Sankara

Traditionally, the Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad-Bhāṣya is regarded as the genuine work of Śaṅkara. However, by the 19th century, some authors (P. Regnaud, G. A. Jacob and editors of ĀSS edition) had already expressed their doubt in Śaṅkara’s authorship. M. Narayanaswami Aiyer in 1900–1901 and Hauschild (1927) also rejected Śaṅkara’s authorship. On the other hand, manuscript colophons attribute the work to Śaṅkara-bhagavat(pāda), which conforms to Śaṅkara’s authorship according to Paul Hacker’s criteria, by which non-genuine works are usually ascribed in colophons to Śaṅkara-ācārya. Hacker, however, also doubted the attribution to Śaṅkara, and called for a special investigation of the content of the work. This paper will attempt to implement Hacker’s other set of criteria, through which the terminological peculiarities typical of Śaṅkara’s BSBh will be compared to ŚvUBh. This methodology has already been successfully employed and refined by Sengaku Mayeda, who argued for Śaṅkara's authorship of the Upadeśasāhasrī and commentaries on the Bhagavad-Gītā, Gauḍapādīya-Kārikās, and Kena-Upaniṣad. The results of this research will be somewhat opposite, as some of the terms in ŚvUBh reflect later developments in Advaita thought. As further evidence against Śaṅkara’s authorship, this paper will present quotations from the Prakīrṇādhikāra, a much more recent Vaikhānasa text attributed to the sage Bhṛgu, which possibly places ŚvUBh a few centuries after Śaṅkara.

Apophatic Measures: Toward a Theology of Irreducible Particularity is a work of constructive comparative theology examining select writings of Śaṅkara (Eighth Century, India) and Nicholas of Cusa (Fifteenth Century, Germany). It investigates the theological significance of individuality, difference, and diversity from the perspectives of these provocative thinkers. It argues that, for Śaṅkara and Cusa, apophasis does not culminate in what Michael Sells calls a “semantic event,” but instead in a sensual event. For each, negation removes intellectual distractions, awakening one to a heightened state of sensual attentiveness. Thus awakened, one attends to other persons, perceiving individuals as unique disclosures of ultimate reality.
For Śaṅkara, this is observed in the embodied encounter wherein a teacher incarnates Vedānta scripture, literally points at a student, and reveals “This Self is Brahman” (Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad 2). In part, a student comes to see himself/herself as Brahman because of being seen as such by the guru who gives voice to the scripture in order that it may be heard (śruti). For Cusa, the intimate encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4) is paradigmatic of true, attentive sensuality. Though thirsty and fatigued, Jesus genuinely sees the woman just as she is, speaking to her particularly and personally, rather than reducing her individuality to socially or religiously constructed categories.
Employing a heuristic device termed “apophatic measure” in its trifold meanings of method, sensuality, and particularity, this dissertation contributes to contemporary discourses on the ontology of difference, the theo-ethical valuation of diversity, and the singularity of unique bodies. Rather than reducing individuals to ethnic, gendered, or other essentializing measures, persons are regarded as unique disclosures of ultimate reality. Each person is re/cognized as an unprecedented imago Dei (from Cusa’s perspective) or as a particular manifestation (vyakti) of Ātman-Brahman (from Śaṅkara’s perspective). Through the pedagogy and performance of apophatic theology, one progressively removes epistemic universals (including race, gender, and religious identity) superimposed upon unique persons, thereby cultivating a phenomenology of irreducible particularity. In other words, one learns to perceive the unique divinity of individual persons. Cusa and Śaṅkara refer to this, respectfully, as a vision of God and as seeing the highest Self. Awakened to an attentive sensuality, one re/cognizes this Self, incarnate before one’s very eyes, as an apophatic measure of the immeasurable divine.

This article presents philological observations which may help to estab- lish a relative chronology of some of the works attributed to Śaṅkara. Commentaries on the Upaniṣads ascribed to Śaṅkara are compared to his commentaries on those parts of Brahma-Sūtras that discuss the same Upaniṣadic passages. Closer investi- gation of some of these passages might lead to some conclusions about the chronology of these works. The article investigates examples from Taittirīya- Upaniṣad 2.1–5 and Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad 3.7 respectively discussed in Brahmasūtra-Bhāṣya 1.1.12–1.1.19 and 1.2.18–20, an example from Kaṭha-Upaniṣad 1.3.1 (3.1), which is presented both in Brahmasūtra-Bhāṣya 1.2.11–12 and in Kaṭhopaniṣad-Bhāṣya 1.3.1, together with some examples of interpretations of the same verses in different Upaniṣads, such as the verse which occurs as Muṇḍaka- Upaniṣad 2.2.10 and Kaṭha-Upaniṣad 2.2.15 (5.15) and two verses shared by Īśā- Upaniṣad, Kaṭha-Upaniṣad and Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad. These examples will reveal some textual parallels in these commentaries, which might provide some clues for establishing a chronology of these passages.

"George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber (eds.), The Roar of Awakening. A Whiteheadian Dialogue Between Western Psychotherapies and Eastern Worldviews, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, ontos verlag, 2009. (251 p. ; ISBN: 978-3-86838-039-2 ; 89 €)
The primary goal of this volume is to describe the contemporary state of affairs in Western psychotherapy, and to do so in a Whiteheadian spirit: with genuine openness to the relative ways in which creativity, beauty, truth and peace manifest themselves in various cultural traditions. To do so, it chooses to explore afresh a cross-elucidatory path that was born with the field of history of religion (and Religionwissenschaft): what have we, and can we, learn from a dialogue with Eastern worldviews? In order to generate meaningful contrasts between these different systems of thought, all the papers address the following core issues. On the one hand, how does the given system understand the interaction of individuality, society, and nature (or cosmos)? Especially: what is its standpoint with regard to the nature of consciousness and with regard to the mind/body problem?; how far is it dualistic?; how are destiny and historicity assessed? On the other hand, what is the paradigm of all mal-adjustment (or pathology) and what is its typical tuning-in (or curative) pattern? What are furthermore the ins and outs of the diagnostic and therapeutic assessments involved? Wherever possible, some (meta)theoretical and clinical issues are addressed from the vantage point of selected material from abnormal psychology or psychiatry.
Table of contents
Contents
Contributors
Foreword — George Derfer, Zhihe Wang and Michel Weber
Introduction — Michel Weber
I. The View from the East
1. Consciousness: The Vedantic Approach to Life and Reality, Francis-Vincent Anthony
2. Dual-Aspect Framework for Consciousness, RamLakhan Pandey Vimal
3. The Paradoxes of Radical Asceticism: Jainism as a Therapeutic Paradigm, Jeffery D. Long
4. Yoga Therapeutics: Philosophical, Scientific and Humanistic Approaches, Ashok Kumar Malhotra
5. Can Indian spiritual practices be used in psychotherapy?, R L Kapur
II. Transcultural Dialogue
6. Ineradicable Frustration and Liberation in Tiantai Buddhism, Brook Ziporyn
7. An Exploration and Analysis into Chinese Traditional Psychotherapy Ideas—A Concurrent Comment on the Integrative point of view of Whitehead’s Organic Philosophy, Fengqiang Gao and Yingmin Chen
8. The Kyoto School and self-awareness in the field of the absolute nothingness —A comparison with Whitehead’s philosophy, Eiko Hanaoka
9. Jung and Hisamatsu Re-envisioning Religiosity: Jungian Psychotherapy and the Kyoto School, Tokiyuki Nobuhara
10. Reconstructing the Meaning of Being Human: A Postmodern Reinterpretation of Frankl in the Framework of Whitehead’s Philosophy, Yoshihiro Hayashi
11. The Development of Binswanger’s Daseinsanalysis, Shoji Muramoto
12. The Intercultural and Daseinsanalytical Psychiatry of Kimura Bin, Bernard Stevens
13. A Certain Form of Psychotherapy (Kenosis, Prajna, Jung, and Hillman), David T. Bradford
14. Vedanta, Process and Psychotherapy, Joseph Grange
15. On Zen Buddhism, Clive Sherlock
"

Thomas Sankara (1949–87) was one of the most important anti-imperialist leaders of twentieth-century Africa. This book examines Sankara’s political philosophies and legacies and their relevance today. Contributors analyze his synthesis of Pan-Africanism and humanist Marxist politics, as well as his approach to gender, development, ecology, and decolonization.

Dreaming is the quintessential metaphor of Śaṅkara’s Advaita Vedānta, and an in-depth look at the way he talks about dreaming provides visceral insight into the realities of perception itself according to Śaṅkara. Specifically, a fundamental premise of Advaita Vedānta is that everything is an illusion; since most people agree with the presupposition that dreams are illusions of the mind, it is an apt starting point from which to describe Śaṅkara’s views of reality, which expand the dream metaphor beyond the dreaming state and apply it to waking life. This paper looks at Śaṅkara’s philosophy of dreaming, and speculates on its influence on Tibetan Buddhism's Dream Yoga practice as inchoate suggestions for further research by way of the conclusion.

This article examines principles of Upaniṣadic interpretation in early Vedānta. Special attention is paid to the Brahma-Sūtras 1.4.19–22. According to commentators, these four sūtras form one topic (adhikaraṇa) devoted to the interpretation of Br̥hadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad 2.4/4.5. The last three sūtras are particularly interesting because they appear as citations of three older authority figures named Āśmarathya, Auḍulomi and Kaśakr̥tsna. These three sūtras raise the question of a way of reconciling Upaniṣadic passages, which is very important for the early history of Vedānta as a system of Upaniṣadic exegesis. Another interesting occurrence in this topic are the words vākya in the first, and liṅga in the second sūtra, two of the six means of determining the usage of ritual subsidiaries in Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā. In Śaṅkara's commentary, another set of exegetical principles appear, that might be originally Vedāntic.
Electronic article available on the link: http://manas.bg/en/indiya/aspects-of-early-upanishadic-exegesis

It is not widely known that Swami Vivekananda remarked to his disciple Swami Shuddhananda that he should try to understand the “true intention” of the author of the Brahmasūtras instead of relying on the biased interpretations of traditional commentators such as Śaṅkara.  In the same conversation with his disciple, Vivekananda himself furnished a striking example of such an independent approach to the Brahmasūtras: he suggests that sūtra 1.1.19 (asminnasya ca tadyogaṃ śāsti)—translated as “The scriptures teach the union of the jīva and Brahman”—supports “both Advaita and Viśīṣṭādvaita.”  This essay aims to explore and develop Vivekananda’s provocative—if all too brief—reading of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19 by placing it in the context of his broader hermeneutic speculations and showing how his reading of 1.1.19 might help explain other relevant sūtras from the Brahmasūtras.  For Vivekananda, I argue, 1.1.19 not only captures the essence of the original non-sectarian Vedānta of the Upaniṣads but also provides the hermeneutic key to interpreting the entire prasthānatraya in a liberal and non-eisegetic spirit.  In Part I, I will outline briefly some of the fundamental principles of Vivekananda’s scriptural hermeneutics and their basis in the life and teachings of his guru Sri Ramakrishna.  This will set the stage for Part II, where I will develop Vivekananda’s unique interpretation of Brahmasūtra 1.1.19.  As we will see, while both traditional and modern commentators have tended to explain 1.1.19 in terms of a particular philosophical sect, Vivekananda suggests—quite radically—that the author of the Brahmasūtras deliberately employs the capacious and open-ended language of "yogam" ("union") in 1.1.19 in order both to harmonize a variety of apparently conflicting scriptural passages concerning the jīva’s relation to Brahman and to accommodate numerous sectarian interpretations of these passages.  From Vivekananda’s perspective, 1.1.19 serves as an ideal hermeneutic framework for honoring and reconciling the various types of union with the Divine expressed in the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, ranging from the Advaitic union of absolute identity with Brahman to the Viśiṣṭādvaitic unity of part and Whole, the Bhedābheda unity of difference and non-difference, and the Dvaitic unity of servant and Master.

This work will argue that Mahāyāna philosophy need not result in endorsement of some cosmic Absolute in the vein of the Advaitin ātman-Brahman.  Scholars such as Bhattacharya, Albahari and Murti argue that the Buddha at no point denied the existence of a cosmic ātman, and instead only denied a localised, individual ātman (what amounts to a jīva).  The idea behind this, then, is that the Buddha was in effect an Advaitin, analysing experience and advocating liberation in an Advaitin sense: through a rejection of the individual ātman and knowledge (jñāna) of and immersion into the universal ātman-Brahman. 

I will explore how different religious traditions define and shape the Absolute according to their own religious convictions, illustrating a divergence in conception from the very start, before exploring key differences between the Advaitin conception of the Absolute as put forth by Śaṅkara and as defended by Bhattacharya in The Ātman-Brahman in Ancient Buddhism.  I then challenge Bhattacharya’s claims that prajñāpāramitā literature necessarily endorses the ātman-Brahman and that Mahāyāna philosophies reorientate Buddhists towards the truth of the ātman-Brahman.

I do this by arguing that there are viable interpretations of Vasubandhu’s Yogācāra and Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka that do not advocate such a belief, that prajñāpāramitā literature can be viewed as a project in episteme rather than ontology, and that we need not find a ground of the same sort as the ātman-Brahman in the Buddhist flux of experience.  I conclude by showing that whilst Absolutism is a theme in some schools of Buddhism, it need not be – contra Bhattacharya – the conclusion of two major Mahāyāna philosophies.

Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta has been very influential in India, both as a well-articulated philosophical system and a weighty theological position. However, Advaita’s supposedly dismissive attitude toward the world always remained its Achilles’ heel. Thinkers whose sympathies lie firmly with Advaita are at pains to give a philosophically satisfactory explanation of the ontological status of the world. This article briefly discusses the efforts and resultant views of four such contemporary thinkers – K.C. Bhattacharyya, S. Radhakrishnan, P.T. Raju, and Richard De Smet.

Śaṅkaradeva is considered as the master builder of the Assamese society. He was a great creative artist, an innovator, a motivator and a preacher of neo-vaiṣṇavite faith and ideals. Śaṅkaradeva laid the foundation of a culturally vibrant and rich Assamese society. The contribution of Śaṅkaradeva influenced the people of Assam as well as the economy to great extent. He always utilized the locally available materials and goods for his religious and cultural activity. The social reformative activities of Śaṅkaradeva had directly impacted the economy of the state. His persistent emphasis on improving the work culture among his disciples helped the enhancement of productivity in the economy. Utilization of his unique ideas of locally available materials boosted the economy of the society.

El artículo se ocupa de Rāmānuja, uno de los ilustres pensadores de la India, el más grande representante del sistema filosófico denominado “No dualismo calificado”. Expone las principales ideas de Rāmānuja: el realismo, que lo contrapone a Shaṅkara; su concepción del Señor como Dios personal, de su consorte, del mundo en que reside; la naturaleza de las almas individuales; el status ontológico del mundo; terminando con la posición panteísta que manifiesta Rāmānuja.

La lettura corrente delle analogie tra Bradley e Śaṃkarasolitamente si concentra sulla seconda parte di "Apparence and Reality", lasciando alla prima il ruolo di lunga premessa, quando invece è nella prima parte – Apparence - che Bradley introduce l’impianto concettuale che permetterà poi di comprendere il suo concetto di Assoluto. In questa prima parte, l’autore inglese opera una destrutturazione delle categorie dell’esperienza comune che ricorda da vicino quella operata da Nāgārjuna nella sue "Strofe sulla via di mezzo". Non è così importante riscontrare una perfetta corrispondenza nei singoli procedimenti logici, quanto mettere in evidenza l’intento de-costruttivo che anima i due autori. Dopo questa prima analisi, che rivelerà come la nozione di apparenza emerga come sintesi tra il momento della “percezione” e quello della “descrizione” del reale, si sarà in grado di comprendere più rettamente l’evoluzione “anomala” di tale nozione, che infatti non si risolve mai completamente in senso idealista e conserva un carattere, problematico e sfuggente, di "indeterminatezza".

"Śaṅkara (circa 700 A.D.) is the author of a great number of works: commentaries on several Upaniṣads, brief treatises, hymns, and a commentary on the Vedānta-sūtras or Brahmasūtras, that is a systematization of the teachings of the Upaniṣads composed by Bādarāyaṇa in the beginning of our Era. This last commentary is considered his most important work. It is a powerful and brilliant treatise."

This article examines commentaries on the Prayer at the hour of death traditionally attributed to Śaṅkara, which appear in the same form as Īśā-Upaniṣad 15–18 and Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad 5,15.1 in the Kāṇva recension. A comparison of these two commentaries reveals their striking resemblance on (a) the broader level of the interpretation of the meaning of the Upaniṣadic passage in question, and (b) on the more specific level, where remarkably similar expressions and wording appear. These commentaries show no real differences, except that the commentary on the Īśā-Upaniṣad version of the Prayer is more extensive than the Bṛhadāraṇyaka-Upaniṣad version, and thus contains some additional information. Although the similarities cannot be used as a valid means to prove they were written by the same author, they still may support this thesis.

Cet article, issu d’une étude menée au sein du Groupe de Recherches Matérialistes, vise à critiquer la matrice idéologique neo-colonialiste du célèbre et controversé discours que Nicolas Sarkozy tint à Dakar en 2007. Les thèses de l’ancien Président de la République Française sont d’emblée reconduites aux stéréotypes colonialistes, puis déconstruites à partir de l’invitation à revenir sur cette page de l’histoire formulée par Makhili Gassama, ancien conseilleur de Senghor. Tout en reconnaissant la complicité d’une grosse partie des politiciens africains dans le partage et saccage de leur continent et dans les guerres qui les
traversent, l’article veut contrecarrer le discours de Sarkozy par les paroles de trois représentants les plus significatifs du panafricanisme: Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba et  Thomas Sankara. Ces trois hommes politiques ont dénoncé avec fermeté les intérêts économiques néo-coloniaux qui empêchent une véritable indépendance de l’Afrique. Il s’agit  en outre de souligner que l’oblitération et le refoulement des souffrances provoquées par la  colonisation au sein des pays de l’occident sont l’indice de l’acceptation par la majorité de leurs populations de l’état des choses en Afrique, qui est ainsi, en quelque sorte, naturalisé.  Cette acceptation tacite constitue une condition fondamentale de la reproduction quotidienne du dispositif pacificateur de domination au sein du monde développé. Les maux de l’Afrique trouvent leur cause alors moins dans une attitude de l’homme africain que dans un système de domination économique et idéologique assuré par les institutions internationales tels que l’ONU, la Banque mondiale ou le FMI.

This article investigates the authorship of the Īśopaniṣadbhāṣya and the Kaṭhopaniṣadbhāṣya, which are traditionally attributed to Ś aṅkara. The first part of the article shows that according to Paul Hacker's criteria of the specific usage of the terms avidyā, nāmarūpa, māyā, and īśvara, there are no grounds upon which to disprove the traditional attribution of the Īśopaniṣadbhāṣya and the Kaṭhopaniṣadbhāṣya to Ś aṅkara, although the analysis of the Īśopaniṣadbhāṣya rests mainly on the absence of un-Ś aṅkarian features. The second part of the article reports on the results of computational experiments based on new developments in authorship verification. This analysis, according to the recently introduced General Imposters framework, affirms Ś aṅkara's authorship of the texts in question.

This article presents a fresh assessment of evidence for the existence of Śaṅkara's 'longer' commentary on the Aitareyopaniṣad, a subsection of the Aitareyāraṇyaka (AiĀ). While most printed editions of the Bhāṣya consider that it covers only three adhyāyas of the Āraṇyaka (AiĀ 2.4-6/7), a much more comprehensive work, bearing on the whole of AiĀ 2 and 3, is preserved in manuscripts. In the first part of the article, I argue that the ascription of this 'longer' gloss to Śaṅkara is likely to be justified, building on previous scholarship (A.B. Keith, S.K. Belvalkar) as well as on my own inspection of two manuscripts of the work, newly identified in the Cambridge University Library. Questions are also raised as to the constitution of the Upaniṣadic canon(s) and the role of commentaries in that process. The second part of the essay provides a comprehensive survey of the material (manuscript and print) available for a first critical edition of this important, though mostly neglected work by the great Vedāntin.