Soma Roy
Volume-XII, Issue-III, April 2024
Volume-XII, Issue-III, April 2024 | ||
Published Online: 30.04.2024 | Page No: 182-190 | |||
Philosophical Method of Advaita Vedānta: A critical Appraisal Soma Roy, Research Scholar of Department of Philosophy, Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India. | |
The essential philosophy of Advaita of which Śaṁkara was regarded to be as the expounder is an idealistic nondualism. His philosophy and methods comprise a teaching tradition intended to culminate in a direct liberating recognition of nonduality, going by study and correct understanding of Śruti, especially Upanisad. He started his philosophy with the hypothesis ‘Brahma satya jagat mithyā jīva Brahmaiva na paraḥ.’ Brahma is only reality, individuated jīva is nothing but Brahma or Pure Subject limited by object or mind body complex which are by nature opposed to each other cannot be identified. On this account world of plurality experienced by individual self have been claimed to be fabricated out of the cognitive superimposition of the category of object on pure subjectivity,due to avidyā or avivekajňāna of jīva, and the relation of jīva to avidyā and world is anādi but has an end. Advaitic aspiration is to communicate the Supreme Self through intuition in its true nature beyond the play of the means of knowledge and their object merely by putting an end superimposition of plurality on to it that causes liberation of jīva. This method is quoted by Śaṁkara in his Gīitābhāsya as adhyāropāpovāda. The present paper intends to do an systematic exploration of this Śaṁkarites specific philosophical method, for this, study demands the analysis of the principle of māyā, its status and nature in their conceptual framework, their conception of the world, and liberation so that it can be evaluated how far this methodology has been able to create better understanding of the topic? for which it was resorted to. | |
Keywords: Avidyā, Sadasadvilakṣana, Adhyāropāpovāda, Jīvanmukta, Mokṣa. |