The Hidden Lives of Brahman: Sankara's Vedanta through His Upanisad Commentaries, in Light of Contemporary Practice

Preface

 Preface Why Another Book About Vedānta? The term vedānta (“the limit of veda”) most literally refers to upāniṣads. These are works found towards the limit, or end, of the collection of hymns, ritual formulas, proclamations and stories known as “veda,” which Hindu brāhmaṇas (Brahmins) chant and memorize up to the present day. The term “vedānta” also implies that such sources describe the limit, the highest goal, to which all of veda points; thus by extension the same term designates a philosophy that many would argue stretches back nearly three millennium to the time of the earliest upāniṣads. The signature claim of this philosophy is that brahman, the one expansive reality that mysteriously encompasses and connects all things, is the true self of every living being. Many regard the eighth-century teacher Śaṅkara Bhagavatpāda as the single most important upholder and systematizer of advaita or “non-dual” vedānta, this philosophy ’s dominant branch.1 A search of the online WorldCat database yields a list of nearly three thousand works in libraries worldwide dealing with advaita vedānta, slightly over a third of them in English, and an equal number addressing vedānta more broadly. Why then another book on this same topic? This study is one of only a handful that considers in detail the practices of teachers and students associated with the vedānta tradition throughout its history, which are largely hidden from view in most books about vedānta. There is much of value in research focusing on the conceptual dimension of Śaṅkara’s teaching,2 yet such works leave out the embodied dimension of vedānta. Without a clear sense of what real people do each day as they reflect on vedānta teachings, many readers find it difficult to discern the relevance of those teachings. Indeed, some foreign scholars focusing on the seemingly more colorful, rival traditions of Hindu Tantra imply that vedānta is too boring to merit further attention.3 Prior to understanding vedānta’s embodied context, I myself compared reading studies and summaries of vedānta to being airlifted to the peak of a majestic mountain in an opaque box; being told to enjoy the view from inside that box; and then brought down again without ever gaining a full view of either the summit or that which leads to it. This strange variant on the mountain climbing analogy often associated with spiritual questing highlights what is missing in primarily conceptual approaches to vedānta, both in India and abroad. Such Preface xvi approaches assume but do not explicitly describe the embodied practices that accompany conceptual engagement in the vedānta quest. The following brief survey identifies the broader currents of scholarship from which my own work flows. Early on in my graduate studies, I was inspired by Mircea Eliade’s references to anthropocosmic thinking in the world religions, especially Indian yoga traditions, which sees macrocosmic reality intertwined with the microcosm of embodied human experience.4 This characterization led me to question the dominant academic approaches to vedānta, which see it narrowly depicting the human microcosm as illusory and the macrocosm of brahman as a homogenous unity; in contrast, this book describes the rich interweaving of the human and the transcendent in vedānta practice. I was also encouraged by the work of anthropologists and religious studies scholars highlighting the way sacred word is used in the context of lived practice;5 such scholarship showcases effective models for integrating ethnography and investigation of historical sources, many aspects of which I have adopted.6 When I originally planned the field research that informs my reconstruction of Śaṅkara’s teaching in this book, which I carried out primarily in 1998–99, I found that two scholars had initiated the ethnographic study of Śaṅkara’s contemporary followers. The late William Cenkner (1983) interviewed heads of the centers of teaching and worship (maṭhas—pronounced “mutt”) affiliated with Śaṅkara’s lineage; Cenkner’s study compares what he found with descriptions of the teacher-student (guruśiṣya) relationship by Śaṅkara, his predecessors, and his later followers. Subsequently Yoshitsugu Sawai (1992) focused on the role of faith (śraddhā) in Śaṅkara’s tradition, interviewing lay brāhmaṇas and renouncers affiliated with the south Indian center at Śṛṅgeri; Sawai’s book analyzes these findings in light of one influential account of Śaṅkara’s life. It was Cenkner who advised...