Great Systems of Yoga: Chapter Four. Shankaracharya's Gnyana-Yoga

SHANKARACHARYA'S GNYANA-YOGA

THIS Teacher, who founded monasteries in India for the study of Vedānta philosophy, is believed by many of his followers to have lived several centuries before Christ, though other scholars place him much later. The date does not matter to us today, but his philosophy does, for it is regarded by some millions of people, and especially by the intellectuals, as the very pinnacle of Aryan thought. It was not that he originated a new philosophy, though he did propound a self-culture or discipline necessary to the understanding of it.

Shankarāchārya expounded with great clarity and completeness the already existing philosophy of the Upanishads—a section of the Vedas often called the Vedānta, or end of the Veda, containing the "last word" or highest teaching about the nature of Brahman (God),

That is the reality," "That, thou art" and other similar sentences to be (r) listened to, (2) thought about and (3) meditated upon, for the attainment of knowledge of the deepest truth, the very secret of life, the discovery which reveals the unalloyed freedom and happiness of our true self, when false ideas are put aside.

Gnyāna or Jnāna is knowledge. The central doctrine of this philosophy is that everything is one, and it can be known. But that knowing is only by being. We know ourselves not by words but by being ourselves, do we not? And this is happiness, for it seems that though this consciousness of self that we find ourselves to be is troubled, we always ascribe that trouble to something else—something outside—which restricts or annoys us. Who is there who blames himself for his sorrow? Even the thoughtful person who calls himself imperfect ascribes his troubles and sorrows to the imperfections, and says that if he could be without them he would be happy. Generally he tries to get rid of them. So it is by the study of the self that this philosophy proceeds to disclose the occult or secret truth which removes the imperfections and leaves the self free and joyous.

vichāra), especially with reference to an understanding of the distinction (viveka) between the eternal (nitya) and temporary (anitya) realities. In emphasizing thought, however, Shankara does not leave out study of the Vedānta, which contains much information and advice about seeking the eternal. Shankara's emphasis on thinking is very clear in his Aparokshānubhūti: "Thinking should be done for the sake of attaining knowledge of the Self. Knowledge

It is well known that we do not see things as they really are, because of our limited point of view, and yet there is in us the craving for greater understanding, because the human soul is one with the divine or universal soul. Each one of us reflects that, just as the disc of the sun may be reflected in many little pools of water. We have thus a dual nature, and though the lower may be satisfied, still the higher makes its claim in a ceaseless desire to understand. If human power and love were to grow so great, as to make our life on earth a perfect paradise of peace and plenty for all, still men would say, "Now, we want to know why all this is so." There are the needs of the personality—food, clothing and shelter, amusement and education, exercise and rest—but beyond these there are spiritual needs, and among them is the real hunger for understanding.

It is not supposed by Shankara that the average or ordinary man can think straight in these matters. He prescribes a course of what may be called purification as a preparation. This is called the sādhanachatushtayam, the "group of four accomplishments."

NAME OF ACCOMPLISHMENT		Function involved
In Sanskrit	In English	Function involved
1. Viveka	Discrimination	Thought
2. Vairāgya	Uncoloredness	Feelings
3. Shatsampatti	6 Successes	The Will
4. Mumukshatwa	The State of Longing for Liberation

Viveka is the practice of discrimination between the fleeting and the permanent. This is the first of three preliminary yogas in this school. It is here that the thinking, thinking, thinking, begins. It is to be applied to oneself, to others and to the whole business of life. It is an inspection of the contents of one's ordinary self, to discriminate between the relatively temporary and permanent. First one may dwell upon the body and realize that it is only an instrument for the conscious self to play upon. Then, one may dwell on the habits of feeling and emotion which have been accumulated during the present lifetime (or, strictly, bodytime), and realize these also to be part of the instrument—"I am surely not my feelings and emotions towards things and people." Thirdly, one must meditate upon the fact that the lower mind, the collection of information, ideas and opinions that one

The second requirement is vairāgya, an emotional condition in which one does not respond at once to impressions coming from the outer world, but first submits the matter to the discriminative power rising from viveka. If you strike an ordinary man, he will get hot and strike back, or run away, or do something else spontaneous and scarcely rational; but a man having vairāgya would use his spiritual intelligence before responding. The literal meaning of the word vairāgya is "absence of color," and in this connection it means absence of passion. Rāga is coloring, especially redness. People everywhere take their emotional coloring from their environment, according to well known psychological laws; like pieces of glass placed on blue or red or green paper, they change

Vairāgya is the absence of agitation due to things outside. A mistaken idea which is sometimes associated with this word is that it implies absence of emotion. That is not so. The purified personality responds to the higher emotions, the love emotions that belong to the real self. Those emotions come from that aspect of the indwelling consciousness which feels other lives to be as interesting as one's own. This is the root of all the love emotions—admiration, kindness, friendship, devotion and others—which must not be confused with any sort of passion, which is personal or bodily desire. If a man has vairāgya and he is still at all emotional, his emotion must express some form of love.

viveka. To understand the function of the will, it is necessary to realize that it is the faculty with which we change ourselves. Thought is kriyashakti, the power of mind that acts upon matter; but it is the will with which we change our thoughts and other inward conditions. Now will-power is to be used to bring the whole life of the man within the purpose of jnāna-yoga. This work is the equivalent of the tapas of Patanjali and the sevā of Shrī Krishna.

The six forms of success are: (1) shama, control of mind, (2) dama, control of body; (3) uparati, which means cessation from eagerness to have certain persons and things around one, and therefore a willing acceptance of what the world offers—contentment with regard to things and tolerance with regard to persons, a glad acceptance of the material available for a life's work. The fourth is titikshā, patience, the cheerful endurance of trying conditions and the sequence of karma. The fifth is shraddhā, fidelity and sincerity, and therefore confidence in oneself and others. The sixth is samādhāna, steadiness, with all the forces gathered together and turned to the definite purpose in hand.

Every one of these six practices shows the will at

It will be useful now to see that the same three means of self-guidance are employed in all the three schools we have studied so far—of Patanjali, of Shrī Krishna and of Shankarāchārya. It becomes obvious when we thus compare them that all are aiming at maturity of mind, the ripening of the three functions of will, love and thought. They put these three in different order, however, indicating the different temperaments of those who take to the different schools of occult practice and thought. The following table will make the comparison clear.

Patanjali	Krishna	Shankara
1. Tapas (Will)	1. Pranipāta (Love)	1. Viveka (Thought)
2. Swādhyāya (Thought)	2. Pariprashna (Thought)	2. Vairāgya (Love)
3. Ishwara-pranidhāna (Love)	3. Sevā (Will)	3. Shatsampatti (Will)

It is necessary to know that māyā has two functions: "covering-up" (āvarana) and "throwing-out" (vikshepa). 3 The first is declared to be the effect of tamas, which hides or obstructs the life, and the second the result of rajas, or energy. 4 "Covering-up" implies that although we are—every one—universal in our essential nature, our attention is now given to less than the whole. Most of the reality is covered up, and since we see only the remainder, it must necessarily become unsatisfying and stupid and even painful, when we have played with it long enough to exhaust its lessons for us. When we have read a book

māyā or illusion is that we do not see their full reality; we see too little, not too much. So far as they go they have an excellent flavor of reality, but their incompleteness is unsatisfying.

The second function of māyā, "throwing-out" (vikshepa), means that we put forth our thought and energy in reference to that part of reality which for us individually has not been covered up, and thereby we produce the world of māyā or created things, which are only temporary (anitya).

The power of "throwing-out" is not merely of the mind, but is actually creative, and this it is which produces all the forms around us, the world of manifestation. The objects therein are very much like pictures painted by an artist. They represent his expression of such part of the reality as is not covered up. As he looks at the picture and realizes how defective

āvarana resembles concentration, and the result of experience can be compared to contemplation. Thus māyā, while not reality, is also not unreality.

Shankara speaks in very strong language about the effect of āvarana and vikshepa in practical life: "The function of āvarana, made of tamas, covers up the shining Self, which has unlimited faculties, just as the shadow of the moon hides the disc of the sun. When there is thus the obscuration of a man's real and stainlessly radiant Self, he thinks he is the body, which is not the Self. Then the great power of rajas called vikshepa afflicts him by the binding qualities of passion, anger, etc., so that this unintelligent man, deprived of real knowledge of the Self, through being swallowed by the crocodile of the great delusion, wanders about, rising and falling in the ocean of limited existence. As clouds produced by the sun obscure the sun as they develop, so does egotism arising

Then comes the question how to remove these two: "Unless the āvarana function ceases completely, vikshepa cannot be conquered. When subject and object are separated, like milk from water, then āvarana disappears on its own account in the Self. Perfect discrimination, arising from clear perception, having distinguished the subject and the object, cuts away the bondage of delusion made by māyā, and then for the free man there is no more wandering about." 6

The substance of material things is called sat, or being. Consciousness, with its powers of will, love and thought, is called chit. Beyond those three aspects of consciousness is ānanda, the true life that is sheer happiness. The being of true life is happiness. First a man must get over the delusion that he is the body, and realize that he is consciousness using the body. He has a body. Then, later on, he must realize that he is not the powers of consciousness, but that he simply

There are two ways in which we may live our lives amidst events of the world, without retiring at all

These facts being established, people sometimes raise the academic question: "Whence comes this ignorance which hides the full reality?" With regard to this Buddha's advice was: "Sink not the string of thought into the fathomless." The fact is that we have to begin our reasoning and our activity from the place in which we find ourselves. We are apparently

The meditations of Shankara are practical, because they are not merely thoughts about things, considered as objects, dwelt upon in the third grammatical person. First, the student must say to himself, "I am not it"—"it" being the personality, physical and psychological, composed of body, personal emotions and fixed ideas. This means not simply the set of "vehicles" as they stand, but also their habits of action, emotion and thought—the entire personality. He must put that outside himself. Secondly, he must say, "I am not you," referring now to that in himself which he would call "you" in another person—the

you, never as it, nor as I, otherwise he will remain in the you, and not reach the I.

All happiness in life is beyond the limited consciousness and is experienced when that activity is forgotten. All the delight that comes from response to beauty, love and truth in the world, and from the powers of will, love and thought in consciousness, lie in the Self beyond, when the world and the limited self are forgotten, and time and space have been swallowed up in something greater, beyond their limitations. Beyond common consciousness, in a state better than that limited consciousness, we are, and all clinging to mental ideas about oneself, pleasurable or not, bars the realization of that truth. That unchanging I is ānanda, happiness, the one reality. To know this directly, not by logic, is the high purpose of the Vedānta.

Footnotes

67:1 Op. cit., 10-12, abridged translation.

75:2 Published by E. P. Dutton and Co., Inc., New York; Rider and Co., Ltd., London, England; Messrs Payot, Paris (in French), and Editorial Orion, Mexico City (in Spanish). It gives a clear and complete exposition of the entire subject.

76:3 See Shrī-Vākhya-Sudhā, 13-19, 35.

76:4 See Viveka-Chudāmani, 113, 115.

79:5 Vivekachūdāmani, 141-146, abridged translation.

79:6 Ibid., 345-348, abridged translation.

Great Systems of Yoga: Chapter Four. Shankaracharya's Gnyana-Yoga

SHANKARACHARYA'S GNYANA-YOGA

Footnotes

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