The Religions Book

119

See also: Higher levels of teaching 101 ■ The personal quest for truth 144 ■ The challenge of modernity 240–45
■ A faith open to all beliefs 321

of philosophical argument and
what is actually practiced in
the Vedas, in terms of gods and
goddesses that are addressed
in worship. How, for example,
can Brahman be both personal
(knowable) and impersonal
(unknowable) at the same time?
How, if it is eternal and absolute,
can it be described in any way?

Shankara’s answer
Shankara attempts to answer
these questions by making a
distinction between nirguna
Brahman (unqualified reality),
known only through pure
consciousness, and saguna
Brahman (qualified reality), which
is more like the traditional idea
of a God who exists and acts in
the world. Brahman remains the
same reality, but can be known
in different ways. One means of
expressing this is to say that there

is nothing in the world that is not

Brahman—it is the basic reality;

however, there is also nothing that

is Brahman: there is no separable,

knowable object that corresponds

to the idea of Brahman. To explain

this, Shankara offers the example of

the sun shining down on a number

of pots, all of which are filled with

water: each pot offers its own

particular reflection of the light of

the sun, and yet there is still only

HINDUISM

Brahman is real;

the world is an illusory

appearance; the so-called

soul is Brahman itself,

and no other.

Adi Shankara

The problem for the Advaitin

is to solve how from the

pure Brahman the impure

world of men and things

came into existence.

T. M .P. Mahadevan

one sun. How then might Brahman

be known? Shankara’s answer lies

in the identity of Brahman and

the atman, the innermost self of

pure consciousness. He states

that Brahman cannot be known

externally, via the senses, but

can be known internally, because

it is our innermost essence.

Consciousness

and knowledge

Shankara proposes that there

is a single reality, but two very

different ways of understanding

it. From the conventional and

pragmatic standpoint, we have the

world of sense experience, with

all its variety. From an absolute

standpoint, however, we need to

recognize that the experienced

world is unreal: it is an illusion.

We can therefore only experience

the ultimate reality, free from

illusion, through an awareness that

comes from pure consciousness.

It is possible that Shankara

took this idea of the two levels of

truth from Buddhism, in which a ❯❯

In Shankara’s philosophy, human
reason is limited to the information we
gather with our senses; a different kind
of knowledge, or understanding, is
needed to grasp absolute reality.