Advaita (Part 1)

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The following is from an issue of WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT magazine:

 

Advaita

 

Introduction

 

 

ADVAITA PHILOSOPHY, or VEDANTIC NONDUALISM, has become, along with

Buddhism, one of the most popular spiritual paths being pursued by

those interested in enlightenment today. During the past three

decades, Advaita has become more widely recognized in the West

through the ever growing popularity of Ramana Maharshi, considered by

many to be modern India's greatest spiritual giant.

We, like many Western spiritual practitioners, also first came into

contact with Advaita philosophy, the Hindu philosophy of nonduality

(oneness, or more precisely not-two-ness), through the teachings of

the great Ramana Maharshi. Endeavoring to acquire a deeper

understanding of the background and philosophical context of this

profound and ever more influential teaching, we looked back to its

source, to the man who is widely recognized as its founder, the

eighth century religious philosopher and master teacher Shankara.

Advaita Vedanta is considered the crown jewel of Indian philosophy,

and Shankara's powerful influence can be felt throughout most modern

schools of Indian thought. Originally we had believed that he was the

legendary figure that he is often described to be in the traditional

literature: the enlightened genius maverick who not only defeated the

dominance of Buddhist philosophy and any and all other opposing

religious views in medieval India, but also single-handedly

reestablished the glory and reign of traditional Vedantic doctrine.

But as we probed beneath the popular interpretation of Shankara's

life, we found out that much of what has been proclaimed about him is

the stuff that myths are made ofand, in fact, knowledge of the actual

circumstances of his life is extremely sketchy at best, to the point

that even his reported date of birth varies by a hundred years. What

we do know is that Shankara was a master philosopher-sage who put

great emphasis on a rigorous interpretation of Vedantic scripture

strictly in accord with the doctrine of advaita, or nonduality. In

traditional Advaita philosophy (which can be simply defined as the

Upanishadic declaration, Thou Art That Immortal Self Absolute!),

spiritual knowledge was sought not through yogic experience as much

as it was through the systematic practice of discriminating the Real

from the unreal, supported by the study of the scriptures.

Noted scholar Georg Feuerstein summarizes the advaita realization as

follows: "The manifold universe is, in truth, a Single Reality. There

is only one Great Being, which the sages call Brahman, in which all

the countless forms of existence reside. That Great Being is utter

Consciousness, and It is the very Essence, or Self (Atman) of all

beings." The special glory and liberating power of these

extraordinary teachings of nonduality (known to be the most direct

path to enlightenment) is not only their potential to enlighten the

seeker in the present lifetime, but even more, their potential to

liberate the ripe individual instantaneously from the bondage of

conditioned existence. There have been impressive living

demonstrations of this profound attainment in recent times, in the

example of the saint and sage Ramana Maharshi; the remarkable

cigarette-smoking jnani [self-realized individual] from Bombay,

Nisargadatta Maharaj; the recently deceased renegade master and "lion

of Lucknow," H.W.L. Poonja; and the unassuming Ajja, who resides

effortlessly in an intensely blissful, unbroken awareness of the

Self, introduced to the Western world for the first time in this

issue of What Is Enlightenment?

 

 

[i am] the nature of Pure Consciousness. I am always the same to

beings, one alone; [i am] the highest Brahman, which, like the sky,

is all-pervading, imperishable, auspicious, uninterrupted, undivided

and devoid of action. I do not belong to anything since I am free

from attachment. [i am] the highest Brahman . . . ever-shining,

unborn, one alone, imperishable, stainless, all-pervading, and

nondualThat am I, and I am forever released.

Shankara, The Upadesasahasri

 

 

 

While Advaita's profound inspiration and power to liberate is

undeniable, its worldview has not been without its critics. Even

though "modern" Advaita seems to emphasize the indivisible nature of

the world and Brahman, or the Self Absolute, Advaita philosophy has

traditionally expressed, as noted religious scholar Lance Nelson

points out, a "deep metaphysical bias against the world. . . . In the

end, the Advaita tradition fails to present a true nondualism of

world and Absolute. . . . It is rather an acosmic monism. It achieves

its nonduality not inclusively, but exclusively. Empirical reality is

admitted in a provisional way, but in the end it is cast out of the

Absolute, out of existence. From the highest perspective, the world

is simply not there [emphases ours]." Once again, even though modern

proponents of Advaita do not appear to exclude the world in their

vision of nonduality, in the classical view, the world is clearly

recognized as being either completely unreal, or only partially real.

And this is what Advaita has been historically criticized for.

Precisely because of its emphasis on the ultimate unreality and

illusory nature of the world and embodied existence, any teaching of

how to live in the world is entirely absent. More specifically, the

nondual teaching does not in any way address the ethical or moral

dimension of human life. And even though modern Advaita does not seem

to exclude the world in its nondual view, it still is devoid of any

teaching that addresses the realities of human life.

Interestingly enough, it appears that historically Advaita did not

address ethical or moral questions because, according to Nelson, the

highest nondual teachings were "never intended to be a philosophy for

the general public." In fact, he states that they were "formulated by

and for a narrow spiritual elite of male brahmins [members of the

highest, priestly class], primarily sannyasins [renunciates], who

alone were believed qualified to fully appropriate its import." This

practically would have meant that the individual to whom the absolute

teachings were revealed would have already fulfilled the demanding

moral and ethical qualifications for discipleship. And even more than

that, Shankara himself states that the qualifications for

discipleship also demanded an extraordinary degree of detachment from

and transcendence of worldly desires:

 

The pupil must be dispassionate toward all things noneternal. . . .

[Having] abandoned the desire for sons, wealth and worlds, endowed

with self-control [and] compassion, he is a brahmin who is internally

and externally pure, whose thought is calm, who has reached

tranquility. . . . [Thus] let him go to a spiritual teacher who is

learned in the scriptures and established in Brahman.

The Upadesasahasri

 

 

 

The unusual phenomenon occurring in the postmodern spiritual

marketplace is that now, as never before in history, what were once

considered the highest esoteric teachings, revealed only to those who

were prepared and had proven themselves worthy of their unimaginable

depth and subtlety, are available to anyone who wanders into a

spiritual bookstore. An important question seems to be: Are most

seekers genuinely prepared for the psychological upheaval and world-

shattering shift of perception that penetration into the Absolute

unleashes? Advaita's emphasis on the illusory nature of embodied

existence has the potential to give license to human weakness and

self-indulgence if the individual is not already firmly grounded in a

fundamentally wholesome relationship to life. The unwholesome

tendencies characterized by narcissistic, neurotic and deeply cynical

convictions so common today create a dangerously weak foundation for

a nondual perspective that transcends all pairs of opposites,

including right and wrong. While Advaita's great strength is its

singular, unwavering emphasis on the Absolute dimension of existence,

its weakness is revealed in the limited scope of its singularity. And

while any truly absolute view must, by definition, transcend all

distinctions, the inherent potential of Advaita or non dualism to

inspire a worldview that is perilously empty of any value whatsoever

is enormous. Indeed, the potential for escape, rather than genuine

transcendence, is great in such an absolute teaching. For to be

embraced, absorbed and utterly consumed by the Absolute is one

thingbut to escape from the inherent complexity of life in order to

avoid the overwhelming demand that true surrender requires is another

thing altogether.