Shankara’s blunder
It was not Shankara’s mission to recover and present the truth for
universal application but to ‘establish the truth of Vedanta (i.e. of his
personal selection of Vedantic maxims) by defeating
in debate all who held an opposite view.’ (Pande:
1994) That admission all but nullifies his work. As Brahmin bookworm (i.e.
scholiast) supporting Brahmin interests he collated a personally favourable
(to Brahmins, but not to sudras) position and then
selected and arranged suitable data from sruti (and which is ‘true
because written’) to ‘prove’ his position. Shankara’s
truth (i.e. ground of creation) finding method was rotten science. He simply
copied his truth finding technique from previous Brahmin bookworms, such as,
for instance, Badarayana or Nagarjuna
(and who masqueraded as a Buddhist beggar (i.e. bikkhu) whose overriding aim
seems to have been to degrade the archaic Buddhist dharma (= law, i.e. as set
of rules derived from observation rather than books) by dissipating it in Vedantic lore/fantasy. The Brahmin Nagarjuna
claimed that he took no position at all as he set about demolishing all
Buddhist dharma positions/views). In ‘proving’
that atman = brahman (to which he should have added
= prajapati) Shankara blindly
accepted the several alternate Brihadaranuyaka
Upanishad propositions about the ground of creation. But that Upanishad had
merely equated tautologies. For, the notions of prajapati,
atman and brahman were but three different names
produced by three different sources of speculation (in that Upanishad
expressed in three chapters) about the origin and purpose of life. In other
words, Shankara claimed atman = brahman
(= parajapati) as creation ground rather than
stating atman or brahman
or prajapati as
creation ground. Had the
youthful Shankara reverted to the insights of Veda
(or the seasoned Manu) or simply to plain everyday (sub species aeternitatis) observation of (objective) nature his equation might have been a very
uncomfortable because revolutionary but wholly liberating:
In other
words, the atman/brahman/prajapati
happens/acts as an ever presenting set of rules (or laws), indeed as a Turing Machine. Atman/brahman/prajapati is not an
‘imperishable’ substance/essence (already denied by the Buddha, but later
upheld by Spinoza) but an ever ‘waiting/presenting’ set of (formation or selection)
rules (or conditions), that is to say, the universal dharma (or any one of
its localised elaborations). Shankara, praised by all
those who sought social stability, specifically the two ruthlessly
self-serving castes on top of the pile, did immeasurable long term damage to
India. He thoughtlessly accepted and so reinforced the atavistic and by his
lifetime redundant notions of karman, samsara,
dharma, the caste system, the varnas, the ashramas and so on within his seemingly sophisticated
flaky metaphysics made irrefutable with 4 (sometimes 7) dodgy ‘proofs of
truth’ (i.e. pramanas).
Obviously, all the former become void if and when atman/brahman
is conceived as unqualified, that is to say, as unqualified tattvamasi. By upholding the
divisive (via arbitrary qualities) archaic social and so behavioural
structure he locked India into a seriously primitive (i.e. infantile) past
(i.e. as development phase) and so condemned India to philosophical and
political stagnation and decay. A true avatar (as paramahansa) would have
completed the transition from Veda (i.e. naïve, childish understanding) via
the Upanishads (i.e. as adolescent/transitional understanding) to modernity
(i.e. to mature understanding) in which all living creatures are and therefore are equal before
the universal dharma/law. |