Is Shankara a Mayavadin?

[Guest guest]

Namaste, Jaishankar Narayanan.

 

I have always tended to agree that Shankara is not a 'Mayavadin'

and that his insight into 'the world' has been often misunderstood,

and perhaps Aurobindo misunderstood what Shankara meant, but I admit

I have sometimes had to hold this view in spite of what Shankara

supposedly said (but I am limited to English translations). My

sense has been that Shankara couldn't possibly have meant what

he sometimes seems to be saying, or what some people say he meant.

 

But I am no authority and have much to learn. I hope my sense that

Shankara is really a "realistic Brahmavadin' will be borne out by

further studies.

 

But the difficulty many of us have with knowing how Shankara

should be understood is illustrated by an expression in your

post which is in tension with what Frank previously said, and

which I thought you were agreeing with. Frank said that illusion

only arises where it is thought that things are realities separate

from Brahman; otherwise everything is real and is Brahman. I take

this to be a "Realistic Advaita Vedanta" like that of Aurobindo.

 

But in your post you say: "all our Shastras are only interested in

establishing the Atma as Brahman and they are not interested in

establishing Maya. Maya is only introduced as a means to explain

away the apparent world." This expression "to explain away the

apparent world" is the type of expression which leads many people

to suspect that Shankara was an illusionist Mayavadin.

>From prior posts I have read on this list, which I have saved

and hope to re-read soon, I know that there are some subtleties

in the philosophy of Advaita Vedanta which are difficult to

explain, especially for us Westerners (my area of 'experise' is

actually Western Existential Phenomenology). I confess that I

am finding it difficult to 'pin down' what is really the correct

interpretation of Shankara's views on reality, maya and Brahman.

And until I get a better grasp of that, I can't evaluate whether

or not Aurobindo had a good grasp of Shankara.

 

You note:

>I think the problem with people like Aurobindo is that they did not have a

>traditional Guru.

 

Aurobindo DID have a guru at the beginning of his yoga sadhana,

but I can't tell you much about him. Aurobindo was innovative,

however, but this is what makes him so attractive to some of us.

 

It may be that what you mean is he didn't have a good Advaitin

guru, and this may very well be true. I don't know the details

about this guru (I can find out). It may be that the guru was

more of a 'yoga guru' than of an 'Advaitin guru'.

 

Namaste,

-- Max

 

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