Buddhism and Self

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Wed, 17 Sep 1997, Gregory Goode wrote:

> I'm asking for the purpose of being clear about our terms.  There are 2 major
> implicit definitions I've seen of advaita.  One is the shruti-based (or to
> a lesser extent, shruti-and-smrti-based) definition, with sources
> consisting of Upanishads, the Brahmasutra, and the Bhagavadgita.  Richard
> King,
> in EARLY ADVAITA VEDANTA AND BUDDHISM (SUNY Press, 1995) is a good example
> of a user of this definition, see p. 51.  Not sure, but I take it that
> there is also
> a living lineage coming from Shankaracharya, with ashrams (10?, 12?) in
> India today.  Is this an orthodoxy?

There are more than 100 such centers in India. Some are more famous than
the others. And yes, they constitute some kind of an orthodoxy. However,
they have never organized themselves the way the Christian Churches have,
although it is becoming popular to compare the contemporary SankarAcAryas
to the pope.

There is an account of the contemporary state of this tradition at

http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~vidya/advaita/ad-today.html

(The URL address of this site will change in the near future. I'll keep
list-members informed about it.)

>
> The other definition of advaita that seems to be current today is that
> advaita is
> a non-dual metaphysical philosophy, with common sources in most of the large
> religious traditions.

I would modify this statement to say that there is a current assumption
that *all* religious traditions ultimately teach a non-dual
metaphysics/ontology. To some extent, the impetus for this feeling
originates in 19th-century India, and is an Indian way of responding to
the claims of Christian missionaries. Thus, when the missionary tells us
that Christ is the only way to salvation, we respond by saying that
vedAnta is the only true/universal religion. In the process, we show them
that even Christ's words can be given Vedantic interpretations. As far as
the motivations of this response go, I am in sympathy with them. However,
I do not always agree with the philosophical ramifications of such an
attitude that some contemporary teachers emphasize. Moreover, one should
realize that it is politically provoking to say that Christians have been
misinterpreting Christ for the last two millenia, and this is not going
to be accepted lightly (Francis Clooney, Abhishiktananda and Bede
Griffiths notwithstanding). I would also like to point out that the
universalist statements aside, there will always be a specific association
of advaita with India, with the Sanskrit language and with the Vedic
texts.

> There are lots of contemporary teachers today who
> consider themselves teachers of advaita.  While perhaps never mentioning
> Shankara, Gaudapada, or the texts above, they talk lots about Taoism, Sufism,
> esoteric Christianity, Buddhism, New Physics, Zen, "New Age"
> touchy-feely-ism,
> psychotherapy, consciousness, psychology, the Enneagram, Kashmir Shaivism,
> and lots of other things.

And this irks those who have ties to the orthodox advaita vedAnta
tradition, as much as it would irk the representatives of these other
schools of thought too. Some of them like Taoism and Sufism (and sadly,
even Kashmir Saivism) seem to be dead in the lands of their birth, but
Zen, Buddhism(s), New Physics, Christianity and other traditions are still
going strong. As for the various New Age-ism(s), they are desperately
searching for an identity.

For example, some of us might say that Buddhism also teaches nothing but
advaita, or conversely, that advaita is nothing but Buddhism. So long as
this is asserted at a philosophical level, this is harmless. Whether it is
right or wrong is a different question. However, when it comes to the
Dalai Lama and his Tibetan followers, it is bound to be problematic. After
all, in the long run, one can well use this as a means to absorb his
following within the Indian population. Most Indians would not object,
while the Chinese will be happy to see it happen, but the political
aspirations of the Tibetans will be forgotten.

That said, I would like to balance this out by pointing out that the
orthodox advaita tradition which bases itself on the Sruti-smrti texts
does recognize the merit of other traditions too. Moreover, after a point,
the texts are de-emphasized. That is the reason the SankarAcAryas of
recent times can accept Ramana Maharishi as a genuine teacher. After all,
he did not approach any of them for religious instruction, nor did he go
through the standard regimen of Vedic schooling that would be taught in
their monasteries. However, it must be pointed out that a Ramana is quite
rare in this world.

Vidyasankar