Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s36: XLV Religion

Indian Philosophy v2.c26.s36

Language
English

Contents

XLV Religion

v2.c26.s36.2

It is generally said that Śaṃkara’s Advaita, though a masterpiece of intellect, cannot inspire religious piety. His Absolute cannot kindle passionate love and adoration in the soul. We cannot worship the Absolute whom no one hath seen or can see, who dwelleth in the light that no man can approach unto. The formless (nirākāram) Absolute is conceived as formed (ākāravat) for the purposes of worship. Worship of God is not a deliberate alliance with falsehood, since God is the form in which alone the Absolute can be pictured by the finite mind. The highest reality appears to the individual, who has not felt its oneness with his own nature, as possessing a number of perfections.¹ The conception of a personal God is the fusion of the highest logical truth with the deepest religious conviction. This personal God is an object of genuine worship and reverence, and not a non-ethical deity indifferent to man’s needs and fears. He is regarded as creator, governor and judge of the universe, possessing the qualities of power and justice, righteousness and mercy, omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience. Holiness of character and moral beauty are prominent aspects of Śaṁkara’s God. He is set over against the human soul, who stands to him in the relation of a beloved to a lover, a servant to a master, a son to a father, and a friend to a friend. The severity of metaphysical abstraction relaxes when Śaṁkara dwells on the variety of the divine qualities by which the eternal draws to himself the spirits of the children he has made. Religion for Śaṁkara is not doctrine or ceremony, but life and experience. It starts with the soul’s sense of the infinite and ends with its becoming the infinite. Sākṣātkāra, or intuition of reality, is the end of religion. True bhakti is seeking after one’s own real nature.² There are many vidyās, or forms of contemplation advocated in the Upaniṣads,³ and each individual has to select one of those, suited to his temper.⁴ There is unity with regard to the object, though there is variety in the mode of approach. Religious worship is broadly of two kinds, that of a personal God, as Saguṇa Brahmā, and that of symbols (pratīka).⁵ When the worshipper looks upon God as external to him, his worship is symbolic.

v2.c26.s36.3

¹ S.B., iii. 3. 12.

v2.c26.s36.4

² Svasvarūpānusaṁdhānam bhaktir ity abhidhīyate (Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, p. 31).

v2.c26.s36.5

³ iii. 3. 5.

v2.c26.s36.6

⁴ S.B., iii. 3. 59.

v2.c26.s36.7

⁵ S.B., iv. 1. 3.

v2.c26.s36.8

The relation existing between the person worshipping and the object worshipped implies a difference between the two.¹ The highest worship takes us to brahmaloka, where the distinction between the individual and the Supreme still survives. Only gradually is mukti attained from that condition. Religion, in the popular sense, is something to be transcended. It is an imperfect experience, which exists only so long as we fail to rise to the true apprehension of reality. It is destined to be absorbed; for "when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away." Śaṃkara quotes passages from the highest religious seers declaring the identity of the soul and Ātman: "verily I am thou, O holy Godhead, and Thou art I."² Every philosophy of religion should offer some explanation of such declarations as "I am Brahman" (aham brahmāsmi), "That art Thou" (tat tvam asi), in which the difference between the creature and the creator is transcended. Śaṃkara accounts for these by declaring that religious consciousness with its distinctions comes to an end when the goal of it is reached. A "Personal God" has meaning only for the practical religious consciousness and not for the highest insight.³ To the finite individual blinded by the veils, the Absolute seems to be determinate and exclusive of himself. Bondage and redemption possess a meaning for the finite individual, whose consciousness is fettered and repressed by his lower nature. If a personal God exclusive of the individual were the highest, then mystic experiences would become unintelligible, and we should have to remain content with a finite God. God is no God if he is not the All; if he be the All, then religious experience is not the highest.⁴ If God's nature is perfect, it cannot be so, so long as man's imperfect nature stands over against it; if it is not perfect, then it is not the nature of God. There is thus a fundamental contradiction in religious experience, clearly indicating that it belongs to the province of avidyā.

v2.c26.s36.9

¹ Upāsyopāsakabhāvo 'pi bhedādhiṣṭhāna eva (S.B., i. 2. 4).

v2.c26.s36.10

² Tvaṃ vā aham asmi bhagavo devate, aham vai tvam asi bhagavo devate (S.B., iv. 1. 30).

v2.c26.s36.11

³ Cp. Bradley: "For me the Absolute is not God. God for me has no meaning outside the religious consciousness, and that essentially is practical. The Absolute for me cannot be God, because in the end the Absolute is related to nothing, and there cannot be a practical relation between it and the finite will. When you begin to worship the Absolute or the universe, and make it the object of religion, you in that moment have transformed it" (Truth and Reality, p. 428).

v2.c26.s36.12

⁴ See Bradley: Truth and Reality, pp. 436 ff.

v2.c26.s36.13

The acceptance of the karmakāṇḍa requires the recognition of the Vedic deities. They are regarded by Śaṁkara, who subscribes to the traditional view, as personifications of natural forces, and not simply natural elements. "The names of the gods like Āditya and so forth, even if they refer to light, etc., compel us, according to the scriptures, to assume spiritual beings corresponding (to the elements) and gifted with ruling power (aiśvarya); for they are used in the hymns and the Brāhmaṇas."¹ These deities act as presiding agents (adhiṣṭhātṛ) of different life functions.² Agni is said to aid speech, Vāyu breath, and Āditya eye. The deities are not affected by the experiences of the individual soul.³ At death, the deities do not wander with the life organs, but simply withdraw their assisting power. The Supreme creates gods, men and beasts according to their merit and demerit. The immortality of the gods is, however, a relative (āpekṣikam) one, the deities are involved in saṁsāra and are subject to transitoriness.⁴ They are in need of saving knowledge and are dependent on the supreme Lord. We have cases in the scriptures of gods learning brahmavidyā. The objection, that, if these deities are individuals, they are subject to birth and death, and this fact will affect the eternal character of the Vedas, is set aside on the ground that the words of the Veda do not refer to individuals but to general notions. The word "Indra" means not an individual, but a certain rank (sthānaviśeṣa) in the hierarchy of beings. Whoever occupies the position bears the name. To the objection that their individuality is neither real, since the gods are not seen at sacrifices, nor possible, since an individual cannot be at many places at the same time, as he should be for receiving sacrificial offerings, Śaṁkara replies that the gods are not seen because they have the power to make themselves invisible, and they can multiply their bodies a thousandfold even as the yogins do.

v2.c26.s36.14

¹ See D.S.V., pp. 65-66.

v2.c26.s36.15

² Ait. Up., i. 2. 4.

v2.c26.s36.16

³ Which alone is bhoktṛ, while the deities are bhogopakāraṇabhūta.

v2.c26.s36.17

⁴ S.B., i. 3. 28.

v2.c26.s36.18.1

While Śaṁkara's spiritual faith needs no shrines and ritual, still, he had a sufficient sense of the historic to recommend them to those who were in want of them.¹ Unlike many other interpreters of the Vedānta, Śaṁkara adopts the philosophical, as distinct from the theological attitude in matters of religion. A theologian generally takes his stand on a particular denominational basis. As a member of a particular religious community, he sets himself to systematise, expand and defend the doctrines of his school. He accepts his creed as the truth with which his religion stands or falls. The philosopher, the other hand, in so far as he is a philosopher, does not confine himself to any one religion, but takes religion as such for his province, without assuming that the religion in which he is born or which he accepts is the only true religion. In Śaṁkara we find one of the greatest expounders of the comprehensive and tolerant character of the Hindu religion, which is ever ready to assimilate alien faiths. This attitude of toleration was neither a survival of superstition nor a means of compromise, but an essential part of his practical philosophy. He recognised the limitations of all formulas and refused to compress the Almighty within them. No reasonable man can think that his sect has weighed and measured God and set forth the result of the process in its own infallible creed. Every creed is an adventure of faith, an approach to experience.

v2.c26.s36.18.2

It is the instrument which leads to the vital religious experience; and if the reality of religious experience acquires a meaning for the individual who sincerely seeks after God in this or that particular form, it is impertinent for us to ask him to change his creed. Śaṁkara was not so fanatical as to question the religious experiences of those who claim to have direct contact with God through their respective tributes of faith and love. If men of radically different convictions are able to secure the same results of moral quickening, peace of mind and *rapport* with the central spiritual reality, he allowed them to have their own views. As one of the greatest religious geniuses of the world observed, "By their fruits" and not by their beliefs "ye shall know them." It does not matter by what names we worship God, so long as we are filled with the spirit of God and fervour for service. The One reality is spoken of in various ways, according to the diversity of the human mind (matibhedāt).¹ When we seek to express that which lies beyond phenomena, we invent symbols bodying forth our needs as best we may. Śaṁkara’s freedom from religious illusions and his deep-rooted humanism led him to take note of men’s dreams, which seem to be the only things of value in the world of māyā. He refused to turn propagandist or lower his philosophical standards in order to widen his religious appeal.

v2.c26.s36.18.3

Hinduism, as Śaṁkara understood it, allowed room within its pale for all the different types of thought and temperament. He is called the Ṣaṇmatasthāpanācārya, or the teacher who established the six creeds.² In matters of religion it is easy to take the high-flying idealistic line, ignoring all the facts of the earth, as it is equally easy to take the crudely realistic line which repudiates all ideals; but it is difficult to combine a clear-eyed realism with a steadfast loyalty to the ideal, and this is what Śaṁkara attempted. It is a unique phenomenon for a religious teacher to justify six different religious systems, a phenomenon possible only in Hindu India. As Vidyāraṇya says, men have identified God with all sorts of objects, from the immanent spirit to stocks or trees.³ While the followers of Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and Śāktaism, etc., were quarrelling one with another, Śaṁkara lifted these popular faiths from out of the dust of mere polemics into the lucid atmosphere of eternal truth. He gave a common basis to the prevalent forms and related them all to the central co-ordinating idea. He emphasised the religion of truth rooted in spiritual inwardness. The truth intended by all religions is the Ātman; and, until we recognise the oneness of our self with the reality that transcends all these imperfect characterisations, we shall revolve in the circle of saṁsāra.

v2.c26.s36.18.4

From his philosophical point of view he declares that, though the Absolute is visualised in many ways, the underlying reality is the same. There are no degrees of reality, though there are degrees of truth, *i.e.* our ways of comprehending the real. He did not jump to the conclusion that there is no God at all, for if there were, men would not differ in their ideas of him. The differences are due to men’s limitations.¹ Thus he was singularly free from both scepticism and fanaticism. He showed his sincerity of conviction by composing hymns to the different deities, hymns which are hardly surpassed for their moving power. This does not, however, mean that he justified all forms of superstition and idolatry. He repudiated vehemently some pernicious practices which became associated with religion. By the inculcation of his Advaita doctrine, he helped men to interpret God in terms of spiritual value. He had faith in the power of the mind to grasp the truth, if we persist in acting up to our best lights. His attitude to the existing religions was both sympathetic and critical. Śaṃkara aims at interpreting Hinduism to the new age in such a manner as to conserve, and even assert more clearly than hitherto, its distinctive message. Within this larger intention we may possibly discern the idea of unifying the people of the country. But he did not seek to bring about this unity by insisting on strict outward organisation or inward beliefs.

v2.c26.s36.18.5

He tried to bring it about by a wider comprehension. By laying stress on the personal character of religious experience, he broadened and spiritualised Hinduism. In reinterpreting Hindu thought, he sometimes found a place for those elements in it which are apparently inconsistent with his own views.

v2.c26.s36.19

¹ It is said that Śaṁkara on his death-bed prayed for forgiveness for having frequented temples, since by so doing he had seemed to deny the omnipresence of God.

v2.c26.s36.20

¹ Haristuti, p. 18. ² The Śaiva, the Vaiṣṇava, the Saura, the Śākta, the Gāṇapatya, and the Kāpāli creeds. ³ Antaryāminam ārabhya sthāvarānteṣavādinaḥ (Pañcadaśī, vi. 121). See also vi. 206-209.

v2.c26.s36.21

¹ S.B., i. 1. 20. There is a passage in Baron von Hügel’s latest work which represents Śaṃkara’s attitude in the matter. “It seems clear that the apparently endless variations which exist simultaneously between one entire religion and another entire religion, and even between single mind and single mind, or which show successively in one and the same religion, and even in one and the same mind, indeed that the crude childishness of much that most individuals and most religions think and represent their experience and its object to be, do not, of themselves, condemn the position that a great trans-subjective superhuman Reality is being thus variously and ever inadequately, yet none the less actually, apprehended by such groups or persons. The Reality extant and acting upon and within the world distinct from the human mind, and upon and within those human minds and spirits themselves, can indeed be taken as the determining occasion, object and cause of man’s long search for and continuous refinding of God; of the gradual growth in depth and in delicacy of man’s religious apprehensions; of man finding his full rest and abiding base in the religious experience and certainty alone; and of man simultaneously becoming ever more conscious both of the need of the best and of the inadequacy of all human categories and definitions to express this really experienced Reality” (*Philosophy of Religion*, pp. 44-45).

v2.c26.s36.22

After the tumult and storm of the polemical period came the Advaita of Śaṁkara, with its elemental calm and persuasiveness of rational conviction. It does not dictate or dogmatise, and its stately and mature affirmations carry the weight of sincere endeavour and ripe reflection. It grounds religious reality in the centre of man’s consciousness, from which it cannot be dislodged. The sole spiritual vocation of man consists in the discovery of reality, and not what serves our temporal ends. This discovery demands a complete abandonment of the egocentric and the anthropocentric points of view, in an absolute surrender of man’s vain and inordinate pride in his own importance. We must relinquish all attempts to envisage God in terms of our limited knowledge and experience. God exists for himself, first and foremost, and not for us merely. Our logic and our ethics make God an instrument for the advancement of our ends. Such an instrumental view of God, formulated by the weak mind of man to advance his petty plans, may do honour to man, but it is not a compliment to God. Śaṁkara would in a manner endorse Spinoza’s dictum that he who truly loves God cannot wish that God should love him in return.

v2.c26.s36.23

If Śaṁkara’s Advaita seems to us to be abstract, it is because we are content to dwell on a level lower than the highest that is possible for us. Śaṁkara’s repugnance to anthropomorphism makes his religion appear a little cold. But if we deny will and knowledge to the absolute spirit, it is not so much a limitation of the Absolute as a consequence of its perfection. Religious feeling is by no means lacking in Śaṁkara. It finds frequent expression in his writings in a manner which is often affecting and sometimes rises to fervour. But our popular religious views are not exempted from his dialectical criticism, and our views of God are shown to be as unstable and fugitive as we ourselves.

v2.c26.s36.24

When all is said, we find that Śaṁkara has combined a penetrating intellectual vision into things divine with a spirit of mystic contemplation. With Śaṁkara for our witness, it is impossible to say that a vigorous play of the intellect is an impediment to mystical contemplation. He also shows that freedom from external occupations is not a necessary characteristic of contemplative lives. He reconciles the personal or mystical, the institutional or authoritarian, the intellectual or philosophical elements of religion with one another.

Cites (5)