The System of the Vedanta according to Badarayana's Brahma-Sutras and Cankara's Commentary c6.s8.t1.2

c6.s8.t1.2

The fundamental thought of the esoteric theology (cf. above p. 102 ff. 115) is this, that Brahman strictly taken is without all differences (viçeṣa), attributes (guṇa), limitations (upâdhi) and forms (âkâra).—This undifferentiated Brahman, as we may briefly call it, has, however, two contraries: first the forms of the phenomenal world, as which Brahman, conditioned by Upâdhis, appears; then the imperfect figurative ideas, which we form of the Godhead, in order to bring it nearer to our understanding and our worship (upâsanâ). It is strange that between these two contraries of the undifferentiated Brahman, however wide apart they naturally are, Çankara draws no sharp distinction, and even if according to one passage (p. 807, 5) it seems as if he saw in the phenomenal forms the basis (*ālambanam*) of the presentation-forms, yet from the continual intermingling of the two, not only in the passage under consideration, but also in many other passages in the work ⁹¹ it follows that our author never became clearly conscious of the difference between them. Perhaps this was done more by other Commentators, who, of the one Adhikaraṇam 3, 2, 11—21, make two, of which the first (3, 2, 11—14) seems to have been directed against the manifoldness of phenomenal forms, and the second (3, 2, 15—21) against the plurality of the characteristics of Brahman, which Çankara (p. 812) discards as aimless (*vyartha*), without our having been able completely to gather the opinion of the Opponent from his words.