Part I
BrÄhmiį¹ical Traditions
1
Shedding Light on the Matter
Åaį¹
karaās Dualistic Theory of Cognition
It remains common in contemporary scholarship on the eighth-century Åaį¹
karÄcarya to brand him as the seminal shaper of ānon-dualisticā VedÄnta, as ānon-dualismā remains the preferred translation for Advaita. As Eliot Deutsch proclaimed in the first modern English-language seminal treatment, Åaį¹
karaās philosophy of the self was in all respects dedicated to establishing the āoneness of realityā and human existence (1973: 47). Modern advocates of Advaita have continued to make this case. Bina Gupta, in her survey of classical and modern construals of Advaita, holds that the ānon-dualismā of the school consists in its commitment to the conclusion that, because consciousness is the locus of material projections as well as their false object, ābeing and consciousness are oneā (2003: 115). That the entire metaphysical scheme of Åaį¹
karaās system has not been convincing either to rival classical schools of VedÄnta or to many modern thinkers is, given the radicality of this supposed ānon-dualism,ā not surprising. None of the early centuries of Advaita commentators, from PadmapÄda to VÄcaspati to Madhusudana Sarasvati, according to J. N. Mohanty, ever successfully explained how a supposedly changeless Ätman, which never performs any actions, could objectify itself into finite persons (1993a: 73). The hard nub of Advaita VedÄnta then presumably rests on its ability to explain how a completely unitary and static self could ever have become the basis (ÄÅraya) for a world of fleeting material transformations and discreet cognitions owned by heterogeneous jÄ«va-s.
In his highly provocative and brilliant collection of essays released in 1991 entitled Indian Philosophy: A Counter-Perspective, Daya Krishna included a brief but incisive paper hypothesizing that Åaį¹
karaās Advaita, in the way it formulated the fundamental problem of mistaking a unitary spiritual self for an empirical ego, took a SÄį¹khya philosophical departure from the very start. That is to say, when, in the BrahmasÅ«trabhÄį¹£ya, Åaį¹
kara claims that the fundamental error of all consciousness is adhyÄsa, the ādisplacementā of empirical qualities on a spiritual subjectivity, he is describing a process with which a SÄį¹khya dualist would be in full agreement. This creates a dilemma, for if this is the case, Åaį¹
kara is basing a non-dualistic perspective on a dualistic distinction. Ultimately, Krishna argues, this problem is overcome by Åaį¹
kara, because in defining the Ätman as ultimately completely devoid of difference, he can, contrary to SÄį¹khya, deny all metaphysical identity and difference and be a true Advaitin (1991b: 161).
I believe, however, that Krishnaās brilliant diagnosis of Åaį¹
karaās dualistic formulation of adhyÄsa has greater implications than he was willing to countenance. What we have in Åaį¹
karaās system, I contend, is not an overarching metaphysical ānon-dualismā at all. On the contrary, Åaį¹
kara constructs a worldview according to which a distinctly SÄį¹khya dualism continues to obtain between the eternally pure and homogeneous self and ever-changing, transforming, and finite matter. The only estimable philosophical difference between Advaita and SÄį¹khya lies in the fact that, for the latter, there are multiple and individuated spiritual selves while, for the former, there is only one transcendental self in all beings. However, for Åaį¹
kara, there is still a persisting difference between self and material existence. And this can be seen not only in the way Åaį¹
kara formulates adhyÄsa, but in how he describes the perceptual and cognitive processes as well. What Advaita then really denotes is the fact that the singular spiritual Ätman is not two things, is not both transcendental self and bodily ego. If Åaį¹
karaās Advaita is a monism, it is a monism of the self alone, and not a monism that envelopes all beings. This depiction of Advaita does not in any way solve the philosophical conundrum of how such a unitary self can be related to the world of difference and change; it only clarifies what the distinction of Advaita is describing for Åaį¹
kara. I will in this brief chapter illustrate why I take this implication to be the case. I will do so first by rehearsing and supplementing a few of Daya Krishnaās arguments, and then add a few of my own.
Åaį¹
karaās commentary on the BrahmasÅ«tra begins with the assertion that the ānotion of thisā (asmadpratyaya) and the ānotion of the otherā (yuį¹£madpratyaya) are as different from one another as light is from darkness. By the former term, Krishna rightly points out, Åaį¹
kara clearly means the unitary and eternally pure spiritual self (Ätman), while by the latter he means both all material plurality and relation and all distinctions between individuated egos (1991a: 157ā8). Therefore, to attribute the features of the latter, physical, changeable, and heterogeneous, onto the former is a special Advaitic species of adhyÄsa. Often translated as āsuperimpositionā or āprojection,ā adhyÄsa really means to place (as) one thing in the locus (adhi) of another thing. This process of misattribution, according to Åaį¹
kara, enables us both to have individuated awareness, in the form of continuous ego-identities, and to be subjects of knowledge. When we identify our continuous selves with the body and all its specific distinctions, activities, and dispositions, as in āI am short,ā āI am old,ā āI am a teacher,ā āI love my home,ā and so on, we wrongly locate bodily, causal, and psychological habits upon the actual source of our continuous self-awareness, the spiritual self. Similarly, when we undergo the cognitions āI see this,ā āI taste this,ā āI infer this,ā and āI remember this,ā or even āI do not know thisā or āI donāt recall this,ā we take specific and li mited cognitive states that are brought about by constrained and contingent circumstances and locate them in the ever-unchanging and tranquil Ätman.
This procedure is further described by Åaį¹
kara as adhyÄropa apavÄdanyÄya, or the logic (nyÄya) of invoking an exception (apavÄda) for a misplaced form (adhyÄropa). In normal circumstances, it is simply wrong for us to mis-predicate a feature to a substance to which it does not belong, taking something to be a snake because it is long and winding when it is actually a rope, for example. But in the case of our lived and embodied experience, we cognitively āinvoke an exceptionā (apavÄda) for the error of projecting empirical forms unto pure subjectivity, because if we didnāt, we could not live active and conscious worldly lives. There is then a pragmatic sort of logic (nyÄya) to the āfundamental incomprehensionā (mÅ«lÄvidya) of reifying our spiritual selves, since that is how we can become individual persons (jÄ«va-s). Here, Krishna quite correctly observes, despite the metaphysical disagreement between Advaita and SÄį¹khya on whether there is one spiritual self or many, the way that Åaį¹
kara has described the process of mistaking spirit for matter āis pure and unmitigated SÄį¹khya doctrineā (1991a: 158). After all, the SÄį¹khya philosopher would and does offer precisely this description of our everyday misidentification of the spirit (puruį¹£a) with the primordial materiality (prakį¹ti) of the body. Åaį¹
kara has then, according to Krishna, launched his presumably non-dualistic VedÄnta with an argument that can, as such, easily be accepted by an unabashed dualist (1991a: 160).
We should dwell upon this on a more basic level for a moment, just to make what is being presently discussed clear. A standard form of ānon-dualism,ā which might otherwise be characterized as a āmonism,ā would hold that all things, in some fundamental respect, have the same nature. If all things in the world, no matter how different they may be in many respects, nonetheless share a more fundamental commonality among them, then at least in that respect, they are āoneā in exhibiting that fundamental feature. This is of course how the mahÄvÄkya or āgreat pronouncementā of the ChÄndogya Upaniį¹£ad is often understood. In that text, UddÄlaka teaches his son Åvetaketu that, since the existence (sat) of all things lies in a uniformly invisible source, Åvetaketu should consider himself to be the same in essence with all things. That is the meaning of the formula ātat tvam asiā (āthat is youā). But this conventional interpretation of tat tvam asi was not held by Åaį¹
kara. Instead, Åaį¹
kara holds that there is an irreducible distinction, and not a reducible unity, between Ätman and the material world. And so, for Åaį¹
kara, the āgreat pronouncementā tat tvam asi identifies the source of the embodied personās consciousness, and not their separate material existence, with Ätman. For a metaphysical non-dualist, then, distinguishing between the self and the world is misguided, while for Åaį¹
kara, it is the identification of self with world that is the great root of all error.
Krishna goes on to argue, however, that Åaį¹
kara manages to push this SÄį¹khya premise of his argument toward a genuinely Advaita conclusion. Krishna contends that Åaį¹
kara holds normal states of conventional cognitive truth to be in the ultimate sense just as erroneous as states of conventional cognitive error. This is so because both wrongly objectify the Ätman, and enmesh it with all its differentiation. But this forced identity in both empirical error and empirical truth is always denied in his Advaita (Krishna 1991: 160ā2). It is, therefore, not as if Åaį¹
kara ever really believed that empirical qualities and transformations were real features of existence that were being projected by adhyÄsa onto a transcendental self, but instead, empirical features of existence are all ultimately illusory to begin with. Because Åaį¹
kara, unlike SÄį¹khya philosophers, does not believe that prakį¹ti or material existence is ultimately real, he can rightly claim a non-dualistic stance. However, even here, according to Krishna, we must be precise about what non-dualism means for Åaį¹
kara. āIt is not an answer to the question of whether reality is one or many. It is an assertion that the real is the realm where . . . duality . . . does not applyā (Krishna 1991: 161). But is this the case? Do Åaį¹
karaās frameworks for cognition in general and epistemology in particular enable him to reclaim non-dualist ground after having initiated his philosophical project with a dualistically formulated problem? It does not, as we shall now learn, seem so. Indeed, Daya Krishna let Åaį¹
kara off the hook too easily.
According to Åaį¹
kara, the living body has the standard Indian philosophical compliment of five external sense organs and the āinner instrumentā (antaįø„karaį¹a) of mental states. While later Advaitins like VidyÄraį¹ya tried to erect subtle arguments denying that these sense organs were physical or directly causal, there is no evidence from Åaį¹
karaās corpus that he conceived of them in any such subtle ways (Mayeda 1992: 29ā30). Åaį¹
kara describes the senses as going out from the body in the direction of external objects (bahirmukha), and notions (pratyaya) of those external objects are brought about in the antaįø„karaį¹a by those external forms (bÄhyÄkÄranimittatva) (Mayeda 1992: 35). Now, it is certainly the case for Åaį¹
kara, as it was for all BrÄhmiį¹ical systems, that this process of outer and inner sensation was not sufficient for consciousness, since material processes and interactions were for these thinkers by definition unconscious. Only the Ätman, for Åaį¹
kara, is cognitively luminous (prakÄÅa), and it is the selfās luminosity that makes the external forms and internal sensa tions take a false coupled appearance (ÄbhÄsa), manifesting themselves as the grasped (grÄhya) and grasper (grÄhakÄ) in our experience. And, again, later Advaitins would continue to stress that both the forms of things and the cognitive luminosity of the self were only experienced together internally, in the illuminated space of the āinner instrument,ā and so we should not think of perception proper as involving external contact (Mayeda 1992: 34). However, we should not let all of the special pleading of Advaita authors and commentators distract us from details of the perceptual process as they describe it. In order for us to be conscious, we need the prakÄÅatva of Ätman, surely. But in order for Ätman to be conscious of anything else, it must ālight upā the antaįø„karaį¹a, and in order for this āinner instrumentā to form ānotionsā of external or internal features, it must be stimulated by external or internal senses which are in contact with their objects. No dreams, no memories, no perceptions, and no sensations will be experienced without physiological or physical activities taking place. The āinner instrumentā is but a locus where spirit and matter must come together in order for us to have embodied experiences. And, if Åaį¹
kara is to be believed, all the causality involved in these processes must come from the side of the physical and physiological, for nothing whatsoever is caused or brought about by the self.
The requirements that both spiritual luminosity and physical causality are necessary in order to give rise to individuated and embodied experiences are, then, held very much in common by SÄį¹khya and Advaita. And the details of their fundamental agreements go farther still. Because his cosmology insulates brahman from all causal interactions as well, Åaį¹
kara must posit the existence of an āunevolved name-and-formā (avyÄkį¹te nÄmarÅ«pe) from which material nature (prakį¹ti) arises. And because Åaį¹
kara provides us with no explanation of his mere claim that āunevolved name-and-formā itself evolved from brahman, his cosmology differs from the SÄį¹khya dualism between spirit and nature only in minor detail (Mayeda 1992: 22). On top of this, Åaį¹
karaās portrayal of the way the āinner instrumentā (antaįø„akaraį¹a) is first illuminated by Ätman and then reflects back to Ätman a false appearance of its own subjective agency corresponds very closely with descriptions given of the buddhi in late SÄį¹khya commentaries (Rukmani 1988: 367ā76). The unavoidable need for both spirit and matter in explaining cosmic evolution and human cognition in Åaį¹
karaās Advaita perpetuates, and does not negate, its dualistic formulation of adhyÄsa.
This feature also applies to Åaį¹
karaās technical epistemology. It is here where Krishna believed Åaį¹
kara extricated himself from the dualistic implications of his other ideas because, ultimately, he held physical and differentiated things to be mÄyÄ, cognitive āmagic.ā But in fact, Åaį¹
kara was not quite so categorical about the ontological status of material objects. It is true that he glosses the mÄyÄ of the Upaniį¹£ads with the more technical term avidyÄ or āincomprehension.ā But close attention must be paid to how he writes about the latter. It is assuredly the case that Åaį¹
kara does not believe the paramount truth (paramÄrthasatya) of the identity between brahman and Ätman can be gleaned from any of the widely recognized āmeans of knowledgeā (pramÄį¹a-s) of the philosophers, but only through scripture and direct insight. However, this by no means entails that the āmeans of knowledgeā should simply be ignored. In fact, Åaį¹
kara is not hesitant to assert that the āmeans of knowledge,ā such as perception, inference, and testimony, are directed toward materially existing objects (yathÄbhÅ«taviÅaya) and are based on externally existent phenomena (vastutantra) (Mayeda 1992: 47). In addition to this, it is crucial to keep in mind how Åaį¹
kara describes the ontological status of external objects. They are not, he tells us, illusory or false, but instead are anirvacanÄ«ya, or āincapable of articulation,ā such that we cannot determine their ontological status with any verbal precision. In one sense, we cannot say, given Åaį¹
karaās lofty standards, that empirical things in the world have existence (sat), since they are limited in spatial extension and temporal duration and their depr...