A Glimpse of Shankara’s Personality
This is not a detailed portrait of Sri Shankara but a bunch of fleeting thoughts which occurred to me while reading a couple of passages from the commentaries of Sri Shankara. One passage is from the commentary on chAndogya upaniShat and the other is from brahma-sUtra (the aphorisms on the nature of Brahman).
The passage from the chAndogya upaniShat is about the clash of gods and demons (1-2-1). This is about an upAsana on Om. Initially Shankara explains what upAsana is about. It is a chitta-vRRitti – a mental process of meditating on a slightly delimited (IShad-vikRRita-brahma, as he says) Brahman for material benefits. Shankara compares it with the knowledge of Atman, which is also a mental process having an akhaNDa vRRitti, i.e. seeing oneself as the Supreme Consciousness. Based on this similarity upAsana finds a place in the upaniShat, he explains. Then the episode of gods and demons follows.
Both gods and demons are children of the same PrajApati (hiraNyagarbha), the first being. Each group wants to excel the other. Here the explanation by Shankara is based on the etymological meaning of the terms. Deva is derived from the root ‘div’ – ‘to shine’. They are the functions of senses which are refined or illumined by scriptural education. Asura is derived from the roots ‘asu’ and ‘ram’, meaning those functions of senses reveling in sensual pleasures, or engaged in a multitude of pleasurable objects, and are guided by the quality of tamas – sloth. So deva-s, the gods, and the asura-s, the demons are nothing but our own sensory functions which are sometimes good and sometimes bad. Sometimes they follow the scriptural injunctions and sometimes rebel and indulge in prohibited acts. These tendencies clash in our mind, each trying to overpower the other. Shankara goes on to say that this has been an eternal conflict in every human mind since the beginning of creation. prajApati, who is the parent of both is no other than the human being, he says. The passage continues to say how the gods (good tendencies) wanted to do the upAsana of Om on each of the senses but every time the demons (bad tendencies) ‘seduced’ the senses.
How did they seduce? By making the senses forget the selfless enjoyment of objects and by creating a sense of rAga – attachment – to objects. Because of attachment they lost the sarvAtmabhAva (seeing Brahman in all things). The demons made the eyes to see things which they should not see, ears to hear what they should not hear and so on. Finally the gods meditate on the life force – prANa – as Om, where the sense of attachment cannot be induced and thus overpowered the bad tendencies. Anandagiri, (the commentator on Shankara) says that this is a ‘clash within’ (AdhyAtmika-sa~NgrAma). Such explanation of gods and demons, which is seen given in other upaniShat-s by Shankara, demolishes our childhood ideas about some clash taking place in the sky high above. Similarly, (in a connected passage) while not in any way rejecting the popular notions on the celestial worlds and the nether worlds, he almost suggests that loka-s (the worlds) are different states of experience, pleasant or unpleasant.
The other passage I was referring to is from the brahma-sUtra (1-1-19) where there is a discussion of whether the ‘blissful self’ – Ananda-maya – can be called the Atman. (Chapter-I of brahma-sUtra tries to reconcile various statements in the Upanishads and tries to establish a unity of thought in them in accordance with the advaita view). Here the discussion is on the five sheaths or five levels of the self that are described in the taittirIya upaniShat. The individual self is conceived at five levels – the flesh and blood level (annamaya), the vital force level (prANamaya), the cognitive level (manomaya), the intellectual level (vij~nAnamaya) and the blissful level (Anandamaya). A seeker trying to know the nature of his self starts identifying first with the body, rejects it and identifies with the vital force level and so on and at last comes to the Anandamaya level.
The question here is whether this can be equated with the Brahman. The opinion of bAdarAyana, the composer of the aphorisms, as well as that of the commentators up to Shankara was that this category i.e. the blissful level of the self could be equated with the Brahman. Here Shankara presents a detailed argument to show that this self can, at the most, be called a qualified Brahman but not the Supreme Self. I will not go into the detailed arguments given by Shankara here, but the point to be noted is that Shankara does not hesitate to differ with the most revered personality of the time and submit his views. He has not only differed with the earlier commentator (which he has done several times to reject the dualist arguments) but he also presents his views on the untenability of the wording of the aphorism. It appears that there was an atmosphere for honest debate on issues in Shankara’s time true to the spirit of the invocation ‘saha nAvavatu…………….mA vidwiShAvahai’, which means that the student-master relationship flourished in a healthy debating environment.
No doubt, Shankara’s main mission was to advocate the advaita view, but his interpretations show that he was aware of the need to respect the prevalent religious practices. For instance, the sA~Nkhya-s, yogi-s and the logicians did not talk of a god with name and form but the practice of worshiping a god with name and form was very much prevalent in society. One would expect that Shankara, an advocate of nirguNa (attributeless) Brahman, would more seriously reject the idea of god with name and form, but he did not do so. He accepted whatever was the existing practice, but accorded it a lower place in the ladder of sAdhanA, spiritual journey. In brahma-sUtra (1-1-20) he says that the all pervading Brahman can be accepted to be visualized with a name and form for the benefit of the sAdhaka-s i.e. spiritual practitioners. In an earlier passage (1-1-12) he refers to the idol worship which befits the dull witted persons as the initial level to understand the subtle nature of Brahman. We see a benevolent social reformer who took care of different levels of seekers worshipping different deities and provided guidance at those levels through his writings by bringing them all under the umbrella of Vedanta by showing that all these forms are that of the self same Brahman.
Sometime ago in these blogs (by other writers) there was a discussion about who can be an ideal guru. I do not know since when the tradition of jagat-guru (teacher of the world) has come into practice, but the meaning of the word is worth examining. The word jagat means ‘the world’. Etymologically it says – gachChati iti jagat – that which keeps on moving is jagat, the world. So a guru is a person who understands the changing needs of the world and evolves strategies to educate the society. He cannot be inflexible in his approach, but try to accommodate the impact of change. Shankara knew this when he said in one passage in brahma-sUtra(3-1-25): ‘what can be considered as dharma in a particular time, place or context may not be dharma in another time, place or context. Scripture has to provide the guidance needed.’ And he interpreted the texts accordingly.
It is ironical that in India we have erected idols of the self same person who prescribed them for the dull witted, and are also worshipping him by according a place in the pantheon of deities. While Shankara wrote hymns on several deities, we have not fallen behind, but have composed hymns with his hundred and eight names and so on.
If we read Shankara and not about him in his biographies, we come across a man with a mission, a strong logician who chose to win scholars in arguments rather than force his ideas on the multitude, respected tradition and strengthened it while healthily disagreeing where required. In India, of course, he is regarded at different levels – the intellectuals (mostly the left-wingers who dominate the scene) dismiss him as a retrograde fundamentalist, the handful of traditional scholars observe prostrations and study his texts with reverence but keep them exclusive to the few, while the rest are content with visiting the temple and break a coconut in front of his idol instead of breaking their heads with any of his writings. The silver lining is the handful of modern teachers of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda, Chinmaya or Dayananda schools who are enlivening the tradition of lively spirit of Vedanta by interpreting it to the jagat, the changing world.
