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by Ernest Wood
THIS Teacher, who founded monasteries in India for the study of
Vedānta philosophy, is believed by many of his followers to have lived several centuries before Christ, though other scholars place him much later. The date does not matter to us today, but his philosophy does, for it is regarded by some millions of people, and especially by the intellectuals, as the very pinnacle of Aryan thought. It was not that he originated a new philosophy, though he did propound a self-culture or discipline necessary to the understanding of it.
Shankarāchārya expounded with great clarity and completeness the already existing philosophy of the Upanishads—a section of the Vedas often called the Vedānta, or end of the Veda, containing the "last word" or highest teaching about the nature of Brahman (God),
man and the world. This teaching summed up its conclusions in a number of Great Sayings, including "There is one reality, but the intellectual persons speak of it variously," "All this certainly is Brahman," "That is the reality," "That, thou art" and other similar sentences to be (r) listened to, (2) thought about and (3) meditated upon, for the attainment of knowledge of the deepest truth, the very secret of life, the discovery which reveals the unalloyed freedom and happiness of our true self, when false ideas are put aside.
Gnyāna or Jnāna is knowledge. The central doctrine of this philosophy is that everything is one, and it can be known. But that knowing is only by being. We know ourselves not by words but by being ourselves, do we not? And this is happiness, for it seems that though this consciousness of self that we find ourselves to be is troubled, we always ascribe that trouble to something else—something outside—which restricts or annoys us. Who is there who blames himself for his sorrow? Even the thoughtful person who calls himself imperfect ascribes his troubles and sorrows to the imperfections, and says that if he could be without them he would be happy. Generally he tries to get rid of them. So it is by the study of the self that this philosophy proceeds to disclose the occult or secret truth which removes the imperfections and leaves the self free and joyous.
Shankarāchārya says in one word what all these imperfections are, what it is that we suffer from—it is ignorance, avidyā. It will be, then, the very height of practical occultism to dispel that ignorance. Because of wrong assumptions we make mistakes, even with the best of intentions—even the intentions are imperfect because of ignorance. So thoughts, intentions and actions are all clouded by ignorance. Finally, even actions are tremendously confused, and without power, because of ignorance.
This is true occultism, then—the dissolution of ignorance at its source, not any small potterings for the gaining of petty pleasures or for the removal of petty pains, but to look behind the veil and find the pure self and no longer play about in the fields of ignorance. This is the real business of life, the Upanishads assert, which can be done, and has been done by successful human beings, who have seen the error and mastered it. At the very least it is better not to walk into new trouble than to busy oneself merely with removing the old.
First of all, Shankarāchārya makes a distinction between people who want to have and those who want to know. To have is connected with external things. The whole world consists of things to have. Shankara does not deny the infinity of worlds or the existence of "higher planes," containing lofty and glorious beings or gods, or that by desiring things
of higher planes or heavens and by worshipping the gods people may obtain centuries and even millennia of delight in various lofty heavens; but he affirms that all those things are the playthings of children or the tinsel of fools, who are making them all for themselves because they have not thought about the eternal realities.
He therefore draws a decided distinction between dharma-jignāsa (the desire to know what should be done in order to obtain better conditions on earth and in heaven) and Brahma-jignāsa (the desire to know that which is eternal). This is discussed very decisively in Shankara's commentary on the first of the Brahma-Sūtras or aphorisms. The desire for the "heavens" must be preceded by sense-experience, and confidence in the Vedas, which declare that the heavens exist; but the desire for Brahman must be preceded by thought, thought and more thought (vichāra), especially with reference to an understanding of the distinction (viveka) between the eternal (nitya) and temporary (anitya) realities. In emphasizing thought, however, Shankara does not leave out study of the Vedānta, which contains much information and advice about seeking the eternal. Shankara's emphasis on thinking is very clear in his Aparokshānubhūti: "Thinking should be done for the sake of attaining knowledge of the Self. Knowledge
is not attained by any means other than thinking, just as objects are never seen without light. 'Who am I?' 'How is this world produced?' 'Who made it?' and 'What is the material?'—such is the enquiry." 1
It is well known that we do not see things as they really are, because of our limited point of view, and yet there is in us the craving for greater understanding, because the human soul is one with the divine or universal soul. Each one of us reflects that, just as the disc of the sun may be reflected in many little pools of water. We have thus a dual nature, and though the lower may be satisfied, still the higher makes its claim in a ceaseless desire to understand. If human power and love were to grow so great, as to make our life on earth a perfect paradise of peace and plenty for all, still men would say, "Now, we want to know why all this is so." There are the needs of the personality—food, clothing and shelter, amusement and education, exercise and rest—but beyond these there are spiritual needs, and among them is the real hunger for understanding.
It is not supposed by Shankara that the average or ordinary man can think straight in these matters. He prescribes a course of what may be called purification as a preparation. This is called the sādhanachatushtayam, the "group of four accomplishments." They present three departments of self-training, and a concluding condition of mind, as will be seen in the following table:
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NAME OF ACCOMPLISHMENT |
Function
involved | |
In Sanskrit |
In English | |
1. Viveka |
Discrimination |
Thought | |
2. Vairāgya |
Uncoloredness |
Feelings | |
3. Shatsampatti |
6 Successes |
The Will | |
4. Mumukshatwa |
The State of Longing for Liberation |
Viveka is the practice of discrimination between the fleeting and the permanent. This is the first of three preliminary yogas in this school. It is here that the thinking, thinking, thinking, begins. It is to be applied to oneself, to others and to the whole business of life. It is an inspection of the contents of one's ordinary self, to discriminate between the relatively temporary and permanent. First one may dwell upon the body and realize that it is only an instrument for the conscious self to play upon. Then, one may dwell on the habits of feeling and emotion which have been accumulated during the present lifetime (or, strictly,
bodytime), and realize these also to be part of the instrument—"I am surely not my feelings and emotions towards things and people." Thirdly, one must meditate upon the fact that the lower mind, the collection of information, ideas and opinions that one
has acquired up to this period, is also not the self, but merely an internal library more or less imperfectly indexed, in which the books have a tendency to open at certain places because they have been opened there many times before.
This meditation may then be applied to other people, so that one comes to think of them as the consciousness beyond the personality, and in dealing with them to assist and further the higher purposes of the Self within them rather than the desires rising from the personality. Being a material thing, even up to the mental plane, that personality has its own quality of inertia, and dislikes the discomfort involved in new thinking and willing and feeling, until it is well trained and learns to rejoice in the sharing of a life more than its own. But we must also help to bring the day of triumph nearer for all whom we contact, as Shrī Shankarāchārya did, for he was one of the world's busiest men.
This meditation must be extended still further to all the business of life, to the family, the shop, the field, the office, society. All these things must be considered as of importance not as they minister to the laziness, selfishness or thoughtlessness of the personality, but as they bear on the advancement in power of will, love and thought of the evolving consciousness in all concerned. It will be seen that works and
their objects pass away, but the faculty and ability gained by them remains in the man.
Fifteen to thirty minutes of this kind of meditation each day is sufficient to establish very soon an entirely new outlook in the personality. Emerson speaks of something of the same kind in his essay on "Inspiration," as the way to an altogether richer life than any of us can possibly reach without it. It can often be practiced to some extent under unfavorable conditions, as for example in the railway train, if one makes up one's mind to take the various disturbances of it with a sweet temper, and lend oneself to the rhythm of its noise.
The second requirement is vairāgya, an emotional condition in which one does not respond at once to impressions coming from the outer world, but first submits the matter to the discriminative power rising from
viveka. If you strike an ordinary man, he will get hot and strike back, or run away, or do something else spontaneous and scarcely rational; but a man having vairāgya would use his spiritual intelligence before responding. The literal meaning of the word vairāgya is "absence of color," and in this connection it means absence of passion. Rāga is coloring, especially redness. People everywhere take their emotional coloring from their environment, according to well known psychological laws; like pieces of glass placed on blue or red or green paper, they change
their color. Likes and dislikes rise up in them without reason, at the mere sight of various objects, and the appearance of different persons calls up pride, anger, fear and other personal emotions.
They are constantly judging things not with their intelligence but by their feelings and emotional habits. "This is good, that is bad," means generally nothing more than, "I like this; I do not like that." A man dislikes a thing because it disturbs his physical or emotional convenience or his comfortable convictions, "I thought I had done with thinking about that—take it away, confound you," grumbles the man comfortably settled in his opinions, as in a big armchair.
Vairāgya is the absence of agitation due to things outside. A mistaken idea which is sometimes associated with this word is that it implies absence of emotion. That is not so. The purified personality responds to the higher emotions, the love emotions that belong to the real self. Those emotions come from that aspect of the indwelling consciousness which feels other lives to be as interesting as one's own. This is the root of all the love emotions—admiration, kindness, friendship, devotion and others—which must not be confused with any sort of passion, which is personal or bodily desire. If a man has vairāgya and he is still at all emotional, his emotion must express some form of love.
Vairāgya may be developed by a form of meditation in which the aspirant should picture and turn over in mind the various things that have been causing him agitation, or the disturbing emotions of pride, anger and fear. Having made a picture of the cat spilling the ink on the best tablecloth, or of your enemy putting in a bad word for you with your employer or superior behind your back, you calmly look at it, meditate on it, and the light of your own intelligence will see the real value of the experience and this removal of ignorance will also remove the agitating emotion. This is a question of feeling, not of action. Do not here substitute the deadly coldness that some people sometimes feel instead of anger, and imagine that to be the calm state.
The calmness obtained in this way will soon make all the other meditation far more effective than before, because meditation best opens the door to the inner world and all its inspiration when the body is quiet, the emotions are calm, and the attention is turned to the subject of thought without any muscular or nervous strain or physical sensation whatever. Incidentally it should be said that meditation with physical sensation or strain may prove injurious to health, but meditation rightly done in this way can never do the least harm.
The third requirement is called shatsampatti, which may be translated "the six forms of success." The will is now used to make all conditions favorable for the further development of viveka. To understand the function of the will, it is necessary to realize that it is the faculty with which we change ourselves. Thought is kriyashakti, the power of mind that acts upon matter; but it is the will with which we change our thoughts and other inward conditions. Now will-power is to be used to bring the whole life of the man within the purpose of jnāna-yoga. This work is the equivalent of the tapas of Patanjali and the sevā of Shrī Krishna.
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