ‘a fallen j~nAnI’, as against a ‘shrotriya-brahma-niShTha’ i.e. one who is obeying the social norms while being a j~nAnI. The latter is one who is following the injunctions prescribed for his upAdhi as per shastra. (That is why a seeker is advised to go to a shrotriya-brahma-niShTha for real teaching but not to one who has theoretical knowledge of Brahman).

We find examples of the former type in the mythological stories. For instance, the demon king Hiranya-kashipu gives a long lecture (to the wailing wife of his brother who was killed by Vishnu) about the nature of jiva, Atman etc. giving the whole gist of what may be called advaita Vedanta (Bhagavatam canto 4). Similarly the demon king VRRitra who fights Indra mocks at the vedantic knowledge of Indra even while getting killed by Indra. The epic Ramayana describes how all the demons, the followers of Ravana were proficient in the Vedas. So we have ancient examples before us of knowledge devoid of morality.

To avoid this danger the traditional teachers of Vedanta insisted on what is told in the very first brahma sutra, i.e. athAto brahma-jij~nAsA, which means – ‘thereafter, the inquiry for Brahman has to begin’, where ‘atha’ = thereafter. The question is – where after?  It is after the spiritual discipline mentioned in the four fold system of exercise referred to above. In spite of this, there is a possibility for fall.

Are we here facing an amoral situation which Nietzsche describes in his philosophy? His philosophy was born out of a situation where the collapse of religion led to the collapse of the moral frame associated with it and the individual had to define his own moral values. Advaita has also presented a situation where religion is rendered irrelevant (after realization) and the person is on his own ethical plane. But the difference is that if a person relapses as we discussed above, Vidyaranya says that such a person goes to a lower grade and he should follow the religious injunctions. He cannot be called a j~nAnI on the strength of textual knowledge. We saw that all demons are highly learned and we should only see that the vice-versa does not happen.

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