Chapter 92. Systems of Liberation: The Six Darshanas and the Vedanta Schools

Classical Indian philosophy is organised as darshanas, “views” or “points of view.” There are six orthodox systems, usually paired: Nyaya and Vaisheshika, Samkhya and Yoga, Mimamsa and Vedanta. All accept the authority of the Veda. They argued with each other and with Buddhist and Jain thinkers about the self, the world and the means of liberation (moksha). By the second millennium CE one of them, Vedanta, had split into rival schools: Shankara’s non-dualism, Ramanuja’s qualified non-dualism, Madhva’s dualism and the devotional schools that followed. This chapter sets out the systems as the library’s reference works present them. It then follows the Vedantic schism, the monastic institutions built in Shankara’s name and their modern politics, and the neo-Advaita of the twentieth century.

The six systems and their presuppositions

The Encyclopedia of Hinduism (Jones and Ryan) gives the technical vocabulary. Adrishta, “literally… the ‘unseen,'” is “a category in Mimamsa and Vaisheshika traditions.” In Vaisheshika the term is “sometimes synonymous with adharma, the equally invisible negative karmic accrual.” In a wider sense “adrishta is the unknown quality of things and of the soul; it brings about the cosmic order and arranges for souls according to their merits and demerits.” The entry directs readers to Keith’s The Karma-Mimamsa [Jones & Ryan, Encyclopedia of Hinduism, #42241, “adrishta”]. The moral order of the universe is thus built into the atomist cosmology itself.

Karl Potter’s Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies classifies the systems by how they relate knowledge to freedom. He separates “path philosophy,” which concerns “finding… proper path(s) of renunciatory or disciplinary activity leading to complete freedom,” from “speculative philosophy,” and within the latter he separates “progress philosophy” from “leap philosophy.” For Potter, “the systems called Nyaya and Vaisesika are progress philosophies, differing so little in fundamental assumptions as to be assimilable for most purposes,” and “Samkhya too is a progress philosophy.” Vedanta, by contrast, is no single school: “There are an indefinite number of different types of Vedanta, such as Dvaita (‘dualistic’), Advaita (‘non-dualistic’), Visistadvaita (usually translated ‘qualified nondualistic’).” Potter subdivides Advaita itself into “progress (Bhamati) Advaita, teetering (Vivarana) Advaita, and leap Advaita.” Shankara “seems to teeter between leap and progress philosophy, and his followers divided into three strands” [Potter, Presuppositions of India’s Philosophies, #82613]. Potter treats the Jains “as if they were one monolithic system.” He notes that Buddhist tradition counts four systems: Vaibhasika, Sautrantika, Yogacara and Madhyamaka [ibid.].

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are the root text of the Yoga darshana. Osho’s lecture commentary The Heart of Yoga states that “Yoga will always be associated with Patanjali.” Osho compares his own role to that of Rishabhdeva, the first Jain tirthankara: “I am not like Mahavira, but like Rishabhdeva,” the founder who “had nobody in the past to look to” [Osho, The Heart of Yoga, #63135]. The modern ethical reading of the yamas is shown by Richard Freeman. He glosses brahmacarya as “to act within Brahman,” treating “all beings as sacred,” and warns that a teacher may claim that “the sexual act with a consenting student is not outside the bounds of ethical behavior.” He answers that “just like with a priest, gang leader, or politician — anyone in a position of power — consent from someone who looks to you as a leader is not coming from a free, autonomous, integrated” self [Freeman, The Art of Vinyasa, #67024, ch. 2].

Shankara’s Advaita: maya, mithya and superimposition

The Encyclopedia of Hinduism summarises the doctrine plainly: “Shankara holds that the phenomenal world is false (mithya) and illusory (MAYA)… Only the one BRAHMAN is true.” The central error is adhyasa, superimposition, as when a person “looking at a rope in a dark place” briefly sees a snake. The fundamental superimposition is “the ignorant superimposition of the empirical world upon the attribute-free BRAHMAN” [Jones & Ryan, #42241]. The honorific “-acharya” (“an acharya is any spiritual guide or teacher”; originally “the one who initiated”) “was, for example, appended to the names of all the great VEDANTA teachers: SHANKARA, RAMANUJA, MADHVA, and NIMBARKA” [ibid., “acharya”]. The encyclopedia also notes that “most TANTRIC philosophical systems are also termed advaita,” but in a different sense: “the individual self is understood as being precisely brahman, God or Goddess, with no reservations… The world too is understood to be non-dual with the divinity” [ibid., “advaita”]. The Yoga Vasishtha is another major Advaita text. It is a Rama–Vasishtha dialogue attributed to Valmiki, condensed by Abhinanda Pandita to 6,000 couplets and by a later hand to about 230. It teaches that samsara “arises from the mind’s projections and vanishes with cessation of thought” [Yoga Vasishta Sara, #52850].

The austere metaphysician is also credited with devotional and Shakta poetry. Bhaja Govindam opens: “Oh, Foolish one! Seek Govinda, seek Govinda. When the appointed time comes (death), grammar rules surely will not protect you” [Sukhabodhananda, Bhaja Govindam, #39624, v. 1]. The Soundarya Lahari, also attributed to Shankara, is a hymn to the Goddess. In it Shiva “would not be able to stir even a second without Shakti” [Adi Shankara, Essence of Soundarya Lahari, #41963]. Whether one author wrote both the commentaries and these hymns is a question the library’s editions do not raise; they present all of them as Shankara’s.

Two hostile readings: Kashmir Shaivism and Daniélou

The Kashmir Shaiva tradition rejects Shankara’s denial of the world’s reality. The introduction to the Motilal edition of the Pratyabhijnahrdayam calls his school “Santabrahmavada,” “the philosophy of inactive brahman,” and contrasts it with its own “Isvaradvayavada” point by point. For Shankara, brahman “is only prakasa or jnana,” and “all activity in the case of Isvara is… due to avidya.” The Shaiva author cites Brahma Sutra Bhashya 2.1.14 to show this. For the Shaivas, consciousness is “both prakasa and vimarsa,” and Shiva “always performs the five-fold act” of emanation, maintenance, withdrawal, concealment and grace. Mahesvarananda is quoted as saying that inactive brahman “would be as good as unreal.” Above all, “according to Santabrahmavada, visva or the universe is mithya or unreal. According to Isvaradvayavada, the universe is perfectly real.” Since Shankara makes maya “neither real nor unreal,” the author argues, “there would be a tinge of dualism in Samkara’s philosophy,” while Shaiva non-dualism is “integral, all-inclusive” [Pratyabhijnahrdayam, #47798, Introduction, §5 “Comparison and Contrast with Samkara’s Advaitavada”].

Alain Daniélou attacks Shankara from a Shaiva-Samkhya position, and his view is contested. He calls Shankara a Dravidian scholar who “definitively annexed Vedism to Shaivism, utilizing a subtle and often perverse dialectic.” He also calls him “one of the first inventors of what in modern terms is known as an ideology.” Daniélou suggests that contact with Kerala’s Jewish and Christian communities and with advancing Islam pushed Indian thought toward monism. In his reading, Brahman “becomes, without it being admitted, an only god, easily personified, close to the Christian and Muslim concept.” He cites, and endorses (“not without reason”), Madhva’s description of Shankara as “a deceitful demon who has falsified the teachings of the Brahma Sutras to lead souls astray” [Daniélou, Shiva and the Primordial Tradition, #67683, “Shankaracharya,” “The Evolution of Vedanta”].

Ramanuja, Madhva and the devotional schools

The theistic Vedantas were Vaishnava. According to the Wikipedia article on Dvaita, Madhva’s school (originally Tattvavada, “arguments from a realist viewpoint”) was founded by the thirteenth-century Madhvacharya. He “believed in three entities: God, jiva (soul), and jada (maya, matter),” with souls “dependent (paratantra) on Vishnu (Narayana), who alone is independent (svatantra).” The same article contrasts this with Shankara’s identity of Brahman and Atman and with Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita, in which “ultimate reality (Brahman) and human soul are different but with the potential to be identical” [Wikipedia: Dvaita Vedanta]. The Encyclopedia of Hinduism describes Bhaskara (c. ninth century) as accepting non-duality while rejecting “the notion that the phenomenal universe… is illusory.” For him the universe is “a real evolute of the Supreme Reality” [Jones & Ryan, #42241, “Bhaskara”]. Daniélou adds that Bhaskara’s “separation in unity” (bhedabheda) “was later taken over by the Muslim Sufis.” He lists Vallabha’s “absolute nondualism, the Shuddhadvaita” among the later schools [Daniélou, #67683]. Nimbarka, Vallabha and Chaitanya complete the “bhakti schools of Vedanta,” as the encyclopedia’s reading list calls them [Jones & Ryan, #42241, bibliography to “Bhedabheda”].

Mathas, Shankaracharyas and modern politics

S. Vidyasankar’s survey Advaita Vedanta covers the institutions. “All present day advaitins trace their guru-parampara through the four disciples of Sri Sankaracarya,” the first heads of the four amnaya mathas at Puri, Sringeri, Dvaraka and Jyotirmath (Badrinath). He records, however, that “Paul Hacker attributes the tradition of four amnaya mathas… to Vidyaranyasvamin,” the fourteenth-century Sringeri pontiff. He insists that “the advaita sampradaya is not a Saiva sect”; “advaitins are non-sectarian, and they advocate worship of Siva and Vishnu equally” [Vidyasankar, Advaita Vedanta, #38774, “Frequently Asked Questions,” “Sources and Modern Literature”]. The mathas have been entangled in politics and litigation. Bharati Krishna Tirtha became Shankaracharya of Dvaraka in 1921 and of Puri in 1925. “Soon after the first world war, he was prosecuted along with the Ali brothers and other Muslim leaders, by the colonial British government for treason.” At Jyotirmath the succession is disputed: “some people consider the rightful succession… to be along the disciple line of Sri Santananda Sarasvati,” and so “there are at least two separate” claimants [ibid.].

Modern Advaita and the Traditionalist reading

Twentieth-century Advaita moved from scholastic commentary to the living sage. John Grimes’s Ramana Maharshi: The Crown Jewel of Advaita dates Ramana’s birth to December 1879 at Tiruchuzhi and his mahasamadhi to 14 April 1950. Grimes identifies “Ramana’s unique contribution to methodology” as “his focus on the Self through Self-enquiry, on directing the seeker to ask, ‘Who am I?'” [Grimes, Ramana Maharshi, #68283]. I Am That, the talks of Nisargadatta Maharaj, carries the same teaching: “The real does not die, the unreal never lived” [Nisargadatta, I Am That, #43742]. In the West, René Guénon’s Introduction générale à l’étude des doctrines hindoues (1921) presented Vedanta as pure metaphysics: “c’est la métaphysique qui est le centre unique de toutes les doctrines de l’Orient.” He accused Western Orientalists of “myopie intellectuelle” for reading these doctrines “en conformité avec leurs points de vue tout occidentaux” [Guénon, Introduction générale, #79029]. Guénon and Daniélou thus valued different things. Guénon put Vedantic metaphysics at the centre of the tradition, while Daniélou blamed the same Vedanta for overshadowing Samkhya and Tantra.

Key points

• The six darshanas share the Veda’s authority but differ on cosmology and method; Vaisheshika’s adrishta builds karmic merit and demerit into cosmic order.
• Potter divides the systems into “progress” and “leap” philosophies and counts “an indefinite number” of Vedantas, with Shankara “teetering” between the two.
• Shankara holds the world to be mithya and maya, superimposed on attribute-free Brahman; hymns attributed to him (Bhaja Govindam, Soundarya Lahari) are devotional and Shakta.
• Kashmir Shaivism charges Advaita with an “inactive brahman” and a “tinge of dualism”; Daniélou calls Shankara’s system an “ideology” shaped by monotheism (his contested view).
• Madhva’s Dvaita (God, souls and matter distinct and real) and Ramanuja’s qualified non-dualism are the main Vaishnava alternatives; Bhaskara and Vallabha form intermediate positions.
• Vidyasankar traces the four Shankaracharya mathas and records Hacker’s attribution of the scheme to Vidyaranya, a Shankaracharya prosecuted for treason by the British, and a disputed Jyotirmath succession.
• Ramana Maharshi’s “Who am I?” and Nisargadatta’s talks mark modern Advaita; Guénon’s Traditionalism made Vedanta the West’s model of “pure metaphysics.”