contiinued ............
Sankaracharya also believed that god and the
created world was one and the difference which
is evident is due to ignorance. According to him,
the way to salvation was to realise by means of
meditation and knowledge that god and the
created beings were one and the some. At the
deepest level of meditation “nirvikalpa
samadhi”, the complete identity between god
and the individual is realised. It is the goal of
everyone to know, realise, feel and display in
action this identity. When this is accomplished
all sufferings and births and deaths cease. This
identity has been termed as “ sachidanand
Brahman” by Sankaracharya.
Sankaracharya’s ‘Brahman’ is not really
different from the concept of ‘nirvana’ of
Mahayana Buddhism. It is a fact which was wellrecognised
by his opponents who called him
“crypto-Buddhist.” However, Shankarcharya
proved the Buddhist scholars wrong and was
able to show that Buddhist metaphysics was
only a poor imitation of the metaphysics of
snatan dharma.
The philosophy of Sankaracharya had far
reaching consequences for the India society. For
example the monastic Sankaracharya (mathas)
which he established in the four corners of India
served as an effective step towards the physical
and spiritual unification of India. By Jainism but
his real greatness lies in his brilliant dialectic. By
the able use arguements he reduced all the
apparently self-contradicting passages of the
Upanishads to a consistent system which has
remained the standard of Hinduism to this day,
Sankaracharaya passed away at Kedar Nath at
the age of 32 Ramanuja combined Sankara’s
Advaitavada with the Vaishnava Pancharatra
theology which claimed that Vishnu is the very
foundation of the universe. The impact of
Ramanuja’s writings and his long service as
priest of the fomous Vishnu temple at Srinangam
made his ideas widely known among the
Vaishnavites and he is justly regarded as the
founder of Srivashnavism. The Vedantic
Philosophy of Sankaracharya was revived
Vivekanand in the second half of the 19th century.
