Adi Shankara
Adi Shankara (Śaṅkarācārya) was the most influential philosopher of Hinduism and the systematizer of Advaita Vedanta — the non-dualist school of Indian philosophy that holds that ultimate reality is Brahman alone, the one infinite, attributeless consciousness, and that the apparent plurality and diversity of the world is māyā (illusion/appearance). The individual self (ātman) is not ultimately distinct from Brahman: 'Thou art That' (tat tvam asi). Shankara's vigorous philosophical arguments, commentaries on the principal Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita, and his institutional reforms (founding four monastic orders across India) made Advaita Vedanta the dominant philosophical tradition in Indian thought.
Key Ideas
Key Contributions
- ● Systematized Advaita Vedanta — the most influential school of Indian philosophy
- ● Argued that Brahman alone is ultimately real and the world of multiplicity is māyā (apparent, not ultimate)
- ● Demonstrated the identity of Ātman (individual self) and Brahman (ultimate reality) through rigorous philosophical argument
- ● Distinguished three levels of reality (ultimate, conventional, apparent) as a framework for understanding experience
- ● Founded four monastic centers across India, institutionalizing Vedantic learning
- ● Wrote definitive commentaries on the Upanishads, Brahma Sutras, and Bhagavad Gita
Core Questions
Key Claims
- ✓ Brahman alone is real (satyam); the world is appearance (mithyā); the self (ātman) is Brahman
- ✓ The individual self is not ultimately different from Brahman — 'Thou art That' (tat tvam asi)
- ✓ Māyā (ignorance/superimposition) is the cause of the apparent plurality of the world
- ✓ Liberation is not the attainment of something new but the recognition of one's identity with Brahman
- ✓ The world has three levels of reality: ultimate (Brahman), conventional (empirical world), and apparent (illusion)
Biography
Life
Shankara was born around 788 CE in Kaladi, Kerala, South India, into a Brahmin family. According to traditional accounts, he was a child prodigy who had memorized the Vedas by age eight and took the vow of sannyasa (renunciation) at a remarkably young age. He traveled across India debating philosophers from rival schools — Buddhist, Jain, and other Hindu traditions — and is credited with restoring the authority of the Vedic tradition at a time when Buddhism was still powerful in India.
Shankara died around 820 CE at approximately thirty-two years of age — an astonishingly brief life given the volume and quality of his philosophical output and institutional achievements.
Advaita Vedanta
Shankara's Advaita ('non-dual') Vedanta teaches that there is only one ultimate reality: Brahman — infinite, attributeless (nirguṇa), pure consciousness. The world of multiplicity and diversity that we experience is the result of māyā — not 'illusion' in the sense of complete unreality, but a superimposition (adhyāsa) caused by ignorance (avidyā). Just as a rope in dim light is mistaken for a snake, the one Brahman appears as the manifold world due to avidyā.
The individual self (ātman) is not ultimately different from Brahman. The great Upanishadic declarations (mahāvākyas) — 'Thou art That' (tat tvam asi), 'I am Brahman' (aham brahmāsmi), 'This Self is Brahman' (ayam ātmā brahma) — express this identity. Liberation (mokṣa) is not the attainment of something new but the recognition of what has always been the case: the individual self IS Brahman.
Three Levels of Reality
Shankara distinguishes three levels of reality:
1. Pāramārthika (ultimate): Brahman alone — attributeless, non-dual, pure consciousness
2. Vyāvahārika (conventional/empirical): The world as we experience it — real at the conventional level but ultimately grounded in Brahman
3. Prātibhāsika (apparent): Complete illusion — like seeing a snake where there is only a rope
Critique of Buddhism
Shankara vigorously criticized Buddhist philosophy, especially the Madhyamaka and Yogācāra schools, arguing that they could not account for the continuity of experience and the very possibility of liberation without positing a permanent, underlying reality (Brahman/Ātman). Ironically, Shankara's own system was sometimes criticized as 'crypto-Buddhism' by other Hindu philosophers because of its apparent similarity to Buddhist emptiness.
Legacy
Shankara founded four monastic centers (maṭhas) at the four corners of India — Sringeri (south), Puri (east), Dwaraka (west), and Joshimath (north) — which continue to function today as centers of Vedantic learning. Advaita Vedanta, as systematized by Shankara, became the most widely studied philosophical tradition in India and has been enormously influential in modern Hinduism (Vivekananda, Ramana Maharshi, and the global Vedanta movement).
Methods
Notable Quotes
"Brahman alone is real; the world is appearance; the self is nothing but Brahman"
"Thou art That (tat tvam asi)"
"The world, like a dream, is true as long as one is in it"
"To the enlightened, all that exists is nothing but the Self"
Major Works
- Brahmasūtrabhāṣya (Commentary on the Brahma Sutras) Treatise (810)
- Upadeśasāhasrī (A Thousand Teachings) Treatise (810)
- Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (Crest-Jewel of Discrimination) Other (810)
Influenced by
- Nagarjuna · influence
Sources
- Eliot Deutsch, 'Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction' (University of Hawaii Press, 1969)
- Natalia Isayeva, 'Shankara and Indian Philosophy' (SUNY Press, 1993)
- Sengaku Mayeda (trans.), 'A Thousand Teachings: The Upadeśasāhasrī of Śaṅkara' (SUNY Press, 1992)
External Links
Translations
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