What
is Nonduality - Nondualism - Advaita?
Jerry Katz, editorEncylopedia Britannica article
Traditional
Various
authors and teachers
Brief
Explications
Lengthier
Explications
From What
Is Enlightenment magazine
From 'A Brief History of Everything', by Ken Wilber
Secondary
Nondualism and Ultimate Nondualism of Da Free John
Meeting
the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists and the Art
of the Self, by Anne Carolyn Klein
The
Rotten Root, by Drew Hempel
Advaita
Vedanta web site FAQ
ADVAITA: Introduction
from What
Is Enlightenment magazine:(link
removed; no longer functioning)
ADVAITA PHILOSOPHY, OR VEDANTIC NONDUALISM, has become,
along with Buddhism, one of the most popular spiritual
paths being pursued by those interested in enlightenment
today. During the past three decades, Advaita has become
more widely recognized in the West through the ever
growing popularity of Ramana Maharshi, considered by many
to be modern India’s greatest spiritual giant.
We, like many Western spiritual practitioners, also first
came into contact with Advaita philosophy, the Hindu
philosophy of nonduality (oneness, or more precisely
not-two-ness), through the teachings of the great Ramana
Maharshi. Endeavoring to acquire a deeper understanding
of the background and philosophical context of this
profound and ever more influential teaching, we looked
back to its source, to the man who is widely recognized
as its founder, the eighth century religious philosopher
and master teacher Shankara. Advaita Vedanta is
considered the crown jewel of Indian philosophy, and
Shankara’s powerful influence can be felt throughout
most modern schools of Indian thought. Originally we had
believed that he was the legendary figure that he is
often described to be in the traditional literature: the
enlightened genius maverick who not only defeated the
dominance of Buddhist philosophy and any and all other
opposing religious views in medie val India, but also
single-handedly reestablished the glory and reign of
traditional Vedantic doctrine. But as we probed beneath
the popular interpretation of Shankara’s life, we
found out that much of what has been proclaimed about him
is the stuff that myths are made of—and, in fact,
knowledge of the actual circumstances of his life is
extremely sketchy at best, to the point that even his
reported date of birth varies by a hundred years. What we
do know is that Shankara was a master philosopher-sage
who put great emphasis on a rigorous interpretation of
Vedantic scripture strictly in accord with the doctrine
of advaita, or nonduality. In traditional Advaita
philosophy (which can be simply defined as the
Upanishadic declaration, Thou Art That Immortal Self
Absolute!), spiritual knowledge was sought not through
yogic experience as much as it was through the systematic
practice of discriminating the Real from the unreal,
supported by the study of the scriptures.
Noted scholar Georg Feuerstein summarizes the advaita
realization as follows: "The manifold universe is,
in truth, a Single Reality. There is only one Great
Being, which the sages call Brahman, in which all the
countless forms of existence reside. That Great Being is
utter Consciousness, and It is the very Essence, or Self
(Atman) of all beings." The special glory and
liberating power of these extraordinary teachings of
nonduality (known to be the most direct path to
enlightenment) is not only their potential to enlighten
the seeker in the present lifetime, but even more, their
potential to liberate the ripe individual instantaneously
from the bondage of conditioned existence. There have
been impressive living demonstrations of this profound
attainment in recent times, in the example of the saint
and sage Ramana Maharshi; the remarkable
cigarette-smoking jnani [Self-realized individual] from
Bombay, Nisargadatta Maharaj; the recently deceased
renegade master and "lion of Lucknow," H.W.L.
Poonja; and the unassuming Ajja, who resides effortlessly
in an intensely blissful, unbroken awareness of the Self,
introduced to the Western world for the first time in
this issue of What Is Enlightenment?
[I am] the nature of Pure Consciousness. I am always the
same to beings, one alone; [I am] the highest Brahman,
which, like the sky, is all-pervading, imperishable,
auspicious, uninterrupted, undivided and devoid of
action. I do not belong to anything since I am free from
attachment. [I am] the highest Brahman . . .
ever-shining, unborn, one alone, imperishable, stainless,
all-pervading, and nondual—That am I, and I am
forever released.
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—Shankara, The Upadesasahasri
While Advaita's profound inspiration and power to
liberate is undeniable, its worldview has not been
without its critics. Even though "modern"
Advaita seems to emphasize the indivisible nature of the
world and Brahman, or the Self Absolute, Advaita
philosophy has traditionally expressed, as noted
religious scholar Lance Nelson points out, a "deep
metaphysical bias against the world. . . . In the end,
the Advaita tradition fails to present a true nondualism
of world and Absolute. . . . It is rather an acosmic
monism. It achieves its nonduality not inclusively, but
exclusively. Empirical reality is admitted in a
provisional way, but in the end it is cast out of the
Absolute, out of existence. From the highest perspective,
the world is simply not there [emphases ours]." Once
again, even though modern proponents of Advaita do not
appear to exclude the world in their vision of
nonduality, in the classical view, the world is clearly
recognized as being either completely unreal, or only
partially real. And this is what Advaita has been
historically criticized for. Precisely because of its
emphasis on the ultimate unreality and illusory nature of
the world and embodied existence, any teaching of how to
live in the world is entirely absent. More specifically,
the nondual teaching does not in any way address the
ethical or moral dimension of human life. And even though
modern Advaita does not seem to exclude the world in its
nondual view, it still is devoid of any teaching that
addresses the realities of human life.
Interestingly enough, it appears that historically
Advaita did not address ethical or moral questions
because, according to Nelson, the highest nondual
teachings were "never intended to be a philosophy
for the general public." In fact, he states that
they were "formulated by and for a narrow spiritual
elite of male brahmins [members of the highest, priestly
class], primarily sannyasins [renunciates], who alone
were believed qualified to fully appropriate its
import." This practically would have meant that the
individual to whom the absolute teachings were revealed
would have already fulfilled the demanding moral and
ethical qualifications for discipleship. And even more
than that, Shankara himself states that the
qualifications for discipleship also demanded an
extraordinary degree of detachment from and transcendence
of worldly desires:
The pupil must be dispassionate toward all things
noneternal. . . . [Having] abandoned the desire for sons,
wealth and worlds, endowed with self-control [and]
compassion, he is a brahmin who is internally and
externally pure, whose thought is calm, who has reached
tranquility. . . . [Thus] let him go to a spiritual
teacher who is learned in the scriptures and established
in Brahman.
—The Upadesasahasri
The unusual phenomenon occurring in the postmodern
spiritual marketplace is that now, as never before in
history, what were once considered the highest esoteric
teachings, revealed only to those who were prepared and
had proven themselves worthy of their unimaginable depth
and subtlety, are available to anyone who wanders into a
spiritual bookstore. An important question seems to be:
Are most seekers genuinely prepared for the psychological
upheaval and world-shattering shift of perception that
penetration into the Absolute unleashes? Advaita’s
emphasis on the illusory nature of embodied existence has
the potential to give license to human weakness and
self-indulgence if the individual is not already firmly
grounded in a fundamentally wholesome relationship to
life. The unwholesome tendencies characterized by
narcissistic, neurotic and deeply cynical convictions so
common today create a dangerously weak foundation for a
nondual perspective that transcends all pairs of
opposites, including right and wrong. While
Advaita’s great strength is its singular, unwavering
emphasis on the Absolute dimension of existence, its
weakness is revealed in the limited scope of its
singularity. And while any truly absolute view must, by
definition, transcend all distinctions, the inherent
potential of Advaita or non dualism to inspire a
worldview that is perilously empty of any value
whatsoever is enormous. Indeed, the potential for escape,
rather than genuine transcendence, is great in such an
absolute teaching. For to be embraced, absorbed and
utterly consumed by the Absolute is one thing—but to
escape from the inherent complex ity of life in order to
avoid the overwhelming demand that true surrender
requires is another thing altogether.
© Moksha Foundation 1998
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