Sankara and Buddhism

[Guest guest]

Namaskar!

 

If you all can bear with me, permit me to narrate one

of my dreams. I was in my village and an elephant of

my childhood days was passing by. The poor animal was

just a bag of bones - totally famished and suffering.

I embraced his trunk and tried to console him saying

"Call Mother, call Mother! She will take care of you."

(My Ishta Devatha is the Universal Mother.). I tried

to wipe his tears. It was then that I realized that

his head was pressing against me and my back was

against a wall. An elephant is an elephant no matter

how emaciated he is and the pressure of his temple was

already hurting and suffocating me. I was in great

pain and I could hear my ribs crack. The vedantic

thought that I cannot be different from what I

experience suddenly occurred to me and in a

split-second it dawned on me that I was the elephant,

I was his temple, I was his tears, I was the pressure

on my chest, I was the sound of my ribs fracturing, I

was my pain and what not. I called out "Mother,

Mother!" (That is what I habitually do in difficult

situations either in the waking state or in dreams.)

and woke up weeping. The tears I wept then were tears

of unfathomable joy because I could immediately

surmise Christ's thoughts on the Cross. “I am my

crucifiers, I am the cross, I am the nails, I am the

blood, I am the pain and if I am the pain, can that

pain hurt me?!”. So, he looked down upon his

tormentors and smiled! Can there be a better

explanation for Christ's smile?

 

Please don't misunderstand me. The intent of narrating

this dream is not to claim Christ's greatness. I only

want to say that an advaitin perhaps understands Him

better. I also thought that it would articulate my

current thinking and answer the current conundrum

concerning Sankara and his refutation of Budhhism.

Consciousness pervades everything. Consciousness can

be “visualized” (Please don’t take the literal

meaning.) as flowing into different entities and

taking their “shapes” (all attributes included). Thus,

whatever I “see” (all sense organs and means of

knowledge included) is Consciousness. The entities

thus “seen” do not exist independently of

Consciousness. When I look at the Sun, I see the Sun

only. At that moment, I am not aware of my body, my

individual identity, my mind or thoughts. There is

only the Sun – Consciousness. As an experience, we

call the object perceived as Sun because it is

conditioned by its form which has relevance only in

relation to space and time. And space and time are

also nothing other than Consciousness when I am

separately aware of them. Remove the form and name,

what remains is Consciousness and that is Me!

 

To articulate further, in my teens, I happened to

stumble upon the Malayalam translation of an English

book titled “The World We Live In”, in which the

author had

foreseen a very bleak future for our Earth. He had

surmised how the Sun

will grow into a red giant and lose its gravitational

force, how the earth

will stray out of its orbit and wander in the

wilderness of space – cold and

barren without any life. A bleak scenario, indeed,

and, in those days, it

used to worry me much. However, no more worries now

thanks to Sri Sankara,

for now I know that that scenario has no substance

without there being a

Consciousness to appreciate (see) it.

 

The other day, I chanced upon Carl Sagan’s science

fiction work “The Contact” written in the eighties.

It tells the story of earthlings’ first contact around

the turn of the Millenium (It has not happened yet!)

with a far superior extraterrestrial intelligence

capable of even inter-galactic engineering. Sagan

concludes at the end of his novel in italics: “There

is an intelligence that antedates the universe”. Here

is a classic example of the West missing the Indian

bus! Russel missed it. Huxley too. And several other

great names. For them all, that Intelligence and the

Universe were always separate, different entities.

That is what we call “avidya” – crudely translated

into English “ignorance”. Thank God, we are lucky! We

have the Sanakara Bus!

 

The Advaitin remains in the constant awareness of the

Truth that he himself is the whole experienced

Universe (matter, space, time, thoughts – everything

included). For him, there is no distinction between

the manifest form and the Truth behind it. It is one

“fullness” without any division as crisply stated in

the Upanishadic verse “Poornamatha Poornamidam”. It

is never “Soonyamatha, Soonyamidam” as a nihilist

would like to describe! And, living constantly in

this “fullness” is samadhi. I believe this is what

Sankara concluded. It was not a refutation of

anything. It was only an assertion. The problem, in

my humble opinion, is that we often get bogged down in

the mires of intellectual profundity when the simple

process of “contemplation” can show us the way.

 

Someone cited the problem of infinite regression in

the long discussion on this topic. Isn’t this problem

a result of “ignorance” (I mean “avidya.) again? As

Bhagwan Ramana advised, can’t we not ask the question:

“Who is aware of this infinite regression?” and

conclude that there is a “seer” behind it. Here

again, “infinite regression” becomes the object and

its perceiver the subject. Both together is one Whole

: “Poornamatha, Poornamidam”. The conundrum ends.

Sankara triumphs.

 

The other point I want highlight is the meaning of

“Nethi, Nethi”. It is generally and poorly translated

as “Not this, not this”. Even a rudimentary

knowledge of Sanskrit can tell us that it is “Na Ithi,

Na Ithi” meaning “Not like this, not like this”. So,

when a meditator is aware of his body, he does not say

“I am not this, I am not this”. He needs to know only

that “I am not like this, I am not like this.”. Here,

the body is not “negated”. It is fully accepted – but

without the conditionings – form, gunas etc. Then

what remains is Consciousness! This applies to the

mind (thoughts), intellect, and the whole universe.

Nothing is outside it. Poornamatha, Poornamidam.

 

At the feet of Sri Sankara always! Where else can I

go?!

 

My humble pranams to everyone. Forgive me if I have

indulged.

 

M.R. NAIR

 

 

 

 

 

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