Sakshin, Shakespeare and advaita

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Hello Michael,

 

Thanks for your kind reply (ombhurbhuva, 29 Nov) quoting a translation

of Dharmaraja Adhvarindra's 'Vedanta Paribhasa', where "the witness in

the individual self" is described as "different in each individual".

Yes, this does help to clarify matters, because it explains that you

were using the word 'witness' in a rather different way from Shri

Atmananda.

 

In the passage you quote, the "individual self" is a personal 'jiva'.

It is a seeming 'jiva-atma', with a seeming 'jiva-sakshin'. The

'sakshin' or 'witness' here not completely impersonal. It is still

associated with personality in a way that makes it seem different from

person to person. The position here is akin to Vishishtadvaita and

Samkhya. This is not the witness that is described in strict advaita,

at the highest level of Shri Shankara's teachings. That witness is

completely impersonal, according to Shri Atmananda. Just as it is the

same at all different times in each person's experience, so also it is

the same from person to person.

 

You also helpfully add Swami Madhavananda's note: "Although the witness

is the same as Brahman, yet since it manifests as possessing the

limiting adjunct of the mind, it is considered to be different

according to different minds." Here, if you note the words "it is

considered to be different", perhaps you can see that they could be

taken to indicate a difference which is not real, but only a seeming

attribution "according to different minds".

 

Moreover, in your subsequent quote from Shri Shankara's commentary on

the Brh.Up. (IV.iii.7), there is no mention of the witness (sakshin),

but only of the discerning intellect (vijnyana). According to Shri

Atmananda, the witness is not this discerning intellect. Instead, the

witness is that one same knowing principle which illumines all

discernment. It is utterly impersonal, beneath all differences of name

and form and quality. Though personalities are discerned to have

different names and forms and qualities, no such difference can be

discerned in the witness.

 

There is no way of discerning the witness as different in different

personalities. For this very discernment of personal differences

implies a witness that stays present through their variation from

person to person, just as it stays present from one moment to another.

That witness is thus common to all personalities, anytime and

everywhere. It is the same universally, as it is individually. It is

the common basis of all understanding between different persons, just

as it is the common basis of all different memories and anticipations

in each person's mind.

 

That common presence of the witness is illustrated in one of Nitya

Tripta's 'Notes on Spiritual Discourses of Shri Atmananda' (11th Nov

1952, # 375):

 

"...Shakespeare, in his dramas, has created diverse characters of

conflicting types, each with a perfection possible to perfection alone.

A writer who has an individuality and character of his own can

successfully depict only characters of a nature akin to his own. It is

only one who stands beyond all characters, or in other words as

witness, that can be capable of such a wonderful performance as

Shakespeare has done. Therefore I say Shakespeare must have been a

jivan-mukta."

 

Is it stretching things to far to think of Shakespeare as an advaitin?

To suggest that this may not be so, three of Shakespeare's verse

compositions are appended, as a postscript to this message. Your

phrase, "structure and paradox", comes particularly to my mind in

relation to the third composition (from 'The Phoenix and the Turtle').

 

Ananda

 

--------------------------------

 

Sonnet 146

 

Poor soul the centre of my sinful earth,

My sinful earth these rebel powers array,

Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth

Painting thy outward walls so costly gay?

Why so large cost having so short a lease,

Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend?

Shall worms inheritors of this excess

Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end?

Then soul live thou upon thy servant's loss,

And let that pine to aggravate thy store;

Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross;

Within be fed, without be rich no more,

So shall thou feed on death, that feeds on men,

And death once dead, there's no more dying then.

 

 

Sonnet 116

 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments, love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come,

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

 

>From 'The Phoenix and the Turtle'

 

So they lov'd, as love in twain

Had the essence but in one;

Two distincts, division none:

Number there in love was slain.

 

Hearts remote, yet not asunder;

Distance, and no space was seen

'Twixt the turtle and his queen:

But in them it were a wonder.

 

So between them love did shine,

That the turtle saw his right

Flaming in the phoenix' sight;

Either was the other's mine.

 

Property was thus appall'd,

that the self was not the same;

Single nature's double name

Neither two nor one was call'd.

 

Reason, in itself confounded,

Saw division grow together;

To themselves yet either neither,

Simple were so well compounded,

 

That it cried, 'How true a twain

Seemeth this concordant one!

Love hath reason, reason none,

If what parts can so remain.'