1. Introduction

We saw in the previous chapter that Śaṅkara divided the attainments which the Veda can provide for men in four spheres, loka, and tied to them a specific means or sādhana, an appropriate qualification or adhikāra, and a corresponding desire, kāma. From this point on, we will pursue in some length, in three chapters, the same scheme regarding liberation, the final and, in this case, ultimate attainment: the sphere, loka, that is the Self. A crucial role in the attainment of liberation, and in opposition to the accounts of liberation that we have examined in the second part of the dissertation, was played by the few sentences in the Upaniṣads which I will call “identity statements,” and which Śaṅkara most commonly referred to as “tat tvam asi and the rest.” Liberation was supposed to follow as a matter of course upon the full understanding of these identity statements, and they on their part organized whole sections of the Upaniṣads in a hierarchy geared towards facilitating such understanding. But, this understanding generally could not take place without some process of clarification of meaning, and one could not engage in such clarification without first satisfying some existential criteria. I will focus on the identity statements, the Upaniṣads, and the process of understanding in chapters Eight and Nine, and here I will deal first with the general nature of liberation and the necessary preliminaries.

While scholars have written extensively on elements of this topic—and I will refer to the most important studies in my notes—I do have a rather major historical argument to make here, one that is novel but, I contend, most useful for understanding Śaṅkara’s soteriology: Śaṅkara developed the whole path to liberation generally, and the section to the state which he called “arising of knowledge” or jñānotpatti/vidyotpatti/jñāna-prāpti specifically, on the model of ritual causality of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā system, drawing particularly on the ideas of mediate causality or pāramparya and the two kinds of non-major ritual actions, the ārād-upakārakas and the sannipātyopakārakas, or the direct and aggregated helpers. A third important Mīmāṃsā principle which he also used with profit, but in conjunction with the aforementioned two and, thus, very differently than other contemporary Vedāntins, was the idea of trans-instrumentalization or repurposing of ritual and other āśrama practices for the needs of liberation. Reading Śaṅkara through the lens of the account that I will present has the benefit of seeing coherence in his system, particularly in his attitude toward ritual that I marked as puzzling in the introduction to this part of the dissertation.

Early Advaitins have mapped the path to liberation in various degrees of detail. Most systematic in this was Sureśvara, whose scheme in the Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi 1.52 runs as follows: performance of ritual and āśrama practices (nitya-karma) → acquisition of merit (dharmotpatti) → destruction of bad karma (pāpa-hāni) → purity of mind (citta-śuddhi) → understanding the nature of bondage (saṃsāra-yāthāmyāvabodha) → dispassion (vairāgya) → desire for liberation (mumukṣutva) → searching for a means (tad-upāya-paryeṣaṇam) → practice of Yoga (yogābhyāsa), which his commentator Jñānottama rightly glosses as the practice of the three methods of śravaṇa, manana and nididhyāsana, but which most certainly involved the Yogic practices of yama-niyama as well → inclination of the mind toward the inner Self (cittasya pratyak-pravaṇatā) → full understanding of the identity statements (tat tvam asy-ādi-vākyārtha-parijñāna) → destruction of ignorance (avidyoccheda) → remaining as the Self (svātmany avasthāna). Sureśvara developed this scheme to show how ritual becomes a means of liberation “mediately,” through a succession in which every result becomes a means for another result and culminates vicariously in the ultimate attainment, exactly like Kumārila’s doctrine of how the understanding of the Veda or the threshing of the rice culminate in heaven mediately.

Śaṅkara also offered an itinerary to liberation, which was, however, organized on important juncture points. In Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bhagavad-Gītā 5.12, he says that one attains liberation through four successive stages: purity of existence (sattva-śuddhi); acquisition of knowledge (jñāna-prāpti); renunciation of all action (sarva-karma-sannyāsa); and steadfastness in knowledge (jñāna-niṣṭhā).¹ We will take these schemes as orientation points, but I will work out the path to liberation by looking at Śaṅkara’s wider corpus and by ascertaining what the stated juncture points involve. Along the way, I will also address points from the competing theories of liberation that still need addressing.