Heeding Sankara's Bhagavadgitabhasya : his proposal for meditation to serve as a complement to philosophical reason (Buddhi), thereby eradicating fragmentation

Abstract

The Advaita philosophy of Sankara (early 8th century) attempts to provide a means whereby the unique and the universal may be known as mutual expressions of each other. Naturally, such a project attempts to make knowing itself the field of research, hence calling for a reassessment and re-dimension of knowing. This thesis attempts to draw attention to this issue and, in as far as words can serve our purpose, provide some reason for acknowledging the meaning of non-duality in the situation where the individual is seemingly juxtaposed with the creation, and fragmentation is most likely to appear. This may help show how Advaita philosophy addresses contemporary issues and with its aspirations, resolves some of the lacunae that have recently developed which have almost flung philosophy into a state of incomprehensibility that merely serves the futile purpose of suffocation. Advaita is audacious in the philosophical stand that it takes. Sankara does not consider philosophical research to be merely a matter of words written on a page, or of arguments expounded in debate. These are merely tools. On no account, are they ever presented as the end itself which, for Advaita, carries the sense of having a non-terminal bias. People speak profusely, write books, poetry, philosophical dissertations and so on. And yet when, in life, it comes to some event where something for others needs to be done, without any personal gain, often we find we are lacking, we draw back; goodwill, love, compassion and so on, are all too rapidly forgotten and abandoned. This often happens as an indication of those realms where knowledge has not been transformed and changed into being. What one knows has come loose and detached itself, so to speak, from what one is and, because it has not been thus transformed, mere learning does not suggest any reasonable response on these occasions. This fragmentary condition is what passes for philosophical blindness, in Satikara' s terms. In Sanskrt the word used for philosophy is darsana which means, literally, seeing. This is not speculation, as some would like to believe. To know the truth, for Sankara, is to cultivate it so that it is experienced and realised, and so that one acts from it. This is by no means an impossibility. In fact it is analogous to saying that to know human nature one has to cultivate it; something which most humans do anyway, by means of family tradition, culture, education and so on. [...]