Mysticism East and East: comparing Sankara and Nagarjuna on absolute reality

Initially, a basic reading of Sankara’s and Nagarjuna’s attitudes towards absolute reality appear to be similar in method and objective, to the extent that fellow Vedantins (such as Bhaskara) labelled Sankara a ‘crypto-Buddhist’.1 In this project, I wish to suggest that not only do the two thinkers differ in method and objective, but also in the accounts of their own understanding of absolute reality. This requires an attempt to remain sympathetic to both scholars, displaying their positions as accurately as possible. Via this method, I wish to show that while there are some parallels as regards to how each thinker views the dual nature of reality as seen prior to liberation and absolute reality itself, their perspectives vary regarding the more intricate details of their soteriological systems.

Before exploring this discussion meaningfully, it is important to be clear on the differences in context between the two scholars. Nagarjuna, who is said to have lived around the 2nd century B.C.,2 developed his soteriology of the Madhyamika much earlier than Sankara, who lived during the 8th and 9th centuries C.E.3 They therefore have approximately a millennium’s worth of difference as regards philosophical, religious and soteriological development. Inevitably a comparison must be made by examining the primary sources available and the concepts put forth within these sources, while attempting to bear in mind the difference in context.

Perceptions of the phenomenal world

The way the phenomenal world is perceived within Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta and Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika has a bearing on how each strategy views absolute reality. Since Sankara claims the phenomenal world is illusory,

A notion present in both thinkers’ soteriology is that of discriminating between ‘lesser’ or conventional reality and ‘higher’ or absolute reality. To Sankara, the phenomenal world is projected by the mind4 and is an illusion (maya) ‘superimposed by ignorance’5. Sankara’s approach has been described as phenomenological by scholars such as Sinari. According to him, the phenomenological attitude is one which ‘springs up as soon as we question our ordinary consciousness of the world, doubt what is given to this consciousness, and by disconnecting ourselves from it and all that goes with it...’6 This approach is not far removed

1 Deutsch & van Buitenen, p. 92 (1971)2 Walser, p. 1 (2005)3 Flood, p. 239 (1996)4 Vivekachudamani, v. 170, trans. by Swami Madhavananda (1970)5 Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, II.V.19, trans. by Swami Madhavananda (1965)6 Sinari, p. 283 (1972)

from Sankara’s, who included within maya that which is given to consciousness. It is also not dissimilar to Nagarjuna’s outlook since he questioned out ordinary consciousness. However to him, it would be more appropriate to speak of doubting one’s relationship to that which is given to consciousness than to doubt that which is given to it. This is the difference between maya and pratityasamutpada. There is more emphasis in causality within Nagarjuna’s philosophy than Sankara’s

An analogy used by Sankara to describe the nature of maya and its relation to absolute reality is that of mistaking a rope for a snake. The closer one moves towards the rope, the more visible it becomes and hence dispels the false impression that it was a snake.7 Likewise, when Brahman is realised, maya and the nescient perception of the phenomenal world are diminished since one has realised the non-dual nature of atman (the self), which is non-distinct from Brahman. In this way, perceiving the world as maya cannot be expressed as a ‘level of reality’ as such, since non-existence is inherent within the definition of maya. Rather, scholars such as Alston have distinguished between the ‘standpoints’ of the phenomenal world and of absolute reality.8 Therefore, the person experiencing the world from the ‘standpoint of nescience’ is not experiencing absolute reality but a reciprocal superimposition between absolute reality and maya. Once the person has realised that the analogous snake is in fact a rope, then the phenomenal world is experienced from the ‘standpoint of ultimate truth’.9

Unlike Sankara, Nagarjuna claims that the phenomenal world is a ‘truth’ and hence real, however it is only conventional. Nonetheless, this is a considerable departure from Sankara’s perspective since Nagarjuna’s view on the phenomenal world is not as strictly acosmic as Sankara’s and besides this, it sees conventional truth as having a necessary part to play in one’s understanding of ultimate reality:

Without a foundation in the conventional truth,The significance of the ultimate cannot be taught.Without understanding the significance of the ultimate,Liberation is not achieved10

Nagarjuna also highlights the significance of the distinction between conventional and ultimate truth, since one who has not understood the difference between these two truths has not understood the Buddha’s message.11 Despite this, there is no doubt that both the conventional truth of the phenomenal world and its distinction from ultimate truth are only of pedagogic use to the Madhyamikan practitioner, since nirvana is expressed by Nagarjuna apophatically:

Unrelinquished, unattained,Unannihilated, not permanent,

7 Brahma-Sutra Bhasya trans. by Swami Gambhirananda, p. 2n (1983)8 Alston, p. 103-104, Samkara on the Absolute (1980)9 Ibid., p. 10410 Mulamadhyamakakarika, XXIV, 1011 Ibid., 9

Unarisen, unceased:This is how nirvana is described12

The difference between the scholars’ portrayal of the phenomenal world as seen prior to liberation has an impact on each of their philosophical positions and how absolute reality is viewed by them. For example as Ingalls has shown, Sankara is burdened with the problem of whether one’s nescience of the phenomenal world is itself an illusion: ‘If this avidya is a real entity, then monism ends. On the other hand, to say that it is an imaginary entity is to destroy the very doctrine of avidya. As Descartes could not doubt that he doubted, so the Kevaladvaitins could not find illusion itself to be an illusion.’13 In other words if the unenlightened person’s nescience about the phenomenal world is not itself an illusion, then reality is no longer non-dual since it contains nescience within it; however if it is an illusion, theoretically the world must be real since what was at first thought to be nescience is an illusion.

Sankara refuted this dilemma for the most part by evading it. Ingalls observes that ‘Sankara’s approach to truth is psychological and religious. His interest in metaphysics and logic is always subordinated to the center of his attention.’14 The dilemma has little to do with one’s spiritual advancement and is hence irrelevant to Sankara, in the same way as creation stories are immaterial to attaining realisation unless they are used as a means for dispelling avidya.15 He goes further than this however, implying that the dilemma itself is proof that the one posing it is afflicted by avidya.1617 Focusing on the nature of avidya shows that the inquirer has not understood that the inquiry is as useless as an examination of non-existence. Moreover, the realisation that nescience, what is nescient and their relation are non-existent is one derived from experience rather than through inference.

Nagarjuna had a similar dilemma which he approached in a thoroughly different way to Sankara. This is to do with the nature of emptiness (sunyata), which is the Madhyamikan doctrine maintaining that no being exists inherently or independently of its relation to other beings. In other words, no being has an autonomous essence.18 Just as Sankara had the problem of whether avidya could be seen within the realm of nescience itself, Nagarjuna had the problem of whether emptiness itself is empty. Unlike Sankara, Nagarjuna asserts with conviction that the doctrine of emptiness is itself empty.19

Emptiness is not an ideology:

12 Ibid., XXV, 313 Ingalls, p. 69 (1953)14 Ibid., p. 72 15 Alston, p. 190, Samkara on Creation16 Alston, p. 67, Samkara on the Absolute17 Ingalls, p. 7018 Williams, p. 61 (1989)19 Garfield, p. 220 (1994)

The victorious ones have saidThat emptiness is the relinquishing of all views.For whomever emptiness is a view,That one will accomplish nothing 20

Sunya is called thus for the purposes of communication:

“Empty” should not be asserted.“Nonempty” should not be asserted.Neither both nor neither should be asserted.They are only used nominally.21

Another central difference which has been given much attention by scholars is the differing concept of self, or atman, within the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. Atman is the focal point of Sankara’s acosmic view on how reality is seen prior to liberation, and the only way through which Brahman can be realised. It is the ‘deathless, birthless, eternal, and real substance in every individual.’22 In other words it is an essence within a being which transcends the gross, subtle and causal bodies, the three upadhis, which can allegedly be mistaken as atman.23 This is in contrast to the ‘no-self’ (anatta) doctrine of the Buddhist tradition, which is one of the three ‘marks of existence’ (the others being impermanence (anicca) and suffering (dukkha).24 In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha clearly states this doctrine to five monks: ‘any kind of consciousness whatever, whether past, future or presently arisen [...] whether far or near must, with right understanding how it is, be regarded thus: “This is not mine, this is not I, this is not my self.”’25

Nagarjuna’s view is that any conception of an existing essence commits the fallacy of eternalism,26 and this of course includes the concept of atman. If one is to achieve nirvana, then inherent impressions of “I” or “mine” must cease to be attached to. However, a denial of atman is illogical to Sankara since the one denying the existence of it is atman itself: ‘Does the one who would deny the Self exist or not? If he exists, he is himself the Self; if he does not exist then the denial is not possible.’27

Despite being a recognised sannyasin, Agehananda Bharati mentioned that the Buddhist refutations of both an ontological self and a transcendent being are practical for the mystic,

20 Mulamadhyamakakarika, XIII, 821 Ibid., XXII, 1122 Swami Nikhilananda in Self-Knowledge, p. 149 (1967)23 Self-Knowledge, V. 10-1224 Harvey, p. 50 (1990)25 SN 22.59, Anatta-lakkhana Sutta: The Discourse on the Not-self Characteristic, trans. by Ñanamoli Thera (retrieved in April 2011)26 Mulamadhyamakakarika, XV, 11 (1995)27 Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya, p. 455n

since he/she does not need to clarify the relationship between the two beings.28 For example, within Sankara’s Advaita,

‘Nagarjuna would say that talk about God would lead to an inherent self-contradiction involved in the categories of thought. Shankara would say that any talk about God, ends in dualism, and, no dualistic talk can lead to non-dual Brahman’29

Sankara and Gaudapada agree: “As long as there is faith in causality, the (endless) chain of birth and death will be there. When that faith is destroyed (by knowledge) birth and death become non-existent.”30

‘Nagarjuna explicitly points out that one should neither call Reality sunya (void) nor should one call it asunya (nonvoid)’31

Absolute reality

The concept of absolute reality is far from simple to illustrate from either scholars’ perspective due to the apophatic nature of their descriptions. Indeed, we are on dangerous ground even at the point at which we call absolute reality a concept or designate it as ‘absolute reality’, although this is perhaps more relevant to Nagarjuna’s soteriology than that of Sankara.

Radhakrishnan points out that since both thinkers’ descriptions of absolute reality are ineffable, affirming their soteriologies through negation, that this makes them comparable.32 However, apophatic mystical accounts are hardly uncommon phenomena within various traditions; examples can be found within Christian mysticism,33 Neoplatonism,34 Sufism,35

28 Bharati, p. 45 (1976)29Masih, p. 58 (1987)30 Mandukyopanisad, IV, 56, trans. by Swami Nikhilananda (1968)31 Nayak, p. 478 (1979)32 Radhakrishnan, p. 700-701 (1989)33 Meister Eckhart writes: ‘I would be speaking as incorrectly in calling God a being as if I called the sun pale or black. God is neither this nor that.’ Sermon 9, trans. by Tobin (1986)34 On ‘The Unity’, Plotinus writes: ‘it is a Beyond-Good, not even to itself a good but to such beings only as may be of quality to have part with it. Nor has it Intellection; that would comport diversity: nor Movement; it is prior to Movement as to Intellection.’ Enneads, VI.9.6, trans. by MacKenna (1991)35 Ibn ‘Arabi states that: ‘that which is of the Divine Unity (al-ahadiyah) none participate in it, for one cannot designate aspects to it; it is not subject to distinction. The Unity of God integrates the totality (of the Names or Qualities) in the principal indifferentiation.’ trans. by

Kabbalah36 and Taoism37 to name a few. This does not mean that these traditions are considerably similar, since an account of absolute reality embodies only one aspect of what are multi-faceted soteriological systems, each with differing ‘means’38 through which absolute reality can be realised.

As Nagarjuna put it, in perhaps his most important verse:

That which comes and goesIs dependent and changing.That, when it is not dependent and changing,Is taught to be nirvana.39

There is a difficulty in attempting to evaluate the two soteriologies from an etic perspective as this runs the risk of being unsympathetic towards one or both thinkers. From an observer’s point of view, we can only assess the logic of the philosophies involved having not experienced them. The two spiritual systems contain a common assertion of non-duality but amalgamating them on this premise alone would be a discredit to each tradition. ‘inevitably colored by the broader conceptual contours of the philosophies which encompass them’40

Fusus al-Hikam (1975)36 Scholem writes: ‘Ein Sof, the Infinite – that is, the concealed Godhead – dwells unknowable in the depth of its own being, without form or shape. It is beyond all cognitive statements, and can only be described through negation – indeed, as the negation of all negations. No images can depict it, nor can it be named by any name.’ Scholem, p. 38 (1991)37 Lao Tzu writes that: ‘The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be defined is not the unchanging name.’ trans. by Ch’u Ta-Kao (1970)38 In some traditions (i.e. Advaita and Madhyamika) speaking of ‘means’ to realisation does not make as much sense as in other traditions due to the nature of the alleged realisation and it’s relation to the phenomenal world.39 Mulamadhyamakakarika, XXV, 940 Bhikku Bodhi, “Dhamma and non-duality” (retrieved in April 2011)