Sankara: The Personality and Its Environment

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SANKARA

Source:http://rkmission-halli.org/

 

Sankara: The Personality and Its Environment

 

Conscious of a great message that he was to deliver and the mission

that he was to fulfill in this country, we find Sankara, while yet a

boy, leaving his home with a firm resolve to bend all his energies

and resources towards that end. If we are to appreciate his work, we

have to capture an understanding of the climate of thought in which

he lived and functioned. He is a remarkable specimen of Indian

humanity of those times. If we can get a close view of these

two things - the environment and the personality - we shall be able

to assess the type of work done by him and see whether we have any

lesson to learn from his life and work. Possessed of extraordinary

powers, this young boy, highly intelligent and deeply conscious of

his mission, has worked wonders in the cultural, philosophical, and

religious fields of Indian life.

 

We can know and appreciate better the great work that Sankara has

done by a consideration of the background of contemporary historical

conditions. At that time, there were various conflicting systems of

thought in India, and the condition that prevailed can be best

characterized as nebulous. Politically as well as socially,

philosophically as well as religiously, there was no central

rallying point from which men could view the entire panorama of

Indian thought and say: `Here is the unity of India'. The several

systems of thought were narrow and self-sufficient and had nothing

to do with each other. That is why I said that our thought and

religious life then were nebulous. The country was divided into

various sects and creeds and they only paid lip allegiance to the

Vedas; even this was thoughtless and uncritical.

 

Politically, as it happened so often in the history of India, and

let us hope it will not happen in future, the country was divided

into a congeries of little states. On the death of the last Buddhist

sovereign, Emperor Harsha, who had brought about some sort of

political unity of India by bringing these states under his empire,

the political equilibrium was disturbed, and Hindustan again became

divided into small states fighting with each other without any

common loyalty to unite them. Thus politically, philosophically,

culturally, and religiously, there was no central rallying point. It

was at such a time that the master mind of Sankara set to work to

produce unity in the field of religion, culture, and philosophy,

leaving the political aspect of it to be worked out by future

generations. But even what he had undertaken was a

gigantic task for a single individual.

 

Sankara's Life-Mission

 

We find clearly from a study of Sankara's career that his purpose

was to reduce to unity and harmony, under the hegemony of Vedanta,

the multiplicity of conflicting thought systems, without destroying

the integrity of the prevalent faiths. He could have brought

everything to a dead dull level of uniformity,but he did not do

that; for it militated against his idea of the richness of

diversity in the world of faiths. Unity was his aim and not

uniformity - unity in diversity. Diversity connotes richness. But

diversity, when it destroys the central unifying cord, becomes

chaotic and an enemy of all progress and well-being of a community.

Therefore, the purpose of all the great thinkers in this country has

been, and is, to preserve the variety and to subordinate it to

an overriding unity. The operation of this idea has created harmony

out of all the diverse thoughts and faiths in this land, instead of

reducing everything to a single uniform faith at the point of sword,

as has happened in some other countries.

 

It is a federation of faiths that Sankara established through a

struggle based on reason and free discussion designed to appeal to

the heart and mind of the people. As such, he fully deserved the

title of `Sanmata-sthapana-acarya' (the teacher who established six

religions) conferred on him by a grateful people. This is what we

get out of the work of Sankara. There were myriads of faiths

justifying themselves through appeals to varying shades of logic and

revelation, but there was no loyalty to a fundamental principle

which could be considered to be mediating element between sect and

sect and party and party.

Sankara tried to introduce this mediating element between these, and

found it in the great philosophy of Vedanta which proclaimed, as

ultimate Reality, a principle that is personal as well as

impersonal, immanent as well as transcendent.

 

In Sankara we find that intense sympathy, a desire to understand

other points of view, and a patient effort at critical appreciation

of thoughts and things. With an iron resolve attuned to a deep

affection and loyalty for the people and the culture of his vast

country, and with a strong conviction that he was born to strengthen

the one and enhance the other, we find him taking up this problem

with a firm determination to produce cosmos out of chaos in the

world of culture and in the mind of man in India. And a sustained

struggle of a lifetime brings to India a measure of unity, harmony,

and order in religion, thought, and culture, which is a record

unparalleled in the history of man.

 

Source: Eternal Values for A Changing Society Volume II - Swami

Ranganathananda

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