4. Śaṅkara’s Psychology and the Human Condition

We saw throughout this dissertation that the notion of dharma in Vedic theology was tied to goods desirable to men, puruṣārtha, and I opened this chapter with Śaṅkara saying that only men were specifically qualified for the two kinds of good which dharma typically brings, prosperity and liberation. At this point it becomes necessary for us to define precisely the human situation that Śaṅkara has in mind so that we can see what the practice of dharma involved, and to do that we must touch upon Śaṅkara’s psychology. Bearing in mind Śaṅkara’s well-known absolute monism, we must assume that there are certain cosmological categories of Being that somehow obtain—it is impossible to define the human situation without them—but we do not need to worry about their relation to Brahman.

The individual Self in Śaṅkara’s system is a complex product that is built on an initial interaction between the real Self, one and only for everyone, and the so-called intellect, internal organ, or the mind (buddhi, antaḥ-karaṇa). The real Self is, essentially, nothing more than the category in virtue of which it is possible to have phenomenal consciousness of any kind. Śaṅkara quite often compares this Self to sunlight, the necessary factor of any perceptual awareness that is essentially formless, but assumes all kinds of forms contingent on the shapes that it illuminates.

We will take the following definition from the Upadeśa-Sāhasrī as exhaustive:

Ātman is the self-effulgent perception, the seeing, internally existing and actionless. It is the witness which is directly cognized and interior of all, and the Observer which is constant, attributeless and non-dual.^[1]

We need to bear in mind that this pure Self is not the subject of conscious experiences, because any cognitive act involves a distinction between a subject, an object, an instrument, and cognitive content, and cancels monism: the non-dual Self cannot participate in these and still remain non-dual. The Self is what makes subjectivity possible. Insofar as Śaṅkara describes it as the witness, it is not itself what cognizes anything, but is the accommodating factor, the seeing behind the seer.^[2] The pure Self, thus, is the awareness that ever obtains but is never transitive.

The subject properly speaking, the one that has cognitions, is a reflection of the pure Self in a set of adjuncts, upādhis, the crucial among which is the intellect or buddhi.^[3] This buddhi can be defined as the evolute of Brahman in which cognition (vijñāna) in general takes place.

The pure Self is the only Self, but it is not one that can have transitive awareness of itself. The intellect, owing to its proximity to the pure Self in the evolution from Brahman, becomes the locus in which a sense of Self can obtain. Śaṅkara illustrates the relationship between the Self, the intellect, and the sense of Self with the reflection that appears when a face is placed in front of a mirror.^[4] The sense of Self that is like the image in the mirror is variously called ahaṅkāra, aham-pratyaya, asmat-pratyaya, ātmābhāsa etc, and becomes the basis on which the individual Self is eventually built.^[5] The Self is not its reflection, but becomes identified with it. It may also be figuratively said to be under illusion, thinking oneself something which it is not, if we understand that this thinking does not happen in the Self itself, but is accommodated by its light.

The reflection is neither a property of the face nor of the mirror, but it is dependent on both, insofar as it can obtain only if both are present. It does not, however, obtain necessarily: it is accidental because the face must be in front of the mirror for one to think, “This is me.”^[6] In a different sense, it is a necessary relationship for there to be cognitive subjectivity at all, because the intellect is not a conscious principle—it is that thing which is the locus of cognition, but is itself not conscious of anything—whereas the pure Self is not an agent. So, the properties of the one are placed over the other: the consciousness of the Self is superimposed over the intellect so that there can be a conscious experience, whereas the cognitive agency that involves the dualities of subject, object, instrument, and cognition that belong to the intellect are superimposed over the Self.^[7] Because the intellect is the place where the reflection of the Self obtains and is located, the first adjunct of the ātman, the individual Self is commonly called the vijñānātman, the Self of cognition, and is typically distinguished from the pure, inner Self called the pratyag-ātman or paramātman.

The above account is based primarily on the Upadeśa-Sāhasrī, and it seems to me that it is the necessary starting point as it provides the clearest idea of the focal point around which the individual Self is constructed, namely the sense of Self or aham/asmat-pratyaya: it is a reflection of the Self in the intellect, a reflection that relates the two. We can now broaden the presentation by drawing from the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra and the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad What is superimposed over the pure Self is not just cognitive agency: it is agency in general, namely the complex that involves action (kriyā), its contributory factors (kārakas) such as the agent, specifically identified with the reflection of the Self around which the vijñānātman is constructed, instruments, and results.^[8] This is most evidently instantiated in the case of cognition: there is an agent or cognitive subject, jñātṛ, which is the sense of Self reflected in the mirror of the intellect (ātmābhāsa); there is an object to this subject that includes anything that might become an object of awareness, from external things to internal states of any kind, called by Śaṅkara yuṣmat-pratyaya, ”the notion of You;” there are the mind and senses as instrumental causes; and there is the cognition itself, vijñāna, that take place in the intellect. All of this is superimposed on the Self either directly or indirectly. Agency, however, is general: it concerns any kind of agency.

The complex of pramāṇa or reliable warrants is a restricted case of cognition—one that happens to be valid—and is equally superimposed over the Self: all reliable warrants, scripture in all its scope included, are superimposed over the Self and can operate because there is such a thing as the Self to illumine them:

All forms of worldly and Vedic forms of behavior that involve knowable objects and reliable warrants become operational through the mutual superimposition of the Self and the non-Self, a superimposition that is called ignorance (avidyā), as do all scriptures that are concerned with injunctions, prohibitions, and liberation.^[9]

The superimposition of agency brings with itself the superimposition of the enjoying the results that such agency implies, bhoktṛtva.^[10]

Furthermore, the cognitive agency, of course, has the intellect as its location—it is there that cognition happens—but cognition is dependent on a set of other factors: it is dependent on the so-called manas, commonly translated as the mind but better understood as the faculty of attention; on the cognitive faculties that function in their respective sphere, commonly called senses, indriya; finally, on the body, which houses these senses.

The light of awareness is, thus, further reflected in the rest of one’s personality, but it is also progressively restricted or dimmed because it is modulated by each previous reflection:

The intellect, because of its transparency and proximity, becomes a reflection of the light of awareness of the Self. For this reason, even those who discriminate fancy themselves first as being the intellect. Next there is the reflection of awareness in the mind, due to proximity, by its comingling with the intellect; then in the senses, because they are in contact with the mind; and then in the body, because of its being in contact with the senses. Thus, in succession the Self with its own innate intelligence illumines the whole aggregate of body and organs.^[11]

These are like mirrors within mirrors, and the Self could potentially identify—have the notion “This is who I am”—in regard to any of them, contingent on one’s discriminative ability. “It is for this reason that all people identify themselves with the body and organs and their functions in an unregulated way, as per their discrimination.”^[12] The buddhi/antaḥ-karaṇa/vijñāna is the first adjunct of the Self, giving it the name vijñānātman, but the rest become its adjuncts as well. This principle can be extended even to things that are merely related to oneself, considered “my,” and Śaṅkara calls the whole field of potential items of identification aham-mama-gocara, “the sphere of ‘I’ and ‘my.’”^[13] This field or sphere is concretized in relation to the sense of Self and becomes “the notion of ‘this’,” idam-dhī, where idam is a variable that stands as a complement to the notion of “I” and forming a complex with it—“I am this”—whose value can be anything from the sphere of “I and mine,” any property of the non-Self that one can superimpose over the Self, as long as it is either reached by the light of awareness or is in relation to oneself.

We can now appreciate one of the most striking passages written in the history of Indian philosophy:

As we said, superimposition, to define it, is the notion of something in regard to something else. It is like when one superimposes external properties over the Self, thinking, “I myself am injured” or “I myself am whole” when one’s son or wife is injured or whole; or when one superimposes properties of the body and thinks, “I am fat,” “I am lean,” “I am fair,” “I stand,” “I go,” or “I leap;” or when one superimposes properties of the senses, as in “I am dumb,” “I am blind in one eye,” “I am emasculated,” or “I am blind;” or when one superimposes properties of the internal organ, such as desire, resolve, doubt and certainty.^[14]

This superimposition whose cause is false awareness, is, Śaṅkara claims, called ignorance or avidyā by the learned.^[15] We should note here for the sake of being thorough that ignorance assumed an all-important role in post-Śaṅkara Advaita Vedānta: it became a cosmological category, standing for the primordial stuff of which the world is made or which operates on Brahman as it is about to don its causal garb. As Hacker and Mayeda have shown, ignorance was not a cosmological item in Śaṅkara’s thought.^[16] In fact, in how Śaṅkara talks about ignorance, the very possibility of ignorance presupposes that the cosmological diversification of Being had already taken place: buddhi and the rest of the adjuncts need to be present for the mutual superimposition of properties to take place. In general, we can say that ignorance is strictly a psychological category in Śaṅkara’s thought and looks at the Ātman-Brahman relationship on the side of the Self, whereas the counterpart cosmological category on the side of Brahman is the nāma-rūpe, name and form.^[17]

In the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bhagavad-Gītā this ignorance is said to be potentially of three kinds: (1) failure to grasp an object (agrahaṇa), as in the case of darkness; (2) seeing one thing as another (viparīta-grahaṇa), under which most of Śaṅkara’s favorite examples would fit, such as seeing a snake in a rope, silver in the mother-of-pearl, or when the simple-minded see dirt and a flat surface in the sky; and (3) doubt (saṃśaya), the classical example of which in Indian philosophy is the uncertainty whether a silhouette in the distance is a man or a post, to which Śaṅkara also commonly refers.^[18] These are all cases of cognitive errors, and Śaṅkara’s object in using them is to show that they do not constitute an error on the part of the knower, but a flaw in the causal conditions of perception: the Self is not in illusion in essentia, but in actu. They must be taken as no more than illustrations, however, because the superimposition that Śaṅkara talks about is evidently of a very different kind: it is the mistake that makes all other mistakes possible—as well as all truths, inclusive of the final truth expressed in the eventual mahā-vākyas. This form of ignorance is not just the common mistake of false recognition that brings embarrassment, or the uncertainty that a scarecrow may cause. Ignorance is the false awareness and the superimposition that is natural (naisargika) and without a beginning (anādi), that is, it obtains as a normal state and not as a cognitive oddity. We may take Mahadevan’s lead, therefore, and distinguish this from of ignorance from the common as metaphysical.^[19]

However—and this is a point not commonly discussed, yet crucial for Śaṅkara’s soteriology and dharma—the mere formation of the reflection of the Self, the consequent superimposition of the notions of agency and enjoyment, the complex centered around action, namely action itself, its contributing factors and its results (kriyā, kāraka, phala), and the potential of identification with anything that constitutes the field of “I and my,” fashion the category of the individual Self, the universal or padārtha to which the word “Self” can be applied: this is not what makes the Self of any Devadatta or John Doe.^[20] Ignorance is the immediate factor of distinguishing the category of vijñānātman or jīva from the Supreme Self, but it is not the immediate factor of individuation. Two additional factors are required for there to be an individual Self.

We may put this another way. What the image of the Self will look like is contingent on the mirror: the image of the face conforms to the mirror, and the mirror can be variously inflected.^[21] There are some contour points that need to be invariantly present in all images so that we could identify what kind of thing the image represents, and these are the sense of Self—“I am this”—and agency. What range of values “this” will take depends on two other factors: impressions that have the nature of habitual desire that prompts action (vāsanā, bhāvanā, saṃskāra, kāma), and the results of previous action or karma.

The three, really, form a circle that reinforces itself. The impressions are impressions of ignorance, results of past identifications involving agency—past actions—that color, or rather perfume, one’s awareness. They are in the form of volitional tendencies for something specific. Śaṅkara determines their scope as rāgādi, which clearly refers to the well-known set of psychological faults or kleśas, namely attachment, aversion, and illusion (rāga, dveṣa, moha). Desires that are formed through impression are the medium that otherwise unproductive ignorance must take to become an instigator to action (bhāvanā). Action and its resultant karma on their part produce one’s future embodiment that is an instantiation of ignorance, as it involves a wrong identification in which one becomes naturally prone to specific desires and fit for the attaining of specific goals, requiring specific action.

Because the superimposition that is ignorance is natural and without a beginning, this circle of avidyā -> vāsanā -> kāma -> karma -> avidyā is a true circle: everything is logically predicated on ignorance, but ignorance historically or temporally requires an existing embodiment.

Being perfectly stainless, Ātman is distinguished from, and broken by, nescience, residual impression, and actions.^[22]

The living Self, individuated by ignorance, results of previous actions and past impressions, assisted by the chief breath and possessing a mind and senses …^[23] Ignorance could be the cause of inequality through recourse to action that is set in motion by impressions that are torments, attachment, etc.^[24]

There must be some force impelled by which one becomes averse to one's own world, the Self, as if he were helpless.–Is it not ignorance? For, he who is ignorant is averse and acts.–Ignorance is not an instigator to action, for it conceals the true nature of a thing. It obtains the state of being the seed of action like darkness that is the cause of the action of falling into a ditch.–Well say it then, what is the cause of a man's activity.–It is said here: it is desire.^[25]

Suffused by the impression of ignorance that is natural to him and that consists in a superimposition of the notions of action, its factors such as the agent, and its results, over the Self, he desired.^[26]

Desire is the cause of action, because of being an instigator.^[27]

The individual Self, thus, is a work in progress, constituted by the three factors of ignorance, desires that are impressions in nature and prompt one to act, and the results of action that have shaped one’s present identity. While ignorance is the general factor of individuation, the category maker, desire and karma are the two factors that make it possible for one to be born with a specific identity—that is, in a family belonging to a class—and have the fitness for specific desires and forms of attainment that are related to them.

As is, hopefully, evident, Śaṅkara’s psychology was Bhartṛprapañca’s psychology from top to bottom. The individual Self was constituted by the same triplet of avidyā-kāma-karma, with vāsanā negotiating the transition between the first two. This was in both cases inspired by the psychology of Yoga, specifically the idea of five kleśas expressed in the Patañjali’s Yoga-Sūtra 2.3: “The torments are ignorance, the sense of Self, attachment, aversion and clinging to life.”^[28] If anything, Śaṅkara was more consistent in applying this Yoga classification, sticking to the psychological significance of ignorance that takes the Self to be its opposite, whereas Bhartṛprapañca’s leaned towards avidyā as a cosmic power.^[29] The point of Śaṅkara’s departure from Bhartṛprapañca was his theory of reflection of the Self in the intellect as constituting the vijñānātman: the individual was not a chunk of Brahman that is cut off by a cosmic power of ignorance. It was a product of one big mistake, a succession of nested mirror images assuming substance because of being graced by the light of awareness.^[30]

We can now see what is the “human” condition in Śaṅkara’s eyes. Which dharma in any specific form will be pertinent to oneself is dependent on a set of specific categories that have been superimposed over the Self: “Scriptural statements such as ‘a brāhmaṇa should sacrifice’ function through superimposition of characteristics such as membership to class, stage of religious life, and age.”^[31] This is the specific superimposition that must take place for dharma to become pertinent, over and above the general identification with the mind, body and senses and their natural properties: membership in the varṇāśrama system. One must have become a member of the social structure for which the Veda is relevant, and without such a state of affairs obtaining, dharma does not pertain to oneself in any way. The light of awareness that permeates the field of “I and mine” must illumine a specific area of social identity that is formed into a habitual nature through avidyā-kāma-karma.

Śaṅkara was, of course, aware that there was a world beyond Vedic society, but that world was of little interest to him. It was split between the “natural world,” in which everyone participates and which is comprised of natural actions such as breathing and eating when one is hungry, actions that have no consequence for the law of karma because of not being scripturally regulated,^[32] and the world of sheer desire and innate faults such as attachment and aversion, in which one acts against the regulations of the Vedic injunctions and prohibitions and glides down the scale of Being all the way to plant life.^[33]

One must have been born in the three upper classes for starters: this is the Self for which dharma in general has pertinence:

The ‘Self’ here refers to the natural person that is characterized by a complex of body and senses, a member of one of the castes.^[34]

The regulated Vedic world provides the means for attaining the goals of prosperity and liberation, and the initial point of both pursuits requires one to be a member of Vedic society, born in it.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

upalabdhiḥ svayaṃ-jyotir dṛśiḥ pratyak-sad-akriyaḥ |
sākṣāt sarvāntaraḥ sākṣī cetā nityo 'guṇo 'dvayaḥ ||—Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.26, translation Mayeda 2006b:174-5.

[2]:

See Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10.

[3]:

See Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.7.

[4]:

Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.43.

[5]:

Throughout the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī, particularly in 1.4 and 1.18. The asmat-pratyaya is the term used famously right at the beginning of the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra

[6]:

Cf. Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.39: dvayor eveti cet tan na dvayor evāpy adarśanāt; “If it be said that the reflection is a property of (a combination) of the two, we say no, because it is not seen even when the two are present.”

[7]:

Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.65. Also, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, I.5: evam aham-pratyayinam aśeṣa-sva-pracāra-sākṣiṇi pratyag-ātmany adhyasya taṃ ca pratya-ātmānaṃ sarva-sākṣiṇaṃ tad-viparyayeṇāntaḥ-karaṇādiṣv adhyasyati: “Likewise, superimposing the internal organ that bears the sense of Self over the internal Self, the witness of the modifications of that bearer, one proceeds to reversely superimposing the internal Self over the internal organ.”

[8]:

See Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.17, VIII.159: svābhāvikyā svātmani kartr-ādi-kāraka-kriyā-phalātmakatādhyāropa-lakṣaṇayā avidyāvāsanayā vāsitaḥ so 'kāmayata kāmitavān. On the reflection of the Self being the agent, see Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.53a: ātmābhāsas tu tiṅ-vācyaḥ.

[9]:

tam etam avidyākhyam ātmānātmanor itaretarādhyāsaṃ puraskṛtya sarve pramāṇa-prameya-vyavahārā laukikā vaidikāś ca pravṛttāḥ. sarvāṇi ca śāstrāṇi vidhi-pratiṣedha-mokṣa-parāṇi. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, I.3.

[10]:

See, for instance, the end of the Adhyāsa-Bhāṣya of the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, I.5, where the two are most explicitly paired in relation to superimposition: evam ayam anādir ananto naisargiko’dhyāso mithyā-pratyaya-rūpaḥ kartṛtva-bhoktṛtva-pravartakaḥ sarva-loka-pratyakṣaḥ; “Thus is this natural superimposition that is without a beginning or end, false notion in nature, the instigator of agency an enjoyment, evident to all.” Also, the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad Introduction, VIII.5: iṣṭāniṣṭa-prāpti-parihārecchā-kāraṇam ātma-viṣayam ajñānaṃ kartṛ-bhoktṛ-svarūpābhimāna-lakṣaṇam; “The cause of the desire to attain the good and avoid the evil, viz, ignorance regarding the Self, which expresses itself as the idea of one's being the agent and experiencer…”

[11]:

buddhis tāvat svacchatvād ānantaryāc ca ātma-caitanya-jyotiḥ-praticchāyā bhavati; tena hi vivekinām api tatra ātmābhimāna-buddhiḥ prathamā; tato 'py ānantaryāt manasi caitanyāvabhāsatā, buddhi-samparkāt; tata indriyeṣu, manaḥ-saṃyogāt; tato 'nantaraṃ śarīre, indriya-samparkāt. evaṃ pāramparyeṇa kṛtsnaṃ kārya-karaṇa-saṃghātam ātmā caitanya-svarūpa-jyotiṣā avabhāsayati. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.3.7, IX.527-8.

[12]:

Ibid: tena hi sarvasya lokasya kārya-karaṇa-saṅghāte tad-vṛttiṣu ca aniyatātmābhimāna-buddhir yathā-vivekaṃ jāyate.

[13]:

See Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.27.

[14]:

adhyāso nāma atasmiṃs tad-buddhir ity avocāma. tad yathā—putra-bhāryādiṣu vikaleṣu sakaleṣu vā aham eva vikalaḥ sakalo veti bāhya-dharmān ātmany adhyasyati; tathā deha-dharmān 'sthūlo’haṃ kṛśo’haṃ gauro’haṃ tiṣṭhāmi gacchāmi laṅghayāmi ca' iti; tathendriya-dharmān—'mūkaḥ kāṇaḥ klībaḥ andho’ham' iti. tathāntaḥkaraṇa-dharmān kāma-saṅkalpa-vicikitsādhyavasāyādīn. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, I.4-5.

[15]:

tam etam evaṃ-lakṣaṇam adhyāsaṃ paṇḍitā avidyeti manyante. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, I.3.

[16]:

Hacker 1995:57-100; Mayeda 2006b:22-26, 76-84.

[17]:

A second issue related to ignorance developed in post-Śaṅkara Advaita Vedānta, growing into a dispute over which the school would divide in two camps. This was the question about the locus of this ignorance: one line of Advaitins, including his immediate students Sureśvara and Padmapāda, claimed that Brahman itself is the locus of ignorance, whereas another line, started by Vācaspati Miśra but continuing the tradition of Maṇḍana, claimed that the individual Self or jīva is the locus. As shown by Ingalls (1953), Śaṅkara, while aware of the problem, chose not to deal with it because he considered that no solution within what is logically possible could be forthcoming.—
Śaṅkara discussed the question “Whose is ignorance?” in a couple of places (most notably Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 4.1.3, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.1.6 and Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bhagavad-Gītā 13.2), which all tend toward evasion and can be roughly characterized by the following dialogue:
-Now, whose is this ignorance that you are talking about?
-Well, of the ignorant, duh!
-That would be me, I gather.
-There you have it, then.
-But hold on a second, you say that I am Brahman, and that I, being Brahman, cannot be ignorant!
-Good for you! If you understand that much, what is the problem?
Ingalls sees in this the same strategy that was employed by the Buddha in answering metaphysical questions, such as those in the famous Cula-Malunkyaputta-Sutta.

[18]:

Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 13.2.

[19]:

Mahadevan 1985.

[20]:

jāti-karmādimattvād dhi tasmiñ śabdās tv ahaṃkṛti. “As this bearer of the "I"-notion has a universal, and is possessed of action, etc., it can be referred to by words.” Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.28. Translation Mayeda 2006b:175.

[21]:

Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.18.31.

[22]:

avidyayā bhāvanayā ca karmabhir vivikta ātmāvyavadhiḥ sunirmalaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1.10.9ab.

[23]:

jīvo mukhya-prāṇa-sacivaḥ sendriyaḥ samanasko’vidyā-karma-pūrva-prajñā-parigrahaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.1.1, II.527-8.

[24]:

rāgādi-kleśa-vāsanākṣipta-karmāpekṣā tv avidyā vaiṣamya-karī syāt. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 2.1.36, II.344.

[25]:

tasmād bhavitavyaṃ tena, yena prerito 'vaśa iva bahirmukho bhavati svasmāl lokāt. nanv avidyā sā; avidvān hi bahirmukhī-bhūtaḥ pravartate—sāpi naiva pravartikā; vastu-svarūpāvarṇātmikā hi sā; pravartaka-bījatvaṃ tu pratipadyate andhatvam iva gartādi-patana-pravṛtti-hetuḥ. evaṃ tarhy ucyatāṃ kiṃ tad yat pravṛtti-hetur iti; tad ihābhidhīyate—eṣaṇā kāmaḥ saḥ. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.16, VIII.157-8.

[26]:

svābhāvikyā svātmani kartr-ādi-kāraka-kriyā-phalātmakatādhyāropa-lakṣaṇayā avidyā-vāsanayā vāsitaḥ so 'kāmayata kāmitavān. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.17, VIII.159.

[27]:

karma-hetuḥ kāmaḥ syāt, pravartakatvāt. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.8.

[28]:

avidyāsmitā-rāga-dveṣābhiniveśāḥ kleśāḥ.

[29]:

Cf. Patañjali’s Yoga-Sūtra 2.5: anityāśuci-duḥkhānātmasu niyta-śuci-sukhātma-khyātir avidyā, “Ignorance is the notion that takes the self, which is joyful, pure, and eternal, to be the nonself, which is painful, unclean, and temporary.” Translation Bryant 2009.

[30]:

The similarity of Śaṅkara’s psychology with that of Yoga, and the purported authorship of the Yoga-Sūtra-Bhāsya-Vivaraṇa, prompted Paul Hacker to advance the thesis that Śaṅkara might have been a converted yogin. Cf. particularly the following statement: “For the time being it is not possible to decide to what extent Śaṅkara, with his point of agreement with the “ātmology” and psychology (“cittology”) of Yoga, follows an already existing (pre-monistic) Vedānta tradition, since no work of this literature except the enigmatic Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa is any longer extant. But since he differs from other Advaitins on those points of ātmology as well as in avidyology which connect him with Yoga, we may assume for the time being that his relations with this system were particularly close as a result of his earlier allegiance to it.” (Hacker 1995:119) It should be evident from my previous chapter that the crucial categories of Śaṅkara’s “ātmology, cittology, avidyology and brahmology” were taken from Bhartṛprapañca, who was mocked for not being able to decide whom he wants to make alliance with. While Śaṅkara’s acquaintance with Yoga seems more thorough than what he could have gathered from Bhartṛprapañca, it was Bhartṛprapañca who, for all we know, used or introduced the terms avidyā, vāsanā, kāma as doṣa, vijñānātman, avyākṛte and vyākṛte nāma-rūpe etc., in Vedānta. This, I think, makes Hacker’s thesis unnecessary.

[31]:

tathā hi—brāhmaṇo yajeta ity ādīni śāstrāṇy ātmani varṇāśrama-vayo’vasthādi-viśeṣādhyāsam āśritya pravartante. adhyāso nāma atasmiṃs tad-buddhir ity avocāma. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.1, IV.4.

[32]:

This is a recurring distinction in his comments. For instance, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3.1.

[33]:

See, for instance, the introduction to the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad This was, of course, a pan-Vedāntic attitude inspired by the “third state” of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, other than the southern and the northern course that we saw in the previous chapter: “Then there are those proceeding on neither of these paths—they become the tiny creatures revolving here ceaselessly. ‘Be born! Die!’—that is a third state.” Chāndogya Upaniṣad 5.10.8. Translation Olivelle 1998:237.

[34]:

ātmaiva—svābhāvikaḥ avidvān kārya-karaṇa-saṅghāta-lakṣaṇo varṇī. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.17.