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A Death-Blow to Śaṅkara's Non-Dualism? A Dualist Refutation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

L. Stafford Betty
L. Stafford Betty
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, California State College, Bakersfield
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Extract

Many of us, and I am no exception, have been led to assume, almost un-consciously, that Śankara is India's greatest philosopher and that the non-dualist philosophy he consolidated, Advaita Vedānta, is the supreme spiritual philosophy of India, if not of the whole world. Dualist (Dvaita) opponents like Madhva, on the other hand, have usually been appreciated very little, if at all. Several of my colleagues think of Madhva as a reactionary, if brilliant, theist whose philosophy best serves as a foil to Śankara's. Madhva, it almost seems, is studied not for his own philosophical virtues but as a means the better to appreciate Śankara's. I believe that we must weigh more carefully the dualist position, particularly its trenchant critique of non-dualism. We may discover in the process that Śankara, whatever else he was – brilliant stylist, mystic par excellence, deft polemicist – was not the originator or consolidator of anything like an internally consistent metaphysics.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , September 1976 , pp. 281 - 290
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

page 281 note 1 Sharma, B. N. K. calls Vādirāja, who wrote a monumental defence of the Dualist Vedānta in a work called Yuktimallikā, ‘the most popular and enthusiastically applauded writer in Dvaita literature’ (A History of the Dvaita School of Vedānta and Its Literature. II [Bombay: Booksellers' Publishing Co., 1961], 192).Google Scholar

page 282 note 1 See Iyer, M. K. V., Advaita Vedānta According to Śankara (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964), pp. 117–18.Google Scholar

page 282 note 2 See Śankara, , The Vedānta Sūtras of Bādarāyana with the Commentary of Śankara, trans. George Thibaut, I (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 1960.Google Scholar

page 283 note 1 None of Vādirāja's many works has been translated before. His corpus is a goldmine for the Sanskritist with philosophical interests. I have translated only the first section (or 421 verses) of the Nyāyaratnāvali.

page 283 note 2 Naraka, usually translated ‘hell’, is one of the devices by which souls which have led wicked lives are justly punished. As in Christianity, it is popularly regarded as a fiery place where the guilty are tormented. Most Hindus, however (and Vādirāja's own school is a notable exception), regard hell as temporary – really more of a purgatory than a hell.

page 283 note 3 Brhadaranyaka Upanirad 4.1.7, in Radhakrishnan, S., The Principal Upanisads (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1953), p. 252.Google Scholar

page 284 note 1 See Dasgupta, Surendranath, A History of Indian Philosophy, II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 76–7Google Scholar, for a detailed explanation of the relation of consciousness to antahkarana.

page 284 note 2 Actually Vādirāja asks the non-dualist to consider whether a man or an arrow, not a can, is able to suffer. But since the verse in Sanskrit is especially effective because narānām (men) and Śarānām (arrows) rhyme, I have rendered the rhyme rather than the literal meaning into English.

page 284 note 3 Narain, K., A Critique of Mādhva Refutation of the Śānkara School of Vedānta (Allahabad: Udayana)Google Scholar

page 285 note 1 ibid. p. 73. See Dasgupta, , Indian Philosophy, IV (1949), 236Google Scholar, for a shorter exposition of the same argument, and p. 243 for a non-dualist counter-argument.

page 286 note 1 Non-dualists often speak of ‘the buddhi’, by which they usually mean the willing or affirming capacity of the mind. At other times they speak of ‘a buddhi’, by which they mean a momentary particularization of the buddhi; in this sense, Dasgupta tells us, ‘Buddhi, or intellect, means the mental state [italics mine\ of determination or affirmation (niścayātmika antahkarana-vrtti)’, and is synonymous with the better known Antahkarana-vrtti, , or ‘mental modification’ (Indian Philosophy, II, 75).Google Scholar

page 286 note 2 Sankara of course holds that the soul is ultimately all-pervading and infinite, for it is ultimately only the ātman.

page 287 note 1 An Introduction to Śankara's Theory of Knowledge (Delhi: Motilal Banarsi Dass, 1962), p. 101.Google Scholar

page 287 note 2 ibid. pp. 101–2.

page 288 note 1 The position that Vādirāja is attacking here resembles Nāgasena's in the Questions of Milinsda (see Stryk, Lucien, ed., World of the Buddha [York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1969], pp. 89–99).Google Scholar

page 288 note 2 Advaita Vedānta, p. 117.

page 289 note 1 Śankara, , Commentary, II, 64.Google Scholar

page 289 note 2 ibid.I, 379, 381.

page 290 note 1 ‘There is a general belief amongst many that monism of Śankara presents the final phase of Indian thought…But the readers of the present volume… will realize the strength and uncompromising impressiveness of the dualistic position’ (preface by Dasgupta, , Indian Philosophy, IV, viii). Mysticism East and West (New York: Macmillan, 1932), p. 33 (title of chapter 2).Google Scholar