SANKARA

 

Will Durant summarises crisply the philosophy of Sankara, which many Indian critics interpret wrongly.

“Sankara establishes the source of his philosophy at a remote and subtle point never quite clearly visioned again until a thousand years later. Immanuel Kant wrote his Critique of Pure Reason. How, he asks, is knowledge possible? Apparently, all our knowledge comes from the senses, and reveals not the external itself, but our sensory adaptation-perhaps transformation of that reality. By sense, then, we can never quite know the "real"; we can know it only in the garb of space, time and cause which may be a web created by our organs of sense and understanding, designed or evolved to catch and hold that fluent and elusive reality whose existence we can surmise, but whose character we never objectively describe; our way of perceiving will forever be inextricable mingled with the thing perceived.

This is not the airy subjectivism of the solipsist who thinks that he can destroy the world by going to sleep. The world exists, but it is Maya-not delusion, but phenomenon, an appearance created partly by our thought. Our incapacity to perceive things except through the film of space and time, or to think of them except in terms of cause and change, is an innate limitation, an ajnana or ignorance whence we see a multiplicity of objects and a flux of change. In truth there is only one Being, and change is 'a mere name' for the superficial fluctuations of forms. Behind the Maya or Veil of change and things, to be reached not by sensation or intellect but only by the insight and intuition of the trained spirits, is the one universal reality, Brahman.”

 

"The doctrine advocated by Sankara is, from a purely philosophical point of view, and apart from all theological considerations, the most important and interesting one which has arisen on Indian soil; neither those forms of the Vedanta which diverge from the view represented by Sahkara, nor any of the non-Vedahtic systems can be compared with the so-called orthodox Vedanta in boldness, depths and subtlety of speculation"

Thibaut

 

Swami Sarvapriyananda said this in a talk. His guru asked him to read Sankara Bhashya. He expressed his apprehension that it would be difficult to follow Sankara. The guru told him that of all bhashyakaras (exegesists), Sankara was the easiest to follow.

Swami Paramarthananda said in a disourse, ‘Sankara does not say so elaborately as I do. He is very precise and crisp.’