Advaita: A Contemporary Critique, Srinivasa Rao

Advaita: A Contemporary Critique, Srinivasa Rao, New Delhi, Oxford, 2012.

Ch. 1: Orthodoxy and Tradition.

…Sankara never refutes the theory of perceptual error of other schools in any of his works while he refutes only the metaphysics of other schools since they all go against non-duality.  But, sadly most of the later followers of Gaudapada and Sankara did not always think in a similar way.  For example, we see Kandkar’s commentators deviating from his view in offering very diverse, extensive refutations of the theories of perceptual error of all schools though such refutation was not at all thought to  be necessary by Sankara himself.—p. 2

…Sankara is strongly rejecting the thesis that the material cause of the world is the unconscious prakrti of the Sankhyans and is instead maintaining that only Brahman, the conscious entity that ever exists, is the “non-different material as well as the efficient cause of the world” (abhinna nimittopaadaana kaarana).  But what have Vacaspati and other commentators done while commenting on this work of Sankara?  They have held that maya, the power of Brahman, that is unconscious in nature exactly like the prakrti of (p.3) the Sankhyans, is the material cause of the world. Thus, what was very summarily rejected by Sankara—an unconscious or an acetana material cause of the world—was quietly brought back into Advaita by his followers as Sankara’s own idea and not as a Sankhyan one, and it coolly became an integral part of the classical Advaita tradition….—pp. 3-4

…Any attempt by anyone to reject acetana maya as the material cause of the world as Sankara himself manifestly did would now be treated as a very serious breach of Advaita sampradaya hence would surely attract extremely strong condemnation….—p. 4

…Closed institutional structures are always the most readily available shelters for orthodoxy to take very quick, deep and permanent roots.—p. 6

…when people become too busy or too lazy to think for themselves, orthodoxy jumps in and takes the driver’s seat…..—p. 6

…religion and philosophy are never sharply separated in Indian tradition.  When the two do not stand very clearly separated, as a rule, the religious aspects usually exert far greater control on people’s minds than the philosophical aspects of a way of thinking.  In such a situation, the philosophers viewing themselves as very faithful, strict followers of a sampradaya can never be an exception to he above rule and thus they also invariably fall in line with every demand of orthodoxy.—p. 6

…the literal meaning of the Sanskrit term siddhanta happens to be “well proven, settled or final conclusion”…..—p. 7

…One religion or one philosophy which suits everyone in this world may be just as impossible as a single size shirt that perfectly fits all different human beings everywhere and at all times.—p. 8

…Most obviously, my view completely and very decisively rejects all possible types of orthodoxy as a genuine sampradaya.  While all orthodoxies are extremely rigid and inflexible, a sampradaya is flexible, dynamic and very living….—p. 8

            Since the Indian philosophical sampradayas are peculiarly structured around a series of successive commentaries on original works upholding the basic tenets of most schools, it is indeed very reasonable to allow freedom to commentators to innovate and bring into the system newer ideas and views….—p. 8

…It is not the thinkers as persons but it is only their ideas which matter in philosophy….—p. 9

…All mayavadins indeed very much belong to Advaita parampara, but they are all also very hopelessly inconsistent Advaitins.—p. 12

            Because of the logical and conceptual problems inherent in accepting any kind of positive, anadi and acetana maya or avidya in Advaita doctrine where no other kind of entity is logically admissible as that harms non-duality (advaita haani), at least when the dualists criticized the mayavadins, they should have read the very clear writing on the wall in those criticisms.  But, instead of really seeing the danger in accepting bhavarupa avidya, all the traditional Advaitins started not only stoutly defending such avidya but also went on even refining and perfecting that doctrine. That is perhaps when quite imperceptibly Advaita totally ceased to be a fully living tradition and started morphing into a very rigid orthodoxy and it has virtually remained so even to this day.—p. 12

…In summary, upholding the basic idea the school without in any way violating logical consistency of the school’s position is all that is required of any follower of a parampara and subscribing to very specific doctrinal details or following any of the earlier masters can never be advocated as a necessary part of it.—p. 12

…But orthodoxies never grant such freedom to any of its followers except interpreters who cleverly camouflage all their deviant views and just parade them all as conforming to tradition, consequently rendering that tradition lifeless.  As pointed out before, it will be only thought to be a very living tradition by its ardent, orthodox followers although it is no more truly living.—p. 13

            Indian philosophy is faring no better at the hands of some experts who have studied Western philosophy extensively for decades and have later on turned to critically appraising Indian philosophy…. There is a certain way of understanding the Indian systems (p.14) which is not automatically or readily accessible to anyone quite submerged in the totally Western paradigm of philosophy and the damage some of these Western philosophy experts have already done and are still engaged in doing to Indian philosophy is immense…. Classical Indian philosophy today seems to be located between one group which has nearly missed the elephant except for its tail and the other group that has not been able to find even this tail….—pp. 14-15

…The fact that most of our local experts of Western thought have never been clearly recognized anywhere in the West for their contributions to its tradition of philosophy is also to be reckoned with….—p. 15

…the current outlooks of the West—be it Logical Positivism, Marxism, Analytic Philosophy, Post-Modernism, post Post-Modernism….—p.16

Ch. 2 Advaita Doctrine: Preliminaries

…it becomes evident that since ancient times it has been consistently held by philosophers that the different Upanisads together carry a unified philosophical view.  Even then, the clear point of dispute still happens to be about the exact character of this unified view.—p. 17

…Mandana {Misra}  was the first to describe maya as “neither existent nor absolutely non-existent” (na atyantam asatiti, naapi satii…. Brahmasiddhi, edtied with Brahmasiddhi-vyakhya of Sankhapani by S. Kuppuswami Sastri, Madras: Madras Government Press, 1937 p. 4).  He also described it as illusory appearance (mithyaavabhaasa) and indescribable (anirvacaniyaa).  Though he held maya to be such an inscrutable entity, yet he accepted its destruction as very real—but only as a reality of a negative kind!—p. 19

…Therefore Mandana had no alternative but to incoherently maintain that though maya itself was neither quite real nor quite unreal, its destruction was still quite real.—p. 19

            Sankara very repeatedly makes it abundantly clear in his writings that nothing whatever exists which is not at all of the nature of the Self.  Since the Self is basically of the nature of pure consciousness (caitanya), nothing else opposed to the Self in nature (i.e., acetana) can ever exist.  Whatever is opposed in nature to the Self which is pure cit, must necessarily lack all consciousness (i.e., be, by its very nature, acit, jada or acetana) like the prakrti of Sankhya.  It is well known that the existence of prakrti—or any purely unconscious entity which could be postulated as the source of the universe—is most clearly, extensively, conclusively refuted in all of Sankara’s writings.—p. 22

…Sankara … tirelessly declares hundreds of times throughout his works that it is cetana Brahman alone which is the cause of the universe and not acetana pradhana (prakrti)….—p. 23

…It is interesting that while Gaudapada very clearly upholds the view of non-origination (ajaativaada), without at all rejecting that view, Sankara upholds the view of “origination” of the universe from Brahman….—p. 23

…Strictly speaking, only some new name and form has been imposed on clay to make it into a pot and despite this imposition of a new form, the original clay continues to be clay alone. Hence the effect (pot) is not at all really different (ananya) in its basic nature from its cause (clay).—p. 25

…What does “acetana” really mean?  It could mean “lacking consciousness”.  But, if the world is produced out of Brahman just as any pot is (p.25) produced out of clay, it must perforce also be admitted that just as clay does not at all cease to be clay on being made into pots, Brahman also does not cease to be Brahman on being made into the world.  In other words, when Brahman “becomes” the world, Brahman’s essential svabhava of consciousness does not at all go missing from the world. If it is so, when it is said that the world is acetana, it can never mean that there is a true “absence of consciousness” in the world but only that the world does not openly “manifest consciousness”.  In short, the world is never a truly unconscious entity as there can never be such an entity in the first place.  The world is not, by its very nature, acetana; it only appears to be acetana. It is Brahman itself appearing as the world because of the superimposition of names and forms, as a result of which the cetana svabhava of Brahman is not at all clearly disclosed by it.  As a natural consequence of this, the world very much appears to be acetana.—p. 25-26

…The world’s real, true svabhava is completely the same as that of Brahman, viz. cetana svabhava. But the world also has an apparent svabhava which is “appearing as acetana” which is not its true svabhava at all.  It appears as acetana only because of ignorance. (p.26) Ignorance here is mistaking the absolutely apparent svabhava of acetanatva of the world for its real, true or natural svabhava.—pp. 26-27

…for Sankara, cetana Brahman alone is the cause of the world which is “well known” to all of us as acetana in character.  But this is only due to our own ignorance of both the world’s being rooted in Brahman and its sharing Brahman’s essential nature.  This is verily the reason why Sankara repeatedly asserts in his works that cetana Brahman alone is the cause of the world and never acetana pradhaana or prakrti which we can see in Brahmasutrabhasya (p. 27) 1.1.5, p. 19; 1.1.5, p. 21; 1.1.9, p. 25; 1.1.11, p. 26; 2.1.1. p. 140 and in many other places…. {The Works of Sankaracarya, Volume 3, Brahmasutra with Sankarabhasya, Delhi: Motilal Banarasidass, 1964}….—pp. 27-28

…he {Sankara} has also said equally clearly and unambiguously that Brahman is the non-different (abhinna) material as well as the efficient cause (nimittopaadaana kaarana) of this world. We do not need any clearer statement than this.—p. 28

            But almost every subsequent commentator on Sankara’s Brahmasutrabhasya makes quite subtle, but also very profound mistakes in understanding this and other extremely clear and also most unambiguous statements of Sankara and chooses to regard maya, taken to be acetana, as the material cause of the world. Of course Sankara does say very clearly that maya is the power (sakti) of Brahman and without this power Brahman will not be able to create at all….—p. 28

…But still almost all the commentators extremely uniformly choose to view maya as the “acetana or jada cause of a jada world”. Why did they do this, and more astonishingly, why did they all choose to do this so very uniformly and systematically?—p. 29

…Sankara makes a very brilliant cryptic statement: The word is of the nature of Brahman, not Brahman of the nature of the world” … This must fully or thoroughly unsettle once and for all the wrong notions of the fundamentally acetana character of the world according to Sankara…..—p. 32

…The entire commentarial tradition vehemently attributing completely real acetanatava to the world is seriously deviating from the completely well settled and totally non-controversial position of Sankara o this most vial point.—p. 32

            It is now time to point out that if one wrong idea is formed by a philosopher that takes him to a troublesome situation, the philosopher usually does not quickly detect the defect in his idea and give it up.  Most of the time he modifies the wrong idea or brings in some other ideas to balance the bad situation and overcome the difficulty. Even if these newly brought ideas are correct ones, the problem will still remain since the initial idea itself is incorrect and the modified solution does not have its foundation in pure truth.  Hence, even if many other new ideas are brought in, none of them will be able to remedy the original (p.33) situation perfectly.  This is what has actually happened in the long history of Advaita doctrine after Sankara.  Sankara most decisively rejected the idea of a true acetana cause for the acetana—looking world because he thought that the world most undoubtedly had its origin in cetana Brahman, the only reality.  As produced from Brahman, he had maintained that it must always continue to possess the basic nature of its own cause as all effects must do in conformity with the relation of ananyatva between causes and effects.  He must have also thought that if the world was viewed as a truly acetana entity, the sole reality cetana Brahman would stand justly accused of creating its own real opposite and thus totally undermine the fact of Brahman really being “one without a second”.  What is really worse here is that this harm to non-duality would not at all be coming from any outside agency but most ridiculously arising from Brahman alone!—pp.33-34

            Sankara took an extremely bold step of asserting that cetana Brahman was indeed the one and only cause of what we all most unquestioningly accept as “acetana world” but he did this only after making it abundantly clear that (1) nothing that is truly acetana ever exists, and hence any acetanatva we perceive in (p.34) the world is totally false, is a superimposition, (2) of whatever exists, cetana Brahman alone is the cause, and (3) the essential nature or svabhava of the cause is completely preserved in all its effects and hence effects are necessarily non-different or ananya (in their basic nature) from their causes. In addition, while saying that Brahman creates through its maya sakti the whole universe, he had also made it completely clear that without such power Brahman would not be able to create at all and that (4) this maya sakti is always completely non-different (ananya) from Brahman.  Therefore in all fairness to Sankara as a first rate philosopher, if we take all the above four points as mutually consistent and never conflicting with one another, we may then begin to see a completely different concept of Advaita emerging from his writings which is radically different from whatever is usually attributed to him by the commentators and almost all modern scholars and writers, Indian as well as Western.—pp. 34-35

…All that is there is cetana Brahman alone. If anyone sees anything else at all of a totally different kind, he sees—and he can only see-just this cetana Brahman alone and nothing else though he may be mistaking it for something else all the time because of his ignorance.—p. 40

            We must also admit that an Advaitin tyring to establish non-duality by denying the very idea of duality is more elegant, more economical conceptually and safer doctrinally than an Advaitin who metaphysically admits the reality of duality, actual existence of the anatman at some level, and then very valiantly fights against it.  Reality can neither be created or destroyed and if we start with duality we must also end with duality and be stuck with it for ever.  Only the idea of duality can be shown to be wrong or false; duality itself, if it is there already, cannot be wished out of existence by proving it to be false. Existing things exist; it makes no sense at all to speak of them as true or false because they already exist.  Since we can form just any idea through imagination even when there cannot simply be any actual or a possible object corresponding to that idea—like a square circle or barren woman’s son—it should be very evident that when we have some idea, it never follows logically that there is, there may or there must indeed be, some object corresponding to the imagined idea….—p. 41

            It is quite impossible to logically establish the doctrine fo Advaita without supposing duality because, as the very name “a”-dvaita quite literally says it in Sanskrit, it is the “denial” of duality (dvaita).  Hence such denial cannot naturally be logically accomplished if we are never at all allowed even to postulate duality, or the idea of “the other”…..—p. 41

…While the Advaitic experience involves only Atman and nothing else, the Advaita doctrine necessarily requires the bringing in of many ideas like anatma, sadasadvilaksana, mithya, maya and so on.  Since even the very idea of non-duality requires both logically and conceptually the total denial of even the very idea of duality, it becomes necessary—logically as well as conceptually—to bring in the idea of duality even if only to fully reject it eventually….—p. 42

…Since all duality in any form is necessarily illusory and also logically absurd according to Sankara, everything that he says by way of explaining our perceptions of duality has to be taken as simply pedagogic devices solely aimed at dispelling the ignorance of seekers.  Such seeker-directedness of doctrines should not be taken either as a proper or as a legitimate part of the Advaitic view of reality. After all, Sankara brilliantly combined within himself very seamlessly the roles of both the philosopher using critical devices and the great teacher using pedagogic devices specially required by the kind of subtle, non-dualistic ideas that he was always most seriously trying to communicate.—p. 44

…Any competent teacher like Sankara actually helps the seekers realize that all duality is an illusion.  Hence it is simply irrational and  absurd to believe that while all the Sankhyans are wrong in believing in acetana prakrti to be the cause of the world, all Advaitins are quite right in believing in an acetana maya to be the cause of the world. It is so simply because there is really nothing that is truly acetana anywhere and at any time.  It is therefore equally impossible and absurd to hold that Sankara, a great philosopher, in the same breath both opposed and held as untenable the acetana prakrti of the Sankhyans as the acetana cause of the acetana world, and at the same time also upheld as perfectly tenable his own idea of an acetana maya as the acetana cause of the acetana world.  How at all could Sankara, (p.45) after severely criticizing Sankhyans for committing a very grave mistake, himself commit exactly that very mistake?—pp. 45-46

…Since Sankara happens to be one of the most brilliant and committed teachers of the sole truth of non-duality, we must take with a very large pinch of salt any of his statements that have received interpretations by any of his commentators as even very preliminary justifications of just any form of duality.—p. 46

…two strategies of interpretation are to be completely (p.46) ruled out in the case of Sankara’s writings: (1) interpreting his statements as directly or indirectly supportive or justificatory of any duality, dualism or dualistic doctrines, and (2) interpreting his statements in such a way that they may come into direct or indirect, actual or possible, conflict with the thesis of the sole truth of non-duality.  Wherever we find the commentators using these two strategies, we may very safely disregard their interpretations because they will all invariably be completely contrary to Sankara’s central purpose of establishing the sole truth and tenability of only non-duality and nothing else whatever.—pp. 46-47

Ch. 3 Logical Possibilities

…There is no logical rule that the objects normally apprehended by senses and the mind must be apprehended only by the senses and the mind and that they cannot therefore be apprehended in just any other way.  Sense apprehension cannot logically exclude any or all other forms of apprehension….—p. 54

            3.15 The term “Advaita” can be understood in two senses.  In the first sense, it can mean that the Ultimate Reality and the way it is known are not different.  If Advaita is understood in this specific sense, any non-difference between “Reality” and “Experience” becomes a presupposition or fundamental postulate of Advaita doctrine.  In the second sense, Advaita may also be understood as meaning that there is nothing else which is other than the Ultimate Reality, i.e., it is “not-two”.  If this is also presupposed, only then could anyone object to some of the cognitive possibilities listed at the beginning of this chapter. But then that objector is already solidly presupposing Advaita before offering any proof for its acceptability and validity.—p. 59

3.32 …According to traditional Advaita, the mis-perception of the rope is also very much a perception proper, but only a perception of a false snake.  Similarly, the Advaitin has very powerfully argued that from the paramarthika or the highest point of view (of Brahman), all empirical descriptions of objects are totally wrong (and also all empirical objects false) and therefore all such descriptions have as their referents a whole range of what we all may have to necessarily call “false objects”.—p. 67

3.34 …If the world itself is not there, neither the illusion of the snake nor of anything else is possible; then, even the :Experience” of “Reality” is never possible.  The empirical reality itself, seen in a totally new light, experienced in a different way, is the non-empirical and trans-empirical reality—the “Reality”.  Only the “reality” which is “experienced” by all of us here and now is itself the “Reality”; there is no other “Reality”.—p. 68

Ch. 16

6.1 There is a very famous epigrammatic description of the traditional Advaitic thesis which runs as follows:

(x) “Brahma satyam jaganmithyaa jiivo Brahmaiva naaparah” or Brahman is real, the world is illusory (mithyaa) and the individual self (jiiva) is none other than Brahman.

16.2 The above assertion is, logically speaking, the most incoherent. One cannot simultaneously assert both the reality of Brahman and the illusory nature of the world and also claim an equal degree of certainty or equal truth for both.  The truth of Brahman is vouched for by Brahmaanubhava.  The falsity of the world is, as it has already been very clearly shown, the result of reasoning which has adopted Brahmaanubhava as a criterion. The two assertions therefore belong to two radically different strata.—p. 178