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Advaita and Neoplatonism (1961)

Advaita and Neoplatonism

(1961)–Frits Staal–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

A Critical Study in Comparative Philosophy


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13. Vyavahāra and paramārtha

One of the most important Advaitic doctrines is the doctrine of vyavahāra and paramārtha. This doctrine is related to the distinction between paravidyā and aparavidyā and correspondingly between parabrahman and aparabrahman. Westerners need special introduction to this topic as they are likely to look without sympathy upon such a doctrine for reasons which we shall have to study too.436 Some illuminating remarks regarding this can be found in the short introduction to K.C. Bhattacharyya's book and can be recommended to every Western student of Indian Philosophy.

 

Vedānta in general has a triple scriptural basis, the prasthānatraya consisting of Upaniṣads, Bhagavad Gītā and Brahmasūtra. Advaita is presented as the systematised philosophy which is embodied in these texts. For convenience the doctrine of revelation or apauruṣeyatva of these texts will be disregarded and the ṛṣis or other human beings will be considered as their authors. This restriction will later be removed. The question then arises as to whether the claim that Vedānta embodies the metaphysical views of these texts means, that every ‘author’ of an Upaniṣad adhered to Advaita Vedānta. This would repeatedly lead to difficulties (e.g., in connection witli the Gïtä).437 But this seems not to have been Śaṅkara's intention either. According to Bhattacharyya,438 ‘Śāndilya, the teacher of the Śāṇḍilya-vidyā in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, may not have ‘looked upon his doctrine as anything else but a statement of the highest truth accessible to man’, ‘but that is no reason why Śaṅkara may not look upon it as the inferior wisdom.’ This shows clearly that Śaṅkara did not claim to give a

historical interpretation, i.e., an interpretation in which he tried to reconstruct the intentions of a historical author. He did not give commentaries but explanations by constructing a philosophical system on the basis of which every textual statement can be explained and understood. Historians generally misunderstand this since they look upon Advaita also as a historical system (‘as a historic curiosity rather than a recipe for the human soul’ says Bhattacharyya).439 But only when we fully realize that Advaita claims to be true440 are we able to accept that it must in that case attempt to explain everything, including Upaniṣadic statements, whether the contents of the latter themselves embody the Advaitic wisdom or only a ‘lower’ wisdom.441 The lower wisdom must be such that it can in principle be extended to the higher wisdom: it may not be incompatible with it as for instance the Bauddha doctrines can be. There is no scope for questioning the sincerity of the bhāṣyakāra with regard to the author: Śaṅkara did never hold that Śaṇḍilya was an Advaitin who for opportunistic reasons (as, e.g., Rāmakṛṣṇa Paramahaṁsa) expounded at a certain occasion the lower wisdom-e.g., because of the limited spirituality of his audience. Śaṅkara simply looked upon Śāṇḍilya himself as a man of limited spirituality. śaṅkara himself admits elsewhere that the Ṛgveda ‘and so on’ constitutes only the lower wisdom.442 This view solves the difficulty of historical interpretation and of sincerity. If this interpretation is right, we ought to translate bhāṣya not by commentary but by explanation. This seems feasible: Gītābhāsya, would mean ‘explanation of the Gītā’ i.e., explanation that the views expounded in the Gītā are not incompatible with the views of Advaita Vedānta.443 What holds for Śaṅkara is likely to hold also for the Ācāryas of the rival schools of Vedānta.444

This view can also be held when we accept the divine origin, apauruṣeyatva, of the text, as the term śruti demands. In that case we need not assume that all the seers have received complete revelations: many, or even all, may have been partially enlightened. Śaṅkara's system can be described as an attempt to reconstruct on the basis of partial revelations and with the help of other pramāṇas, the real content of the transcendental divine wisdom (paramārthika paravidyā).

 

This practice of the bhāṣyas (and we have to be more explicit in this respect than Śaṅkara himself was), is related to the treatment which philosophers generally give to their colleagues. Aristotle for example reviews in the first book of the Metaphysics the Pre-Socratics and Plato, from the standpoint of the causes he discovered himself. Hegel interprets the previous philosophies as steps leading to his own doctrine445 and explains this entire process itself as the unfolding of Reason. Heidegger never fails to explain why doctrines which he combats (e.g. Descartes or Hegel) had nevertheless to come into being. Jaspers, lastly, in his ‘Psychologie der Weltanschaungen’ uses the same practice systematically.

 

Historians are nevertheless, right when they reject most of these interpretations as unhistorical. It would indeed not be wise to study the Pro-Socratics exclusively from Aristotle, Hegel or Nietzsche-nor the Upaniṣads exclusively from Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja or Madhva. But philosophers may see more deeply than historians.

 

A doctrine like Advaita, which denies the reality of everything other than Brahman, i.e., which denies itself, its expression, its reasoning, its teaching, its teachers and its pupils-in short, everything which enters our consciousness in as far as we have not yet

entered brahmavidyā-such a doctrine cannot abstain from discussing the unreality to which it claims to belong itself. Advaita accordingly enters the anirvacanīya world of māyā and of avidyā and deals with many of the problems which present themselves there. The true answer to all these problems is always the same: they do not exist, as only the Absolute exists. But such answers would fail to satisfy us, and answers are therefore given at the practical level of unreality to which the problems belong as much as we ourselves. Unless Advaita would be altogether silent this is an unavoidable but useful compromise with the ‘world’. This explains that the Absolute is in one place declared nirguṇabrahman while elsewhere the saguṇabrahman is accepted and discussed; or vivartavāda is established as the only truth about causation, while elsewhere pariṇāmavāda is accepted and discussed. In general there are a higher and a lower wisdom, para and aparavidyā. ‘Lower wisdom’ or ‘lower knowledge’ are here euphemistic expressions: ultimately they are avidyā. This follows from the principle of the excluded third which Śaṅkara never denies.446 In reality the saguṇabrahman does not exist and the pariṇāmavāda does not hold. The two levels, in which these two kinds of wisdom of knowledge reside and in which the explanations take place, are called paramārthika ‘the absolutely real (level)’ and vyāvahārika ‘the practical (level)’. They have necessarily to obtain in any philosophy which denies the reality of the world in which we live and which contains us, but which nevertheless presents itself as a philosophy. It existed before Śaṅkara in Nāgārjuna's distinction of paramārthasatya, ‘absolute truth’, and saṁvṛtisatya, ‘apparent truth’.

 

Unlike Nāgārjuna447 Śaṅkara has a second and equally important reason to adopt the view of two levels: he has to explain the

scripture. Since roughly speaking two main views occur there, the best device is to explain their discrepancy by declaring one view as absolutely true and the other as apparently true. The latter view is in fact untrue, but practically speaking a lower view which can be looked upon as a step towards the higher view. In the Upaniṣads for example we find niṣprapañca and saprapañca views:448 the first is absolutistic, non-dualistically inclined, looks upon the divine as quality-less and is akin to vivartavāda; the second is realistic, creationist, dualistic, looks upon the divine as quahiied and is akin to pariṇāmavāda. The first is impersonalistic, the second more personalistic. Śaṅkara's Advaita is the culmination of the first view, but the metaphysical structure of his absolutism enables him to interpret the second view as lower wisdom. This explains that we see that Śaṅkara so often subordinates other views, without rejecting them. There are however also views which are explicitly rejected and others which are chosen and preferred:449 Śaṅkara can be uncompromising.450 Nevertheless he has with the help of this distinction ‘synthesized’ the scriptural doctrines. He speaks therefore about samanvaya ‘concord (of the texts)’, commenting upon the fourth sūtra; tat tu samanvayāt, ‘but that (Brahman is to be known from scripture), because there is concord’.451 This is explained in the commentary as follows: ‘i.e., all the texts of the Vedānta are concordant (samanugata) in establishing the same meaning and in tending towards the same aim (tātparya)’.

There are however views which cannot be understood properly and adequately when interpreted as ‘lower wisdom’, as for instance the view that the divine is qualified meaning not only that the divine is qualified, but also that anything which is not qualified is not the divine and is not higher or more perfect than it. Recognizing the legitimacy of the interpretation of this view prevents it from being regarded as ‘lower wisdom’ along with a ‘higher wisdom’ concerning a quality-less divine. Because of his compromising attitude Śaṅkara comes to misinterpret other views, and though this does not matter very much when historical interpretation is concerned, it becomes very important when an attempt is made (as often throughout the history of Advaita) to prove the supremacy of Advaita over contemporary or later systems (e.g. Viśiṣṭadvaita) by allotting a ‘lower’ place to those system and by subordinating, but not rejecting them. This apparently powerful weapon of apologetics is often bound to fail, as it rejects the exclusiveness which is essential for many doctrines (e.g., the saguṇa-doctrine of Viśiṣṭādvaita is essentially incompatible with a higher nirguṇa-wisdom). These problems will occupy us again.

 

The Upaniṣads provide us with a distinction between higher and lower knowledge as applicable to the higher and lower Brahman respectively.452 They do not state, however, that this duality should be utilized for the interpretation of the Upaniṣadic texts themselves. Śaṅkara clearly goes beyond scripture453 by adopting a standard with the help of which he explains the scriptural texts themselves. This need not imply that he was necessarily influenced by śūnyavāda (though this is of course possible), but shows that both Nāgārjuna and Śaṅkara adopted on metaphysical grounds the same view of two levels. So there is a metaphysical and a historical reason for the theory of two levels. Next Śaṅkara's own formulation of this doctrine may be examined.

 

‘Two kinds of knowledge,’ says the Ācārya,454 ‘are enjoined... a lower and a higher one. Of the lower one it is said that it

comprises the Ṛgveda and so on, and the text continues455 “the higher knowledge is that by which the indestructible (akṣara) is apprehended”.’ Two remarks come to our mind: if Śaṅkara looks upon ‘the Ṛgveda and so on’ (ṛgvedädi), which probably comprises the entire śruti with the exception of the Upaniṣads (and perhaps also smṛti apart from the Bhagavad Gītā and the Brahmasutras) as ‘lower wisdom’, i.e., in reality as avidyā-this implies that (1) there is no harm in looking upon a sage like Śāṇḍilya as a person of limited spirituality; and (2) there is in as far as the problem of authority is concerned, not so much a philosophical as a practical difference with Buddhism, which rejected śabdapramāṇa alltogether. For the greater part of the scripture Śaṅkara does in fact the same (calling it compromisingly and euphemistically lower wisdom), while on the other hand the Buddha could also have found scriptural support in the Vedic tradition. This did not concern the Buddha whereas Śaṅkara had in addition to a philosophical aim also ‘worldly’ aim, i.e., restoring the unity of Hinduism.

 

That the latter aim was attained was not due to the purely metaphysical pāramārthika doctrine of Advaita, but to its compromising and synthesizing attitude in the practical, vyāvahārika realm. Śaṅkara did not reject any part of the Vedic tradition and was therefore welcomed by all who regarded themselves as followers of the sanātana dharma. Śaṅkara's philosophical compromise with the vyāvahārika realm is connected with the fact that he was not a secluded cave-dwelling sage, as some picture him, but an active and creative mind and a great organiser, who, in a short life, established according to tradition the four maṭhas at ŚṚṅgeri, Puri, Dvāraka and Badrināth (and perhaps another one at Kāñcīpuram), expelled Buddhism from Indian soil, founded the six ‘cults’ still preponderant in Hinduism,456 established the main orders of saṁnyāsa, kept Tantrism within limits and expelled magical practices which had become abundant.457 In addition he was so sincere

in his compromising attitude458 that he composed a number of devotional (bhākta) hymns,459 in which the saguṇa aspects of the deity are praised. We do not know which of these are authentic and which are spurious.460 In all these respects it is clear that the vyāvahārika realm is an important aspect of Advaita. The paradox therefore arises that a doctrine summarized in the words jaganmithyā ‘the world is false’ is expounded by a jagadguru or ‘world teacher’.461

 

By his attempts to establish Hinduism as a ‘national’ religion Śaṅkara shows how in India philosophy influences not only the individual (as is often stressed) but also the country.462 Despite these vyāvahārika efforts, the pāramārthika realm denies uncompromisingly that any effort of karma may lead to brahmavidyā. Almost all Advaitins therefore reject samuccayavāda.463 The later Advaitins pay less attention to the vyāvahārika realm, which comes under the jurisdiction of Mīmāṁsā. The aim of Mīmāṁsā in the vyāvahārika realm is called svarga, whereas the pāramārthika realm is the realm of mokṣa: ‘for the distinction of higher and lower knowledge is made on account of the diversity of their results, the former leading to more worldly exaltation, the latter to absolute bliss’.464 All concepts related to karma and meditation, to Vedic injunctions etc., are transferred to the lower level. The terms Pīrva and Uttara Mīmāṁsā are generally interpreted by Advaitins as referring to the lower and the higher level respectively. Whosoever is incapable of realizing the nirguṇabrahman belongs to the vyāvahārika level and is hence bound by all that holds and is applicable in this level. ‘The lower knowledge which comprises the Ṛgveda and so on is mentioned preliminary to the knowledge of Brahman for the mere purpose of glorifying the

latter; as appears from the passages in which it (the lower knowledge) is spoken of slightingly, such as ‘but frail indeed are these boats, the sacrifices, the eighteen in which the lower ceremonial has been told. Fools who praise this as the highest good are subject again and again to old age and death.’465 Whoever turns away from the lower knowledge is prepared for the highest one:466 ‘Let a brāhmaṇa after he has examined all these worlds which are gained by works acquire freedom from all desires. Nothing that is eternal can be gained by what is not eternal. Let him in order to understand this take fuel in his hand and approach a guru who is learned and dwells entirely in Brahman’.467

 

The last 58 sūtras of the Brahmasūtras468 are interpreted by Śaṅkara as ‘describing the path of the Gods (devayāna) which leads those who possess the lower kind of knowledge towards the attainment of their reward’.469 This describes the fate after death of souls which possess aparavidyā. Occasional remarks are added concerning the status of the soul which possesses paravidyā and is free from all rebirth.470 In this connection later Advaitins deal with the difference between two kinds of human beings which have gone beyond lower knowledge: the videha-mukta ‘released at the moment of death’, and the jīvan-mukta ‘released while embodied’.471

 

The refinement of the theory of two levels into three levels is a natural extension though it is not of great metaphysical importance. It plays an important part in the epistemology of later Advaita. If vyāvahārika denotes the sum total of all errors caused by avidyā, we have to distinguish those errors which are made

within the vyāvahārika level and which may be cleared at that level too: for instance the error of the famous example of taking mother-of-pearl for silver.472 Such errors are as it were errors of the second degree. What pertains to these errors is denoted by the term pratibhasika. According to Murti,473 the doctrine of these three truths, in Advaita as well as in vijñānavāda, is necessitated by the fact, that both analyse first an empirical illusion and then apply this analysis analogically to the world-illusion. ‘The Madhyamika, however, addresses himself directly to the world-illusion....’.


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