Advaita Vedāntaअद्वैत वेदांत

Advaita Vedānta (Sanskrit a-dvaita, “not-two”, “non-dual”) is the school of Vedānta which holds that Brahman alone is real, that the world of many things is an appearance of Brahman, and that the individual self (jīva) is, in its true nature, identical with Brahman. Its classical statement, often summarised in half a verse, is: brahma satyaṃ jagan mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ — “Brahman is real, the world is false (or: an appearance), the individual self is Brahman alone and not other.” Liberation (Mokṣa) is therefore not reaching something new but realising what one has always been: the removal of ignorance (avidyā) by knowledge (jñāna). Systematised by Ādi Śaṅkara (c. 700–750) on foundations laid by Gauḍapāda, and developed by a long line of brilliant successors, Advaita became the most influential school of Indian philosophy, the main voice of Hinduism in the modern world, and one of the most radical metaphysics ever proposed: that you and the absolute are one, and that the world you see is something like a dream from which you can wake.

History

Roots in the Upaniṣads

Advaitins claim simply to restate the Upaniṣads, and the Upaniṣads give them their great sayings, the mahāvākyas:

• prajñānaṃ brahma — “Consciousness is Brahman” (Aitareya 3.3, Ṛg Veda)
• ahaṃ brahmāsmi — “I am Brahman” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4.10, Yajur Veda)
• tat tvam asi — “That thou art” (Chāndogya 6.8.7, Sāma Veda; see Tat Tvam Asi — Salt in Water)
• ayam ātmā brahma — “This self is Brahman” (Māṇḍūkya 2, Atharva Veda)

They also take from Yājñavalkya the teaching that the Self is the unseen seer, describable only as neti neti, “not this, not this”, and from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad the doctrine that “in the beginning there was only being, one without a second” (6.2.1) and that all change is “a name, a verbal handle” — as all things made of clay are really only clay.

Gauḍapāda

The first surviving systematic Advaita text is the Māṇḍūkya Kārikā (also called Āgama Śāstra) of Gauḍapāda (c. 6th century), traditionally the teacher of Śaṅkara’s teacher. Commenting on the short Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, with its analysis of the four states of consciousness — waking, dreaming, deep sleep and the “fourth” (turīya) — Gauḍapāda argued that the waking world is no more real than a dream; that nothing has ever really originated (ajātivāda, “the doctrine of non-origination”); and that the one unchanging consciousness only seems to become many, as a firebrand whirled in a circle seems to make a ring of fire. His arguments and vocabulary resemble those of Buddhist Madhyamaka and Yogācāra, and critics later accused Advaita of being “Buddhism in disguise” (pracchanna-bauddha).

Śaṅkara

Ādi Śaṅkara, traditionally born in Kālaḍi in Kerala, made Advaita the leading school of Vedānta in a short life filled, according to legend, with debates across India. His commentaries — on the Brahma Sūtras, the principal Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā — together with the independent treatise Upadeśasāhasrī (“A Thousand Teachings”), are the classics of the school. Tradition credits him with founding four monasteries (maṭhas) at Śṛṅgeri, Dvārakā, Purī and Badrīnāth, and organising the Daśanāmī order of renunciants.

After Śaṅkara

Śaṅkara’s pupils Sureśvara (Naiṣkarmyasiddhi) and Padmapāda (Pañcapādikā), and his older contemporary Maṇḍana Miśra (Brahmasiddhi), developed his ideas. Two sub-schools emerged, distinguished by their answer to the question “where does ignorance reside?”: the Bhāmatī school of Vācaspati Miśra (9th–10th century), for whom ignorance resides in the individual selves; and the Vivaraṇa school of Prakāśātman (c. 10th century), for whom it resides in Brahman itself, as its locus and object. Śrīharṣa’s Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya (“The Sweets of Refutation”, 12th century) used the logic of Nyāya to demolish all definitions of everything — showing that the world of distinctions cannot be coherently described. Vidyāraṇya’s Pañcadaśī (14th century) became a popular manual. Madhusūdana Sarasvatī’s Advaitasiddhi (16th century) answered the Dvaita school’s attack point by point, and combined Advaita with fervent devotion to Kṛṣṇa. Short, popular texts — the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (“Crest-Jewel of Discrimination”, attributed to Śaṅkara), the Aṣṭāvakra Gītā, the Yoga Vāsiṣṭha — spread Advaita far beyond scholars.

Metaphysics

Brahman

Brahman is the one reality. It is pure being (sat), pure consciousness (cit) and pure bliss (ānanda) — saccidānanda — not as three qualities it possesses, but as what it is. It has no parts, no qualities, no internal distinctions, no relations: it is nirguṇa, “without attributes”. Words cannot describe it; scripture points to it by negation (neti neti) or by “secondary implication” (lakṣaṇā), as when we say “the village on the Ganges” to mean the village on the bank.

Brahman is not an object that consciousness knows. It is consciousness — the light by which everything else is known, which cannot itself become an object, as the eye cannot see itself. It is also not something distant: it is the innermost Self (ātman) of every being, the witness (sākṣin) of the waking, dreaming and sleeping states, present in all of them and changed by none.

Three levels of reality

Advaita reconciles its monism with experience by distinguishing three levels of reality (sattā):

1. Pāramārthika — absolute reality: Brahman alone, which is never contradicted by any experience.
2. Vyāvahārika — empirical or conventional reality: the world of everyday experience, of persons, things, causes, duties and gods. It is real for all practical purposes, shared by everyone, and contradicted only by the knowledge of Brahman. Here the Advaitin can accept the epistemology of Mīmāṃsā and the ritual and moral duties of the Veda.
3. Prātibhāsika — apparent or illusory reality: dreams, hallucinations, the snake seen in a rope — contradicted even by ordinary waking experience.

The world is not nothing. It is not like a “son of a barren woman” or a “hare’s horn”, which are simply unreal (tuccha). It is experienced, and it works. But it is not ultimately real either, because it is contradicted by the knowledge of Brahman, as the dream is contradicted by waking.

Māyā and the rope-snake

How does the one Brahman appear as many? Advaita’s answer is Māyā, also called avidyā (ignorance) — the power by which Brahman appears as the world. The classic illustration is the rope and the snake: in dim light, a man sees a rope lying on the path and takes it for a snake. He is frightened; his heart races; the snake is “real” for him. When a lamp is brought, he sees the rope. The snake does not go anywhere; it never existed. Yet the rope was always there, and without it the snake could not have appeared. So the world appears in Brahman through ignorance; when knowledge dawns, the world is seen to have been Brahman all along.

Māyā itself is indescribable (anirvacanīya): it cannot be called real, since it is sublated by knowledge; nor unreal, since it appears; nor both, which is contradictory. It is beginningless but can be ended. Ignorance has two powers: concealment (āvaraṇa), which hides the rope, and projection (vikṣepa), which projects the snake.

Causation: appearance, not transformation

Advaita accepts the Sāṃkhya view that effects pre-exist in their causes, but transforms it. The world is not a real transformation (pariṇāma) of Brahman, as milk really becomes curd — that would make Brahman changeable and divisible. It is an apparent transformation (vivarta), as the rope “becomes” the snake: the cause is unchanged, the effect is an appearance. This theory, vivartavāda, is the hallmark of Advaita.

Superimposition

Śaṅkara’s commentary on the Brahma Sūtras opens with a famous preface on adhyāsa, “superimposition”: the appearance of something in something else, “the apparent presentation, in the form of remembrance, of something previously seen in another thing”. We superimpose the not-self on the Self, and the Self on the not-self: we say “I am fat”, “I am blind”, “I am happy”, mixing the properties of body, senses and mind with the pure consciousness that witnesses them. Our whole ordinary life — ritual, morality, knowledge, scripture itself — operates within this superimposition. The purpose of Vedānta is to remove it.

God

There is a personal God, Īśvara: Brahman as seen through māyā, the creator, sustainer and destroyer of the world, the dispenser of karma, the object of worship. Īśvara is real at the empirical level and worship of him is valuable. But he is not the final truth; he is saguṇa Brahman, “Brahman with qualities”, the highest form in which the formless absolute appears to the mind still bound by ignorance. This “two-level” theology made Advaita both inclusive — every god can be seen as Brahman — and, to its theistic critics, insulting to God.

The individual self

The individual self, the jīva, is Brahman appearing limited by the adjuncts (upādhis) of body and mind. Advaitins offer two images. In the theory of limitation (avaccheda), associated with the Bhāmatī school, the self is like the space inside a pot: it seems separate, but when the pot is broken it is seen to have been the one space all along. In the theory of reflection (pratibimba), associated with the Vivaraṇa school, the self is like the sun reflected in many pools of water: each reflection seems distinct and trembles with its pool, but there is only one sun.

Knowledge and liberation

What liberates

For Advaita, the cause of bondage is ignorance, and only knowledge can remove ignorance — as only light, not action, removes darkness. Ritual and moral action cannot liberate, because they belong to the world of distinctions (agent, act, result) produced by ignorance, and because liberation is not something to be produced: it is the eternal nature of the Self. Action and devotion are valuable only as preparation, purifying the mind (citta-śuddhi) so that it can receive knowledge. This position set Śaṅkara against both Mīmāṃsā and, later, the theistic Vedāntins.

The path

The classic Advaita path has four qualifications (sādhana-catuṣṭaya): discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal; dispassion toward the enjoyment of results here and hereafter; six virtues — calm, self-control, withdrawal, endurance, faith and concentration; and a burning desire for liberation. The aspirant then undertakes three practices: śravaṇa, hearing the teaching of the Upaniṣads from a qualified teacher; manana, reflecting on it to remove doubts; and nididhyāsana, sustained contemplation until the knowledge becomes direct.

What is known is not a new fact but the meaning of the mahāvākya tat tvam asi. “That” (Brahman, the cause of the world) and “thou” (the individual) seem to have contradictory properties — omniscient and limited, creator and created. Their identity is understood by setting aside these contradictory properties and grasping the pure consciousness common to both, as in “this is that Devadatta” we identify a man seen now with one seen years ago, ignoring the different times and places.

Liberation while living

Because liberation is knowledge, it can happen here and now. The jīvanmukta, “liberated while living”, continues to live until the karma that produced the present body is exhausted — like a potter’s wheel that keeps spinning after the potter stops turning it, or an arrow already in flight — but acts without ego, without attachment, and without accruing new karma. At death comes videha-mukti, liberation without body. Strictly, though, there is no one who becomes liberated: the Self was never bound. As Gauḍapāda says: “There is no dissolution, no origination, no one in bondage, no aspirant, no seeker of liberation and no liberated one — this is the highest truth” (Māṇḍūkya Kārikā 2.32).

Criticisms

Advaita has been attacked from every side, and its responses have produced some of the most subtle arguments in Indian philosophy.

Rāmānuja’s seven untenabilities. In his Śrī Bhāṣya, Rāmānuja attacked māyā: (1) Where does ignorance reside? Not in Brahman, which is pure knowledge; not in the individual self, which is itself a product of ignorance. (2) What does it conceal? Brahman is self-luminous and cannot be concealed. (3) Its nature: if “indescribable”, it is nothing at all. (4) If neither real nor unreal, it violates the law of excluded middle. (5) What proves it? Neither perception, nor inference, nor scripture. (6) What removes it? Knowledge of an attributeless Brahman is impossible, since all knowledge is of something with attributes. (7) If ignorance is real, Advaita is not non-dual; if unreal, it cannot do anything.

Madhva and the Dvaitins attacked the identity of self and God as blasphemous and contrary to experience and scripture, and the Dvaitin Vyāsatīrtha’s Nyāyāmṛta (16th century) mounted a detailed logical assault, which Madhusūdana Sarasvatī answered.

Buddhism in disguise. Theistic critics called Śaṅkara a “crypto-Buddhist”, pointing to Gauḍapāda’s borrowings and to the similarity between māyā and Buddhist emptiness. Advaitins replied that Brahman, unlike Buddhist emptiness, is a positive, eternal reality.

The world-denying charge. Modern critics — Christian missionaries, Marxists, social reformers — charged that a philosophy calling the world “false” encouraged indifference to suffering and injustice. Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Radhakrishnan answered that seeing the one Self in all beings is the deepest ground for service and equality.

Influence

Advaita is the backbone of the monastic tradition of the Śaṅkarācāryas and of countless teachers to the present day. In the modern period it was the main philosophy of the Hindu renaissance — Vivekananda’s “Practical Vedānta”, Ramana Maharshi’s self-inquiry (“Who am I?”), Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I Am That — and it shaped Western perennialism (Aldous Huxley, Huston Smith), Schopenhauer, Emerson, Schrödinger, and much of the twentieth-century “non-duality” movement. Its relation to Western philosophy is a perennial topic: it has been compared with Parmenides (being is one, change is appearance), Baruch Spinoza (one substance), Immanuel Kant (appearance and thing-in-itself), Bradley’s Absolute, and Berkeley — with differences in each case as instructive as the similarities.

Advaita in conversation

The whole system is in the rope and the snake: the fear was real, the snake never existed, and the rope was there all along. And in the half-verse that sums it up — brahma satyaṃ jagan mithyā, jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ — Brahman is real, the world is appearance, and you are not other than Brahman.