| Shankara (788-820),
Indian philosopher and religious thinker who developed Advaita Vedanta,
a system of philosophical thought within Hinduism. According to tradition,
Shankara was born into a Brahman family in Kaladi, on the Malabar Coast
of south India (now part of the state of Kerala). He studied the Vedas,
ancient sacred Hindu texts, under Indian philosopher Govinda, according
to tradition a disciple of Indian philosopher Gaudapada, who first established
the principles of Advaita. Shankara rejected material comforts early in
his youth, choosing to become a sannyasin (one who has relinquished the
worldly life in order to seek spiritual enlightenment). He traveled widely
across India, defending the principles of Advaita against opponents from
various religious sects and schools of philosophy. He attracted many disciples
and established religious communities and temples in all parts of India-at
Puri in the east, Dvaraka in the west, Shringeri in the south, and Badarinath
in the Himalayas to the north.
Shankara is believed to have died at Kedarnath, high in the Himalayas.
Shankara's philosophical thought is preserved in his commentaries on Hindu
religious texts such as the Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Vedanta
Sutra. He sought to revive what he believed to be the central message of
the Upanishads, expressed in the statement tat tvam asi (Sanskrit for "thou
art that"). In Shankara's view, this meant that the individual soul
or self (atman) is fundamentally identical with universal being (Brahman).
The perception that human beings are separate entities is consequently
a distortion arising from spiritual ignorance. Further, Shankara believed
that since Brahman is absolute and undifferentiated from the self (hence
the term advaita, or nondual), the entire familiar world of experience
(samsara) has no independent reality. Rather, it is a dreamlike appearance
projected by ignorance onto the pure consciousness of Brahman. All creatures
are tied to samsara by the bonds of karma, the accumulated consequences
of actions in previous lives. The key to achieving release from samsara
is right knowledge (jñana), which through a spontaneous mystical
illumination reveals the fundamental oneness of reality.
The concept of Brahman in Advaita Vedanta is fundamentally different
from the monotheism, or belief in one God, of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam. Brahman is a transcendent, timeless, undifferentiated state of being,
and is in a strict sense indescribable. Since Brahman is theoretically
all-pervasive, Shankara had to explain the existence of the familiar, experiential
world of samsara. His solution was that samsara is the product of a process
called superimposition (adhyasa). Through adhyasa, the unity formed by
atman and Brahman is refracted as a multitude of conscious beings on the
one hand, and as God (Ishvara) on the other.
God becomes both the material cause (what anything is made of) and the
efficient cause (the power acting to produce the work) of the physical
universe (see Causality). Nevertheless, Shankara taught that the removal
of ignorance will lead to the realization that atman-Brahman is the only
reality, and that the physical universe, individuals, and even God are
ultimately unreal. A qualified philosophical monism, which made possible
the idea of a God in the more traditional sense, was developed in response
to Shankara by Indian philosopher Ramanuja in the 11th century.
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