• About me
  • About this blog
  • Comment rules
  • Other writings

Love of All Wisdom

~ Philosophy through multiple traditions

Love of All Wisdom

Tag Archives: Śaṅkara

Experiencing different ultimate unities

21 Sunday May 2023

Posted by Amod Lele in Consciousness, Metaphysics, Vedānta

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, mystical experience, nondualism, perennialism, phenomenology, Rāmānuja, Robert Forman, Śaṅkara, Seth Zuihō Segall, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, Teresa of Ávila, Upaniṣads, W.T. Stace

Defenders of cross-cultural mystical experience are right to note that in many widely varying cultures, respected sages have referred to the experience of an ultimate nonduality: a perception that everything, including oneself, is ultimately one. But one might also then rightly ask: which ultimate nonduality?

Nondualism may be the world’s most widespread philosophy, but it can mean different things – not merely different things in different places, but different things in the same place. Members of the Indian Vedānta tradition frequently proclaimed that everything is “one, without a second”, in the words of the Upaniṣads they followed. But they disagreed as to what that meant. Śaṅkara founded the Advaita Vedānta tradition – a-dvaita literally meaning non-dual – which argued that only the one, ultimate truth (sat, braḥman) was real, and all multiplicity and plurality was an illusion. His opponent Rāmānuja agreed that everything is “one, without a second” – but in his Viśiṣṭādvaita (qualified nondual) school, that meant something quite different. All the many things and people we see around us – what Chinese metaphysicians called the “ten thousand things” – are parts of that ultimate one, and they are real, not illusory.

Continue reading →

No opposite for the ultimate

28 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Christianity, Daoism, God, Indigenous American Thought, Metaphysics, Truth, Vedānta

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Augustine, Aztec, G.W.F. Hegel, Hebrew Bible, James Maffie, Krishna, Kyoto School, Laozi, Nishida Kitarō, Nishitani Keiji, nondualism, Śaṅkara, Satan, theodicy, Zhuangzi

I have considerable sympathies for nondualism and have started in recent years to think that it might be true. But there is an important qualifier to any such view. Namely: I do not think that there could possibly be an omnipotent omnibenevolent God. The problem of suffering is just too intractable.

Many nondualists, especially Sufis, would identify the nondual ultimate with that God. And I cannot accept that view. For similar reasons I am skeptical of a Vedānta view where the ultimate is sat: both being and goodness. There is too much being that is not good.

For this reason I have been inspired by a wonderful passage in Nishida Kitarō’s “The logic of nothingness and the religious worldview”:

Continue reading →

The reasons for nondualism

21 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Psychology, Reading and Recitation, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Alasdair MacIntyre, Aristotle, conventional/ultimate, drugs, G.W.F. Hegel, Gārgī Vācaknavī, Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabī, mystical experience, Nathan (commenter), nondualism, pramāṇa, Roland Griffiths, Śaṅkara, Thales, Upaniṣads, Zhiyi

I said previously of nondualism, “I’m not sure I can think of any other major philosophical idea that flowered so much in so many different places, more or less independently. I think that gives us prima facie reason to think the nondualists were on to something important.” Nathan reasonably took me to task for this claim in a comment: “Amod seems to overlook that ideas can be successful without being true.”

I don’t think it’s fair to say I overlooked that point: I said the pervasiveness gave us reason prima facie – at first glance – to say think the nondualists were on to something. That doesn’t mean nondualism is true, and I didn’t say that it was. Second glances might reveal something different. And where I think Nathan is right is in asking us to take those second glances. Is nondualism widespread for a reason other than its being true?

Continue reading →

The need for subjectivity

25 Sunday Oct 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in Buddhism, Death, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Natural Science, Self

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Augustine, conventional/ultimate, G.W.F. Hegel, Graham Harman, Kyoto School, Nishida Kitarō, nondualism, Quentin Meillassoux, Śaṅkara, Speculative Realism, Wilfrid Sellars

I first read Quentin Meillassoux in a local reading group in summer 2016, and thought at first that I was largely in agreement with him. That changed in 2019 when the same group read the Kyoto School‘s Nishida Kitarō.

Nishida reminded me of the importance of subjectivity in our thought about the world – something which Meillassoux is at pains to deny. It was particularly striking to hear this from Nishida since he was a self-proclaimed Buddhist – a tradition so often thought to deny subjectivity. Nishida says:

Continue reading →

Perennial nondualism

30 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Amod Lele in East Asia, God, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Neoplatonism, Self, Sufism, Vedānta

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Dara Shukoh, Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabī, mystical experience, Nishida Kitarō, nondualism, perennialism, Plotinus, Rāmānuja, Ron Purser, Śaṅkara, Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, Upaniṣads, Wilhelm Halbfass, Yogācāra

I have spent a good deal of time criticizing the idea of a “perennial philosophy”, the idea (expressed by Ken Wilber and others before him) that the great sages of the world have always basically agreed on the really important things. In the past I had said there were perennial questions but with different answers; now I’m not even sure whether that is the case.

And yet I am struck by a particular phenomenon from which the perennialists draw a great deal of inspiration – and that is the pervasive influence of nondualism. “Nondual” is a literal English translation of the Sanskrit a-dvaita, the name of Śaṅkara’s school of Vedānta philosophy. But the core idea of nondualism has been asserted by a very wide range of philosophers around the world – from people who could never have heard of Śaṅkara, to Śaṅkara’s enemies.

Continue reading →

The accidental Gītā

16 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Amod Lele in Epics, Flourishing, Foundations of Ethics, Mahāyāna, Metaphysics, Modern Hinduism, Morality, Vedānta

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Aurobindo Ghose, Bhagavad Gītā, Mohandas K. Gandhi, Paul Hacker, pedagogy, Rāmānuja, Śaṅkara, Śāntideva

A strange coincidence surprised me as I designed this spring’s course in Indian philosophy – but one that I suspect is quite significant. The coincidence resulted from three of my primary concerns in selecting content for the course syllabus, and I’ll start with those. One of those was, whenever possible, to focus on primary texts – texts actually written by Indian philosophers.

A second primary concern was to stress the connections between theoretical and practical philosophy. Too often, Indian epistemology and metaphysics are seen as purely abstract activities with little relation to one’s ethical conduct or even one’s ultimate liberation, and Indian reflection on practical matters is taken to have little background in that theoretical work (as in Damien Keown’s needlessly pessmistic reflection that there is no such thing as Buddhist normative ethics). It is no wonder that Indian philosophy is so little studied when even those who study it sometimes think its questions tend not to edification.

My reading of Śāntideva convinced me that this is absolutely not the case. Metaphysics is a pervasive concern of his most celebrated text (and one of the most widely read works of Buddhist ethics), the Bodhicaryāvatāra – not only in the ninth chapter, which focuses on it, but in the other more widely read chapters as well. (I gave a talk on this topic at the SACP a few years ago, and am planning on expanding it into a paper for publication soon.) I have come to believe that this is the case more widely in Indian philosophy as well. It’s not always easy to see what the practical implications of Indian theoretical thought are, but I think that they are there, and it was hugely important to me that my course bring them out.

My final primary concern was to bring in modern Indian philosophy, in order to excite student interest and let them know it is not a dead tradition. Continue reading →

Two gods

20 Sunday Oct 2013

Posted by Amod Lele in Early Factions, Foundations of Ethics, God, Metaphysics, Vedānta

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Augustine, Marcion of Sinope, nondualism, Śaṅkara, theodicy

Last week I examined the theology of Marcion of Sinope, who believed – as did many other early Christians – that there existed two gods, one good and one evil. I argued that Marcion’s theology is an ingenious way for a Christian to make sense of the atrocities in the Hebrew Bible. But this week I want to argue that the appeal of such a theology goes well beyond the interpretation of scripture in the West. Rather, it is also a way to help us understand the world, if we are to take theism seriously. Continue reading →

The classical enumeration of categories, and why it matters

22 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Epistemology, Logic, Metaphilosophy, Metaphysics, Natural Science, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, Philosophy of Language, Truth, Vedānta

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Aristotle, Ken Wilber, Plato, Rāmānuja, Śaṅkara

There’s a recurring theme in Indo-European thought that has often perplexed me: categories. The Indian Vaiśeṣika school of thought is known primarily for enumerating a set of categories (padārthas) with which to understand reality. I always had a hard time getting why they spent so much time doing that. The thing is, they’re hardly alone in doing it. In an introductory class I took on reading philosophical Sanskrit, we read an 18th-century Sanskrit introduction to the thought of Rāmānuja, a thinker quite far removed from Vaiśeṣika – and that too was all about dividing the world into categories. I have not yet delved much into Aristotle’s difficult theoretical philosophy, especially his Metaphysics – but most introductions to that work will tell you that it too is all about categories. What’s going on here? Why would so many major thinkers do this sort of thing?

I think a key reasons the categories have puzzled me is that, like the majority of my readers, I have been brought up in a worldview heavily infused by scientism. In the English-speaking world, at least, we usually take it for granted that reality is made of matter; we are materialists. And we are wrong. Continue reading →

On innovation through conservatism

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by Amod Lele in Confucianism, M.T.S.R., Metaphilosophy, Modern Hinduism, Roman Catholicism, Shinto, Social Science, Vedānta

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Alasdair MacIntyre, conservatism, Front Porch Republic, Japan, Ken Wilber, modernism, modernity, postmodernism, Randall Collins, Romanticism, Śaṅkara, Thomas P. Kasulis, Upaniṣads

I noted two weeks ago how Ken Wilber’s recent post/modern turn (“Wilber-5”) is right in important respects, but suggested important problems with it. Last week I noted empirical problems: sociological data on Christianity show a very different picture from his. This week I want to turn to a deeper philosophical problem, which I suspect underlies last week’s sociological picture.

We cannot go back to premodernity. This much is true and important. Our options going forward must take account of the post/modern world, be developed within it. On all of this I agree with Wilber. But what I don’t think Wilber makes room for is this: one can take account of the post/modern world, understand it, know it, and still reject it. Continue reading →

Philosophical single-mindedness (2)

27 Sunday Nov 2011

Posted by Amod Lele in Aesthetics, German Tradition, Greek and Roman Tradition, Place, Politics, Protestantism, Psychology, Salafi, Vedānta

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Advaita Vedānta, Aristotle, Augustine, Communism, conservatism, David Harvey, G.W.F. Hegel, James Doull, Jane Jacobs, Karl Marx, Karl Popper, modernism, Myers-Briggs, Plato, Pol Pot, Śaṅkara

Last week I spoke of a philosophical single-mindedness shared by modernists, evangelical Protestants, Salafi Muslims and St. Augustine, and this week I’d like to reflect on it further. What these various single-minded thinkers hold in common is opposed above all, I think, by literal conservatism. Conservatives in the literal sense seek to preserve much of the world as it is – “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” They are opposed to radical breaks and revolutions, whether those aim to take us forward (as the modernists) or backward (as the Salafis). I noted in my earlier post that Jane Jacobs’s urban criticism, a direct attack on modernist architecture and modernist urban planning, is a quintessential example of literal conservatism; Jacobs would react with the same hostility to the Salafi assault on Mecca. In that respect, for all its urbanity, Jacobs’s work is of a piece with the agrarian rural conservatism of Front Porch Republic and Wendell Berry.

The appeal of such literal conservatism is certainly not limited to aesthetics, but one may perhaps see it most clearly in the aesthetic realm. (Some modernists, like the Marxist geographer David Harvey, see an aesthetic conservatism as opposed to a more ethical modernism.) For it’s hard to imagine elevating a single most important principle, as modernists typically do, as the principle behind beauty: could one ever say “Everything constructed according to principle X will be beautiful,” without making principle X entirely vacuous and devoid of content? Aesthetics seem to require a focus on the details and not merely the big picture.

Now of the various single-minded thinkers I’ve mentioned so far – modernists, evangelicals, Salafis and Augustine – one might note that they all have their historical roots in Western traditions. Continue reading →

← Older posts

Welcome to Love of All Wisdom.

I invite you to leave comments on my blog, even - or especially - if I have no idea who you are. Philosophy is a conversation, and I invite you to join it with me; I welcome all comers (provided they follow a few basic rules). I typically make a new post every other Sunday. If you'd like to be notified when a new post is posted, you can get email notifications whenever I add something new via the link further down in this sidebar. You can also follow this blog on Facebook or Twitter. Or if you use RSS, you can get updates through the RSS feed.

Recent Comments

  • Nathan on Experiencing different ultimate unities
  • Nathan on Experiencing different ultimate unities
  • Amod Lele on Experiencing different ultimate unities
  • Nathan on Experiencing different ultimate unities
  • Paul D. Van Pelt on Experiencing different ultimate unities

Subscribe by Email

Post Tags

20th century academia Alasdair MacIntyre Aristotle ascent/descent Augustine autobiography Buddhaghosa Canada conferences Confucius conservatism Disengaged Buddhism Engaged Buddhism Evan Thompson expressive individualism Four Noble Truths Friedrich Nietzsche G.W.F. Hegel gender Hebrew Bible identity Immanuel Kant intimacy/integrity justice Karl Marx Ken Wilber law Martha Nussbaum modernity mystical experience Pali suttas pedagogy Plato race rebirth religion Siddhattha Gotama (Buddha) technology theodicy Thomas Kuhn United States utilitarianism Śaṅkara Śāntideva

Categories

  • African Thought (13)
  • Applied Phil (285)
    • Death (37)
    • Family (42)
    • Food (17)
    • Friends (14)
    • Health (23)
    • Place (28)
    • Play (14)
    • Politics (163)
    • Sex (20)
    • Work (37)
  • Asian Thought (404)
    • Buddhism (291)
      • Early and Theravāda (125)
      • Mahāyāna (118)
      • Modernized Buddhism (88)
    • East Asia (84)
      • Confucianism (54)
      • Daoism (13)
      • Shinto (1)
    • South Asia (132)
      • Bhakti Poets (3)
      • Cārvāka-Lokāyata (5)
      • Epics (16)
      • Jainism (24)
      • Modern Hinduism (37)
      • Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (6)
      • Sāṃkhya-Yoga (14)
      • Vedānta (37)
      • Vedas and Mīmāṃsā (7)
  • Blog Admin (27)
  • Indigenous American Thought (5)
  • Method (244)
    • M.T.S.R. (137)
    • Metaphilosophy (161)
  • Practical Philosophy (362)
    • Action (11)
    • Aesthetics (45)
    • Emotion (155)
      • Anger (31)
      • Attachment and Craving (26)
      • Compassion (5)
      • Despair (3)
      • Disgust (3)
      • Faith (19)
      • Fear (7)
      • Grief (5)
      • Happiness (48)
      • Hope (15)
      • Pleasure (33)
      • Shame and Guilt (6)
    • External Goods (51)
    • Flourishing (88)
    • Foundations of Ethics (109)
    • Karma (43)
    • Morality (64)
    • Virtue (151)
      • Courage (5)
      • Generosity (13)
      • Gentleness (6)
      • Gratitude (10)
      • Honesty (13)
      • Humility (22)
      • Leadership (4)
      • Mindfulness (15)
      • Patient Endurance (29)
      • Self-Discipline (9)
      • Serenity (28)
      • Zest (6)
  • Practice (123)
    • Karmic Redirection (5)
    • Meditation (33)
    • Monasticism (45)
    • Physical Exercise (3)
    • Prayer (14)
    • Reading and Recitation (12)
    • Rites (20)
    • Therapy (10)
  • Theoretical Philosophy (339)
    • Consciousness (16)
    • Epistemology (109)
      • Certainty and Doubt (15)
      • Prejudices and "Intuitions" (28)
    • Free Will (17)
    • God (66)
    • Hermeneutics (55)
    • Human Nature (30)
    • Logic (28)
      • Dialectic (16)
    • Metaphysics (93)
    • Philosophy of Language (19)
    • Self (66)
    • Supernatural (49)
    • Truth (59)
    • Unconscious Mind (14)
  • Western Thought (431)
    • Analytic Tradition (91)
    • Christianity (144)
      • Early Factions (8)
      • Protestantism (23)
      • Roman Catholicism (50)
    • French Tradition (47)
    • German Tradition (86)
    • Greek and Roman Tradition (111)
      • Epicureanism (24)
      • Neoplatonism (2)
      • Pre-Socratics (6)
      • Skepticism (2)
      • Sophists (7)
      • Stoicism (19)
    • Islam (37)
      • Mu'tazila (2)
      • Salafi (3)
      • Sufism (9)
    • Judaism (34)
    • Natural Science (88)
      • Biology (24)
      • Philosophy of Science (47)
    • Social Science (150)
      • Economics (32)
      • Psychology (61)

Recent Posts

  • Experiencing different ultimate unities
  • Being yourself in the medieval era
  • From “qualitative individualism” to “expressive individualism”
  • Are mountains beautiful?
  • A hymn to Ecclesiastes

Popular posts

  • One and a half noble truths?
  • Wishing George W. Bush well
  • Do Speculative Realists want us to be Chinese?
  • Why I am not a right-winger
  • On faith in tooth relics

Basic concepts

  • Ascent and Descent
  • Intimacy and integrity
  • Ascent-descent and intimacy-integrity together
  • Perennial questions?
  • Virtuous and vicious means
  • Dialectical and demonstrative argument
  • Chastened intellectualism and practice
  • Yavanayāna Buddhism: what it is
  • Why worry about contradictions?
  • The first philosophy blogger

Personal favourites

  • Can philosophy be a way of life? Pierre Hadot (1922-2010)
  • James Doull and the history of ethical motivation
  • Praying to something you don't believe in
  • What does postmodernism perform?
  • Why I'm getting married

Archives

Search this site

All posts, pages and metadata copyright 2020 Amod Lele. Comments copyright 2020 their comment authors. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (BY-NC-SA) licence.

Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Chateau by Ignacio Ricci.