scholarly journals One or None? Truth and Self-Transformation for Śaṅkara and Kamalaśīla

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1043
Author(s):  
David Vincent Fiordalis
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Religious Philosophy ◽  
Ontological Commitments ◽  
Spiritual Path ◽  
The World ◽  
Gain Access ◽  
Buddhist Monasticism

This article explores how two influential 8th-century Indian philosophers, Śaṅkara and Kamalaśīla, treat the threefold scheme of learning, reasoning, and meditation in their spiritual path philosophies. They have differing institutional and ontological commitments: the former, who helped establish Advaita Vedānta as the religious philosophy of an elite Hindu monastic tradition, affirms an unchanging “self” (ātman) identical to the “world-essence” (brahman); the latter, who played a significant role in the development of Buddhist monasticism in Tibet, denies both self and essence. Yet, they share a concern with questions of truth and the means by which someone could gain access to it, such as what, if anything, meditation contributes to knowledge and its acquisition. By exploring their answers to this and related questions, including how discursive and conceptual practices like learning, reasoning, and meditation could generate nonconceptual knowledge or knowledge of the nonconceptual, this essay shows the difficulty of separating “philosophical” problems of truth from those related to self-transformation or “spirituality,” as Michel Foucault defines the terms. It also reassesses, as a framework for comparison, the well-known contrast between “gradual” and “sudden” approaches to the achievement of liberating knowledge and highlights them as tensions we still struggle to resolve today.

scholarly journals Staruszkowie w opowiadaniach Jurija Mamlejewa cykl „Koniec wieku”

2017 ◽  
Vol 163 ◽  
pp. 289-300
Author(s):  
Elżbieta Tyszkowska-Kasprzak
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Old People ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Immortal Soul ◽  
The World ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Old Men

Old people in novels of Yuri Mamleyev The End of the CenturyThe purpose of the article is an examination of the images of old men and women in The End of the Century — aseries of short stories by Yuri Mamleyev. Elderly characters in the series are almost always presented in the context of the end of their lives and are apretext to present the author’s philosophical views on the nature of existence, death and immortality. Images of reality in The End of the Century are combined with the mystique, the belief in the immortal soul and its journey. Mamleyev’s philosophical views are based on Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta. Hence, his considerations do not fit into the mainstream of the Russian religious-philosophical tradition. Old people in The End of the Century combine the world of the living with the world of the dead, they are capable of crossing the border — death — in both directions. The characters are often accompanied by acat — which in different beliefs is associated with the ability to communicate with other worlds — and achild, abeing close to the border separating the mortal world from the amorphous underworld, arecurring symbol of rebirth. Старики в рассказах Юрия Мамлеевацикл Конец векаВ статье анализируются образы пожилых людей в цикле рассказов Юрия Мамлеева Конец века. Старые люди почти всегда представлены здесь в контексте конца жизни, ивта­кой контекст вводятся философские рассуждения писателя о природе бытия, смерти ибес­смертия. При этом изображение реальности сочетается с мистикой, верой в бессмертие души и ее переселение. Поскольку свои философские взгляды писатель основал на учениях веданты и адвайта-веданты, то они не вписываются в русло русской религиозно-философ­ской традиции.Старики/старухи в произведениях Мамлеева объединяют мир живых и мир мертвых, они способны пересекать границу, которой является смерть, в обоих направлениях. Ча­сто этих персонажей сопровождают кошки, которым в разных верованиях приписывают способность общаться с другими мирами, а также дети, находящиеся близко к границе, разделяющей мир смертных и аморфную преисподнюю, и являющиеся символом повторя­ющегося возрождения.

scholarly journals Cutting the Knot of the World Problem: Sri Aurobindo’s Experiential and Philosophical Critique of Advaita Vedānta

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 765
Author(s):  
Swami Medhananda
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Philosophical Critique ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Standpoint ◽  
The Universe

This article proposes to examine in detail Aurobindo’s searching—and often quite original—criticisms of Advaita Vedānta, which have not yet received the sustained scholarly attention they deserve. After discussing his early spiritual experiences and the formative influence of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda on his thought, I outline Aurobindo’s philosophy of “realistic Adwaita”. According to Aurobindo, the sole reality is the Divine Saccidānanda, which is not only the static impersonal Brahman but also the personal, dynamic Cit-Śakti (Consciousness-Force), which manifests as everything in this universe. At various points in his corpus, Aurobindo criticizes Advaita Vedānta on three fronts. From the standpoint of spiritual experience, Aurobindo argues that Śaṅkara’s philosophy is based on a genuine, but partial, experience of the Infinite Divine Reality: namely, the experience of the impersonal nondual Absolute and the corresponding conviction of the unreality of everything else. Aurobindo claims, on the basis of his own spiritual experiences, that there is a further stage of spiritual experience, when one realizes that the impersonal-personal Divine Reality manifests as everything in the universe. From a philosophical standpoint, Aurobindo questions the logical tenability of key Advaitic doctrines, including māyā, the exclusively impersonal nature of Brahman, and the metaphysics of an illusory bondage and liberation. Finally, from a scriptural standpoint, Aurobindo argues that the ancient Vedic hymns, the Upaniṣads, and the Bhagavad-Gītā, propound an all-encompassing Advaita philosophy rather than the world-denying Advaita philosophy Śaṅkara claims to find in them. This article focuses on Aurobindo’s experiential and philosophical critiques of Advaita Vedānta, as I have already discussed his new interpretations of the Vedāntic scriptures in detail elsewhere. The article’s final section explores the implications of Aurobindo’s life-affirming Advaitic philosophy for our current ecological crisis.

Awareness in Indian thought

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Self Awareness ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Intrinsic Nature ◽  
Indian Schools ◽  
Indian Thought ◽  
The World ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Philosophical Texts

Classical Indian schools all stake out positions on awareness, its intrinsic nature, its place in the causal processes crucial to human accomplishment, its relations to objects in the world, and the possibilities, according to certain religious or spiritual theories, of mystical transformation. In several prominent instances, stances taken on awareness may be said to constitute the most salient differentiation among schools, so central to a school’s overall outlook is its view on the topic. Classical epistemological conceptions, for example, are in large part shaped by positions on awareness, and the spiritual philosophies for which Indian thought is best known present theories of awareness to guide meditation and mystical practice. Yogic, Vedāntic and Buddhist mysticism all came to be supported by views of the true nature of awareness or its native state. In the professionalized debates that fill the immense proliferation of philosophical texts in the classical period (from approximately ad 100 to the eighteenth century and later), key issues are whether awarenesses have forms of their own or assume content only with reference to objects, and the precise nature of the relation, or relations, of awarenesses to objects in the world, including the role of awareness in human activity. Some important positions are shared across schools, and apart from the anti-theoretic polemics of Mādhyamaka Buddhists and others, a phenomenalist and idealist stance, a representationalism, and a direct or causal realism are the major theories concerning the content of awarenesses. The world-oriented philosophies of Logic (Nyāya) and Exegesis (Mīmāṃsā) engage spiritual or mystical views (principally, Buddhist Yogācāra and Advaita Vedānta) on the issue of self-awareness or awareness of awareness. The exchange between upholders of Nyāya and Advaita Vedānta (Vedāntic Monism) on this score is, in particular, an admirable philosophical achievement.

Insights Into the Lives of Indonesian Female Tablighi Jama’at

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 468-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVA F. NISA
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Boarding Schools ◽  
Entry Point ◽  
Muslim Country ◽  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
Gain Access

AbstractTablighi Jama’at is one of the most popular Islamic purist movements in the world. Although it has a growing presence in Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, little research has thus far been done on its activities in that country. To gain access to Indonesian society, the Tablighi Jama’at has been particularly original in choosing a uniquely Indonesian institution as its entry point: the pesantren (Islamic boarding schools). The role of pesantren for the Tablighis in Indonesia is not confined to spreading Islamic knowledge, they also serve as a hub of Tablighi activities. This paper focuses on examining the role of the Tablighi pesantren in shaping and transmitting religious knowledge to its Indonesian followers, and in particular to female followers, as there is to date no scholarship on this topic. It analyses the life experiences of female Tablighis inside and outside the pesantren and their passion to belong to a global imagined Tablighi community. Transnational travel of female Tablighis from diverse neighbouring countries is a central part of the pesantren experience. For Indonesian Tablighi women, the presence of these female guests and foreign students who are enrolled in the pesantren play a significant role in strengthening their passionate desire to be part of the global Tablighi Jama’at umma.

scholarly journals The liberation doctrine in Brahmasiddhi of Maṇḍanamiśra

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-56
Author(s):  
Paweł Sajdek
Keyword(s):  
Ontological Status ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
The World ◽  
Recurrent Theme

The issue of liberation is a recurrent theme in all schools of Indian classical thought. In case of advaita-vedānta it is deeply rooted in ontology. The problem of ontological status of the world was the bone of contention for two competing non‑dualist schools of vedānta — vivaraṇa and bhāmatī. Maṇḍana’s Brahmasiddhi can be regarded as an important source of inspiration for the latter. The present paper is an analysis of Maṇḍana’s statements pertaining to the issue of mukti (or mokṣa) in contrast with those of Śankara, the exponent of advaita commonly (though erroneously) considered the creator and the most prominent representative of the school.

Monism, Indian

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen H. Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Mystical Experience ◽  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Advaita Vedānta ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
Native State ◽  
True Self ◽  
The World ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Almost All

The prominent classical and modern Indian philosophy known as Advaita Vedānta, which insists on the single reality of Brahman (the Absolute), is often identified as Indian monism. But the monism of Advaita is only a portion, albeit central, of the Advaita view. Furthermore, a monism in theology (Brahman as God) is important to almost all expressions, classical and modern, of Indian theism. The monism of Advaita is principally psychological. Nondual awareness is considered the true self; that is to say, in the self’s native state, the object of awareness and awareness itself are identical. This kind of awareness is claimed to be presupposed by all dualistic consciousness. Moreover, it is said that only self-aware self-awareness itself cannot be revealed by experience to be illusory. And according to Advaita, a supreme mystical experience, popularly called liberation, does in fact, when it occurs, reveal self-awareness to be the sole reality. A dialectical Advaita adds the further contention that it is impossible to define and explain coherently diverse appearances. This contention is cashed out by long and intricate attacks on the pluralistic ontologies of rival schools, particularly Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika. The monism of Indian theism centres on the reality of God, who is constrained by metaphysical law to create out of the single spiritual substance that God is. The world is commonly said to be God’s body. Various ramifications of God’s being in some way everything can be discerned in Indian theology.

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