2. The Self and the Nature of Liberation

Śaṅkara defined liberation in a couple of related ways, depending on whom he was arguing against, but his most persistent and final definition was that liberation is just remaining in the state of being the Self:

Therefore, liberation is remaining in one’s Self, [a state that follows] when ignorance that is the ground of desire and action has ceased.^[1]

For, attaining the world that is the Self is just remaining in one’s Self at the cessation of ignorance.^[2]

Liberation is the state of being the pure Self when the complex of the factors of individuation is removed. It comes about when the ground of individuation, ignorance or avidyā that produces the category of the individual Self, has been destroyed, at which point the other two factors that further give rise to the innumerable individual Selves—desire and action—fall off by themselves.

In this sense, liberation is synonymous with the Self or with Brahman, and its definition is identical with the definition of Brahman:

This one, on the other hand [as opposed to the permanently changing] is permanently changeless in the absolute sense, all-pervading like space, devoid of all transformation, ever content, partless, self-effulgent in nature. It is the state of being unembodied, called liberation, where good and bad karma along with their results, as well as the three periods of time, have no continuation.^[3]

Liberation is, in fact, most directly said to be Brahman: “For, in all Upaniṣadic texts liberation is ascertained as uniform. The state of liberation is, in fact, Brahman itself.”^[4]

However, because liberation happens when ignorance has ceased, logically if not temporally, it was also possible to define it in negative terms:

Liberation cannot be brought into being. For, it is nothing more than the destruction of bondage, and it is not producible. And, as we have just said, bondage is ignorance, and destroying ignorance by action is not possible.^[5]

The most sustained presentation of liberation in such negative terms is in the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 16 and 18. There bondage is defined as a cognitive error that consists in wrong superimposition, specifically the superimposition of the property of knowing to the intellect or buddhi in the manner of attributing the idea of a snake over a rope, and the failure to distinguish the intellect from the Self. Bondage is ignorance. Release happens when this cognitive error is undone. Such release does not constitute an attainment of a different state on the part of the Self; rather, it is a form of anamnesis that can only figuratively be ascribed to the Self. The Self is neither an agent nor a patient, and the whole talk of attaining liberation as a goal, of means to attaining that goal and the like, is figurative in any case.^[6] Liberation is a sādhya or prāpya like the other three attainments, but only in a manner of speaking. The witty Sureśvara says that it is like getting the necklace that has been on one’s neck all along, or escaping the demon that is one’s own shadow. Neither of the two are real attainment or avoidance, yet something does happen on both occasions.^[7] One has forgotten a true state of affairs—logically again, not temporally—and needs to be reminded. To get the necklace, one simply has to get it.

Defining liberation as the cessation of ignorance at knowing oneself as Brahman also meant promoting liberation as something that brings visible results, dṛṣṭa, that is, readily available and apparent, and not something one will experience in the hereafter, like heaven or brahma-loka. That knowledge had visible results was the accepted norm in Vedic theology, and the study of the Veda itself was commonly described as ending in visible results. Presenting liberation as dṛṣṭa had some significant theological consequences, since it immediately disqualifies the major forms of ritual action—the rituals as units—from being direct means to liberation. Rituals by hypothesis produce invisible, future results, and liberation is not of that kind. This was, in fact, one of the reasons why Advaita Vedānta stood so uncompromisingly by the problematic ideal of jīvan-mukti or liberation while living, and presented every attainment along the course as a visible result. That liberation is a visible result is often the unstated factor behind Śaṅkara’s claim that there are only four kinds of action—production, attainment, transformation, and refinement, the four sannipātyopakārakas—and that none of them can operate over the Self and bring about liberation. What he means is that only these types of ritual Vedic actions bring about visible results of the kind to which liberation belongs, not that Agnihotra or playing marbles are not action at all.^[8]

In terms of strict soteriological causality, however, the cessation of ignorance was the final cause of liberation, not what liberation as a state was, and this formulation is better understood as a causal explanation rather than a proper intensional definition. Śaṅkara resorts to this causal definition when arguing against fellow theologians who would like liberation to be a novel, future state of affairs, producible in the manner of heaven, or against other competing doctrines, when it is important to bring home the idea that liberation is just what happens when bondage, its opposite, is no more.^[9] It was, nevertheless, important to affirm, specifically against Kumārila, that liberation was a state, not a negative one that consists merely in absence of the cause of embodiment, but a positive state equivalent to the Self. It wasn’t another or a future state, but a present state of which one was not aware. The positive definition was important when arguing against Kumārila’s first account of liberation.

We will remember here that the negative account of liberation said that freedom from rebirth was like the absence of a broken pot: the pot had a history but no future, and its absence, though brought into being, was subsequently eternal. To put it differently, its absence had no history, but had future. This was a form of liberation that was not acceptable to Vedāntins in general, and to Advaitins in particular, because it smacked of asatkārya-vāda. The subsequent absence of the pot was just a figurative absence, because Being continued to be a positive remainder after the breaking of the pot. Being as a positive and unitary thing could assume distinguishing features, such as the shape of a pot and the action of a pot production, and then be separated from them, and the two states could respectively be described as coming into the being of a pot and its absence or destruction, but this was a form of vikalpa or mental construct. The important point, though, was that Being allowed such imagination to take place, whereas absence, a mere nothing, could assume no qualities or actions. It was absolutely non-relational. Properly speaking, there was no absolute future absence when the pot was broken. To define liberation, therefore, as absence of future embodiment—which was, we will remember, the key move on Kumārila’s part in the argument that liberation could not be enjoined as it does not admit of productive striving—was just not sound reasoning. Liberation was not absence: it was presence of the only thing that could be present, the Self.^[10]

This was an important move, because the pursuit of liberation was an action and a form of striving, and such striving had to be prompted by a desire for something positive. Śaṅkara could now present the pursuit of liberation as striving for the Self, on the part of an ātma-kāma or one with a sole desire for the positive Self. This Self, however, was not the satya-kāma, the Self that was the repository of all good desires. It was the Self all whose desires were fulfilled because it did not have any. It was Yājñavālkya’s Self. Because the Self did not have any desires, he who aspired just after that Self was eo ipso without the desires that were satisfied by ritual and similar means. One could at the same time have the desire for the Self, be prompted to action in the proper Vedic manner and with the adequate adhikāra, and be properly without desires as expected from an aspirant after liberation, simply because the Self did not have desires.^[11]

Let us mark these three final steps that are in a logical sequence as the consummation of the path to liberation: full knowledge of Brahman, causing the destruction of ignorance, causing the state of being the Self. That there was a temporal break between them is explicitly denied in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.4 with a most impressive arsenal of Upaniṣadic statements, but the sequence is affirmed consistently.^[12]

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

tasmād avidyā-kāma-karmopādāna-hetu-nivṛttau svātmany avasthānaṃ mokṣa iti. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.10.

[2]:

ātma-loka-prāptir hy avidyā-nivṛttau svātmany avasthānam eva. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22, IX.647.

[3]:

idaṃ tu pāramārthikaṃ kūṭastha-nityaṃ vyoma-vat sarva-vyāpi sarva-vikriyā-rahitaṃ nitya-tṛptaṃ niravayavaṃ svayaṃ-jyotiḥ-svabhāvam, yatra dharmādharmo saha kāryeṇa kāla-trayaṃ ca nopāvartete; tad etad aśarīratvaṃ mokṣākhyam. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.4, I.20.

[4]:

mukty-avasthā hi sarva-vedānteṣv eka-rūpaiva avadhāryate; brahmaiva hi mukty-avasthā. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.52. Cf. Warrier 1961:469-75; Nelson 1996:19-20.

[5]:

anārabhyatvān mokṣasya; bandha-nāśa eva hi mokṣaḥ, na kārya-bhūtaḥ; bandhanaṃ ca avidyety avocāma; avidyāyāś ca na karmaṇā nāśa upapadyate. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.3.1, IX.386.

[6]:

“Bondage is a confusion of the intellect, and liberation is destruction of this confusion,” buddher bhrāntir iṣyate | bandho mokṣaś ca tan-nāśaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 18.59—“The intellect, illuminated by the light of the sentient Self, thinks that it possesses sentience. That is its confusion. Because sentience is the nature of the Self, it is commonly applied to the intellect figuratively. This absence of discriminative knowledge is beginningless, and there is nothing more to transmigration than this. Liberation is the destruction of this error, it cannot be more than this.”—
bodhātma-jyotiṣā dīptā bodham ātmani manyate |
buddhir nānyo ‘sti boddheti seyaṃ bhrāntir hi dhī-gatā ||
bodhasyātma-svarūpatvān nityaṃ tatropacaryate |
aviveko ‘py anādyo ‘yaṃ saṃsāro nānya iṣyate ||
mokṣas tan-nāśa eva syān nānyathānupapattitaḥ ||—Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 16.60-62ab. See also Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 18.45-6, 107.

[7]:

Sureśvara’s Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi 1.31-4.

[8]:

See, for instance, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.3.1: “And, it is not possible that ignorance be destroyed by action. The operation of action extends over the sphere of the visible, for the domains of the operation of action are production, attainment, transformation, and refinement. There is no domain of action other than the faculty of production, attainment, transformation, and refinement, as is well-known in the world. And, liberation is none of these four categories. That is why I just said that it is obstructed by ignorance;” avidyāyāś ca na karmaṇā nāśa upapadyate, dṛṣṭa-viṣayatvāc ca karma-sāmarthyasya; utpatty-āpti-vikāra-saṃskārā hi karma-sāmarthyasya viṣayāḥ; utpādayituṃ prāpayituṃ vikartuṃ ca sāmarthyaṃ karmaṇaḥ, na ato vyatirikta-viṣayo 'sti karma-sāmarthyasya, loke 'prasiddhatvāt; na ca mokṣa eṣāṃ padārthānām anyatamaḥ; avidyā-mātra-vyavahita ity avocāma. Also, in detail in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 1.1.4.

[9]:

For this reason, Mayeda’s account of Śaṅkara’s understanding of liberation (2006b:73-5), that is, liberation just as the cessation of ignorance, is incomplete and imprecise, as it relies solely on the Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī and completely misses the numerous passages where Śaṅkara defines liberation as a state that ensues upon the cessation of ignorance.—Particularly problematic is the conclusion that “Śaṅkara's concept of final release is very similar to the Mahayana Buddhist view of nirvāṇa, characterized by Candrakīrti as 'being of the nature of destruction of all false assumptions' (sarvakalpanākṣayarūpa).” While this is procedurally true—liberation is achieved by undoing all concepts—to Śaṅkara’s mind it certainly was not true regarding liberation as a state.

[10]:

yad dhi naṣṭam, tad eva notpadyata iti pradhvaṃsābhāva-van nityo 'pi mokṣa ārabhya eveti cet—na, mokṣasya bhāva-rūpatvāt. pradhvaṃsābhāvo ‘py ārabhyata iti na sambhavati, abhāvasya viśeṣābhāvād vikalpa-mātram etat. bhāva-pratiyogī hy abhāvaḥ. yathā hy abhinno 'pi bhāvo ghaṭa-paṭādibhir viśeṣyate bhinna iva ghaṭa-bhāvaḥ paṭa-bhāva iti, evaṃ nirviśeṣo 'py abhāvaḥ kriyā-guṇa-yogād dravyādi-vad vikalpyate. na hy abhāva utpalādi-vad viśeṣaṇa-saha-bhāvī. viśeṣaṇavattve bhāva eva syāt. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.10.

[11]:

karma-hetuḥ kāmaḥ syāt, pravartakatvāt. āpta-kāmānāṃ hi kāmābhāve svātmany avasthānāt pravṛtty-anupapattiḥ. ātma-kāmatve cāptakāmatā. ātmā ca brahma. tad-vido hi para-prāptiṃ vakṣyati. ataḥ avidyā-nivṛttau svātmany avasthānaṃ para-prāptiḥ. Ibid, p.8.

[12]:

api ca brahma veda brahmaiva bhavati [Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.2.9], kṣīyante cāsya karmāṇi tasmin dṛṣṭe parāvare [Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.2.8], ānandaṃ brahmaṇo vidvān na bibheti kutaścana [Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 2.9], abhayaṃ vai janaka prāpto’si [Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.4], tad ātmānam evāvedāhaṃ brahmāsmīti, tasmāt tat sarvam abhavat [Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.4.10], tatra ko mohaḥ kaḥ śoka ekatvam anupaśyataḥ [Īśā Upaniṣad 7] ity evam-ādyāḥ śrutayo brahma-vidyānantaram eva mokṣaṃ darśayantyo madhye kāryāntaraṃ vārayanti. I.21.