3. The Role of Ritual and Vividiṣā

Kumārila’s first account promoted the obligatory rituals as the direct causal factor in the attainment of liberation. Ritual had to prevent the creation of future bad karma that would occur through non-performance, and after the karmic stock had been exhausted through experience, one would be automatically liberated. In the Bṛhat-Ṭīkā, the obligatory rituals were given even a more prominent role: they would not only prevent, but also exhaust some present bad karma, and thus speed up the process.

Śaṅkara, as we saw in the previous chapter, rejected this account, arguing that ritual as a form of action was predicated on ignorance and desire—action was the third in line among the individuation factors. I said that Kumārila’s account presupposed that ignorance and desire had already ceased through the discriminative knowledge of the Self, but for Advaitins that just could not be the case: if ignorance had ceased, so would have agency. Sureśvara’s causal chain of saṃsāra was particularly explicit about the place of any form of action, ritual included. The human condition was that of suffering, which was consequent on embodiment. The body was a result of good and bad karma, which was a result of deeds prohibited and enjoined in scripture.

Action was predicated on attachment and aversion—the staple forms of desire—which were false ideas of what was pleasant and unpleasant. Such ideas had root in the uncritical acceptance of duality. At the bottom of this was the lack of understanding of the self-evident non-dual Self. Action that is not prompted by desire was just not possible. By performing the so-called obligatory rituals, one at the least hopes to attain the pleasant and avoid the unpleasant, and these are intrinsically related to rāga and dveṣa.^[1]

Śaṅkara, further, rejected Kumārila’s claim that the failure to perform the nitya-naimittika rituals would create bad karma, pratyavāya. He argued that non-performance was a form of absence, nonexistence or abhāva, and that as such it could not create positive effects.^[2] However, he took a shine to Kumārila’s claim that the so-called obligatory ritual could exhaust accumulated bad karma.^[3] To be sure, there was nothing obligatory about these rituals, and they were not really niṣkāma or performed without any expectations, but they had the good characteristic of being bound to the general good that a Vedic ritual can bring, namely heaven. They were not explicitly tied to specific desires, such as for cattle or virility, and so they could be repurposed through a Vedic fiat and a fitting desire on the part of the performer.

We have already seen this repurposing procedure in Kumārila’s second account, with the knowledge of the Self, and in the Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa, with ritual. I called it trans-instrumentalization. With Śaṅkara’s characteristic eloquence and clarity, this trans-instrumentalization comes into sharp focus. Ritual that is enriched with two elements—the Upaniṣadic meditations and the absence of interest in the objects that ritual otherwise brings, abhisandhi—produces a special effect, different from its common results, just as poison that otherwise causes death can be a cure when accompanied by a charm, or as thick sour milk that causes fever can have calming effect when sugar is mixed in it.^[4] A third element is mentioned additionally in the BGBh, and that is dedication of all action to the Lord.^[5] This special effect of ritual performed not for heaven but as a way of worship of the Lord is purification of one’s existence, called variously sattva-śuddhi, ātma-saṃskāra, etc. This procedure also changes the type of ritual as action, and of the result that ritual brings.

Ritual does not bring adṛṣṭa results, something necessarily experienced in a future life, but dṛṣṭa, results that are palpable here and now; it becomes a form of saṃskṛti, one of the four sannipātyopakārakas:

And, I just said that actions are in the domain of one who does not know. For, actions of the type of production, obtainment, transformation, and refinement/purification are in the domain of ignorance. That is why I said that actions become a means of knowledge though purification of the Self.^[6]

Śaṅkara will not call ritual a sannipātyopakāraka for a different reason, however, as we will see by the end of the chapter. Let us note here that Śaṅkara expected those who are intent on liberation to take their ritual “with cream and sugar.”

Such purification of existence or refinement of the Self consists in the removal of psychological faults that result from bad karma and that block the knowledge of the Self. In short, performance of ritual leads to what Śaṅkara calls the arising of knowledge, jñānotpatti or vidyotpatti. And, because of this, such obligatory ritual is properly a means of liberation.^[7] We need to be mindful of several things in this regard, however, and we need to consider what this arising of knowledge is.

The performance of ritual, consisting mostly of the daily Agnihotra, is now just one of the actions that are pertinent to the members of the varṇāśrama social system. It is important to bear this in mind: when talking about karma, Śaṅkara commonly has ritual in mind, but ritual is just one of several possible practices a participant in the varṇāśrama would engage in, and it is pertinent only for householders.

Let us pay some attention to the following passage from the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad:

–If that is the case, then the other āśramas are irrelevant, since the arising of knowledge is caused by action [through removing the hindrances] and actions are enjoined for householders only, from which fact it follows that there can be only one āśrama. Thus, the statements that Agnihotra should be performed as long as one lives are all the more apposite.–No, because actions are many. It is not that only Agnihotra and the like are actions. There are actions that are associated with the other āśramas such as chastity, austerity, truthfulness, calmness, self-control, non-violence, etc., as well as actions that are characterized by concentration, meditation, etc., that are the best for the arising of knowledge, because they are unadulterated.^[8]

The nitya-karmas are now not the daily rituals that every Vedic man should perform, but whatever the members of the individual āśramas do. Other practices are, in fact, better than disinterested ritual, because of being “unadulterated,” “unmixed.” Ānandagiri glosses this with “because they are not mixed with violence and the like,” obviously alluding to ritual slaughter.^[9] This is well-corroborated in Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, where Śaṅkara offers a similar reasoning and claims that the obligatory actions of those who have gone forth are better suited for the rising of knowledge than ritual, which is mixed with violence, attachment, aversion, etc. Let us remember the dual nature of ritual: it is commonly associated with desire, wealth, etc., and only exceptionally with the arising of knowledge. Thus, the arising of knowledge—and what that is we will discuss shortly—may happen through any of the obligatory practices of the respective āśramas, so long they are scriptural, in addition to some factors that are not even related to the āśrama system, such as the grace of the Lord (īśvara-prasāda).

Śaṅkara is not always clear whether all the obligatory practices of the respective āśramas give rise to knowledge specifically through depleting the bad karmic stock. In the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad, for instance, he says that there is no such rule that knowledge arises just from the exhaustion of bad karma and not from practices such as non-violence, chastity, austerity, meditation, as well as from the grace of the Lord. All these are, in any case, only helpers to the triple Vedāntic process of hearing, thinking and meditation.^[10] In the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22, on the other hand, the most important comment on this matter, purity of existence that comes from the depletion of bad karma is associated specifically with the obligatory practices of the three āśramas other than those who have gone forth, namely the recitation of the Veda, sacrifice, charity, and austerity. In the path to liberation, such purity of existence is an important, threshold step, and one of the cardinal points in Śaṅkara’s soteriology.^[11] We may, thus, surmise that the obligatory āśrama practices occasion the arising of knowledge through engendering purity of existence first, while the practices of those that have gone forth, as well as factors such as the grace of the Lord, do so directly.^[12]

That these ritual and other āśrama practices give rise to knowledge of the Self can also be formulated in the strict terms of Vedic theology. The two key passages in this regard are already known to us from the Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa: they are Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22 and 23, and particularly significant is what Śaṅkara has to say about them under Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa 3.4.26-7. The first passage said that Brahmins seek to know (vividiṣanti) the great Self through recitation of the Veda, sacrifice, charity, and austerity.

Once they know the Self, they become sages and go forth as renunciants desiring that Self.^[13] For Śaṅkara, the statement presents two consecutive processes. The first is the striving after knowing the Self, vividiṣā, and that striving proceeds by performance of the āśrama practices. These are now canonized as the daily recitation of the Veda, sacrifices, charity, and austerity, to which Śaṅkara adds chastity.^[14]

This list, now, corresponds fully to Chāndogya Upaniṣad 2.23.1:

There are three types of persons whose torso is the Law (dharma).
The first is one who pursues sacrifice, vedic recitation, and gift-giving.
The second is one who is devoted solely to austerity.
The third is a celibate student of the Veda living at his teacher's house—that is,
a student who settles himself permanently at his teacher's house.
All these gain worlds earned by merit.
A person who is steadfast in brahman reaches immortality.^[15]

There are, then, five āśrama practices listed here, and from the comment on the cited passages (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 2.23.1) we can relate them to the respective āśramas:

(1) Chastity or brahmacarya for the student who lives with his teacher his whole life. Śaṅkara is clear that this does not include the regular student life, after which one must make the choice of an āśrama as a vocation, as Olivelle has shown, but for the life-long student whose vocation is to serve the teacher;^[16]

(2) Sacrifice or yajña, consisting primarily of the daily Agnihotra; charity or dāna; and Vedic recitation or adhyāyana for the householder;

(3) Austerity or tapas for an ascetic (tāpasa) or a mendicant (parivrāṭ). The mendicant is, again, one who has made such vocational choice, to be distinguished from another category of mendicant whom we will soon see. The vocation consists in observing vows such as the cāndrāyaṇa fast.

All these āśrama practices eventually lead to the arising of knowledge, as we have seen, if they are not performed for other gain; that is, if they are repurposed. Otherwise, they all normally bring some form of good karma or puṇya that belongs to the sphere of promotion.^[17]

Now, there is nothing inherently or naturally prophylactic about these practices. They are not like acetone for nail polish that removes stains just because such is its constitution or the way it reacts with other substances: we saw that nitya-naimittika-karma was generally for heaven. Rather, there is an injunction in the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad passage of the utpatti/apūrva type, which, as we will remember from the Second Chapter, introduces a ritual undertaking for a specific purpose by disclosing a causal relation that is not knowable except from a Vedic statement. These actions are for knowing the Self just because the Upaniṣad says so. To spell this out as clearly as we can, the injunction relates the āśrama practices to the state of appearance of knowledge of the Self as means to a result, just as an injunction for, say, Darśa-pūrṇamāsa relates the sacrifice to the appearance of heaven as means to a result. The practices of the āśramas bring about vidyotpatti because there is an utpatti-vākya, an originative injunction to that effect. Performance of ritual thus becomes the starting point in the pursuit of liberation. The injunction, of course, informs: it does not command.^[18]

And then, there comes a point where such knowledge of the Self has arisen, one has become an ātma-vit, and the process is no longer vividiṣā. The absolutive in Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22 marks that break clearly, etaṃ taṃ viditvā, and introduces something new. This new thing is that one desires the Self and goes forth as a renunciant. This renunciant is different from the vocational renunciant. He corresponds to the brahma-saṃstha from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, one who is steadfast in Brahman, and Śaṅkara clearly distinguishes him from the ordinary mendicant whose vocation is to do rites of austerity.^[19]

In other words, Śaṅkara thinks that there comes a point, the arising of knowledge, where one gives up the āśrama practices that have made one a knower of the Self.^[20]

–But, is it not contradictory to say that knowledge depends on the āśrama practices and that it does not depend on them at the same time?–No, we say! Knowledge, once arisen, does not depend on anything for fruition. However, it does depend for its arising.^[21]

They have been useful for the arising of knowledge, but knowledge once arisen has a result of its own—Śaṅkara occasionally talks about the arising and the maturation of knowledge^[22] —for which it does not require the help of the āśrama practices. We still need to figure out just what this “arising of knowledge” is, but let us first introduce the relevant part from Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.23.

When the performance of the āśrama practices has borne fruit and one has become a knower of the Self, one further becomes śānta, calm, “withdrawn from the action of the senses”; dānta, self-controlled, “averse to the mental cravings”, uparata, tranquil, “free from all desires”; titikṣu, tolerant, “bearing with the dualities”; and samāhita, collected, “concentrated by disassociation from the spurs of the mind and the senses.”^[23] This is, in fact, the scriptural origin of the set of personal virtues—śama, dama, uparati, titikṣā and samādhāna—that we know from the Brahma-Sūtra attributed to Bādarāyaṇa as the virtues that all aspirants after liberation should cultivate. We have also seen them standing for the yama-niyama complex in the doctrine of prasaṅkhyāna-vāda, the counterpart of kriyā-yoga in Yogic meditation. Now, we need to note two important things about them in the context of the arising of knowledge.

First, while the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad passage says that one who had acquired these five has already become a knower of the Self—they appear as the result of the vividiṣā—they may also be practiced in lieu of the five āśrama practices, even when one does not have knowledge of the Self. Śaṅkara, in other words, treats them as āśrama practices like the other five, because they are the practices of those who are real knowers of Brahman. They have, thus, a dual nature of virtues that one has acquired, and of practices that one cultivates intentionally. Although they are pertinent to someone who already knows the Self, manifest after the arising of knowledge—and Śaṅkara says that they are “directly related to knowledge,” for reasons we will see under the next heading—they can serve as substitutes for the āśrama practices that are just for the arising of knowledge, which comes to mean that one can practice just them instead of ritual and the like, renounce even before knowledge had arisen, and make knowledge arise through them.^[24] If they are “related to knowledge,” why couldn’t they give rise to knowledge as well? They are, in fact, better suited to give rise to knowledge, being “unmixed” with violence and the like, as we have seen.

Second, like the prasaṅkhyāna-vādins, Śaṅkara takes these five as quite synonymous with the Yogic yama-niyama complex—commonly referring to them either as śama-damādi or yama-niyama, where the respective items evidently correspond and mean the same thing, sense and mind control—and wider in scope than just the five. To put this differently, from some important loci such as Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, and Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1:4-5, it is evident that the virtues/practices that are “related to knowledge” are more than just five—they include non-violence, absence of anger, truthfulness, etc.—but they are essentially reducible to practices of sense and mind control, and to virtues such as humility. Under Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, Śaṅkara says that the āśrama practices that are directly related to knowledge are, first, yama-pradhānāni, predominantly sense control in nature; second, humility, etc.; and, third, mental practices characterized by meditation, knowledge, and dispassion.^[25] A similar classification can be made based on Śaṅkara’s Upadeśa-Sāhasrī 1:4-5, where Śaṅkara says that the teacher should engage the student who evidently has no grasp of knowledge in yamas such as non-violence and absence of anger; in niyamas that are not opposed to knowledge, which would likely correspond to dhyāna, dhāraṇa, jñāna, vairāgya from Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15 and Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4; and in humility and similar virtues. Nevertheless, the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.23 text is important for theological purposes, because based on this text Śaṅkara claims that the śama-damādi complex is more proximate to knowledge than the practices of the common āśramas.

Let us summarize our findings. The path to liberation begins with the performance of the āśrama practices, along with Upaniṣadic meditation and no expectance of the results. This complex causes purity of the Self through exhausting bad karma, which removes the psychological faults and leads to the arising of knowledge. In theological terms, this is called vividiṣā and is based on Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22. Alternatively, there are virtues that commonly appear when knowledge had arisen, but which can also be practiced instead of ritual and the like, for the arising of knowledge. They are essentially sense and mind control in nature, and theologically are traced to Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.23. The common āśrama practices are “comparatively external” because of their relation to the “desire to know,” vividiṣā, whereas the later are “proximate” because of their relation to “knowledge” or vidyā itself.^[26] And, there is the grace of the Lord, which can make knowledge arise as well.

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

Sureśvara’s Naiṣkarmya-Siddhi Introduction; Sureśvara’s Vārttika on Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.6-8.

[2]:

See, for instance, Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.9: “The non-performance of the obligatory rituals is an absence, and therefore bad karma [as a result of that] does not make sense;” nityānāṃ ca akaraṇam abhāvaḥ tataḥ pratyavāyānupapattiḥ. In all fairness, we should say that Kumārila had anticipated this objection—or perhaps it was already explicitly made, possibly by the Vājasaneyins who, as we have seen, argued that one could take to the life of renunciation immediately after the study of the Veda, without ever lighting the fire, which was endorsed by Bādarāyaṇa against Jaimini—and replied to in the Kumārila’s Bṛhat-Ṭīkā:—
karmanāṃ prāg-abhāvo yo vihitākaraṇādiṣu |
na cānartha-karatvena vastutvān nāpanīyate ||
sva-kāle yad akurvaṃs tad karoty anyad acetanaḥ |
pratyavāyo ‘sya tenaiva nābhavena sa janyate ||—
“The anterior absence of ritual actions, when such rituals are enjoined but not performed, does not lose substantiality because of causing something undesired. The unthinking man who does not perform them when he should, does [at that time] something else, and his bad karma is a result of that, not of absence.” Verses 2 and 3 in Taber’s excerpt (Taber 2007:182).—Śaṅkara’s theory was that while not performing the obligatory rituals, one was creating fresh bad karma as a consequence of past accumulated bad karma, presumably by engaging in other things—thus following Kumārila’s polished argument—while the non-performance itself was just an indication that such thing was happening, “for otherwise there would be an origination of something positive out of mere absence, in contradiction to all reliable warrants;” ataḥ pūrvopacita-duritebhyaḥ prāpyamāṇāyāḥ pratyavāya-kriyāyā nityākaraṇaṃ lakṣaṇam iti śatṛ-pratyayasya nānupapattiḥ–akurvan vihitaṃ karma [Manu Smṛti 11.44] iti. anyathā hi abhāvād bhāvotpattir iti sarva-pramāṇa-vyākopa iti. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.9.—Another prominent argument against nitya-naimittika was that they could not fully exhaust the bad karmic stock either, since it was endless. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4.

[3]:

nityāny adhigatāni karmāṇi upātta-durita-kṣayārthāni. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad Introduction, VI.8.

[4]:

yat punar uktam, vidyā-mantra-śarkarādi-samyukta-viṣa-dadhy-ādi-van nityāni kāryāntaram ārabhanta iti–ārabhyatāṃ viśiṣṭaṃ kāryaṃ, tad-iṣṭatvād avirodhaḥ; nirabhisandheḥ karmaṇo vidyā-saṃyuktasya viśiṣṭa-kāryāntarārambhe na kaścid virodhaḥ … yeṣāṃ punar nityāni nirabhisandhīny ātma-saṃskārārthāni teṣāṃ jñānotpattyarthāni tāni. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 3.3.1, IX.391, 393. See also Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22.

[5]:

Called variously īśvarārpaṇa, īśvara-samarpaṇa, īśvarārādhana, īśvarārtham karma etc., and omnipresent in the text.

[6]:

karmaṇāṃ ca avidvad-viṣayatvam avocāma; avidyā-viṣaye ca utpaty-āpti-vikāra-saṃskārthāni karmāṇīty ataḥ–ātma-saṃskāra-dvaireṇa ātma-jñāna-sādhanatvam api karmaṇām avocāma–yajñādibhir vividaṣantīti. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, IX.676.

[7]:

evaṃ kāmya-varjitaṃ nityaṃ karma-jātaṃ sarvam ātma-jñānotpatti-dvāreṇa mokṣa-sādhanatvaṃ pratipadyate. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22, IX.646.

[8]:

evaṃ tarhi āśramāntarānupapattiḥ, karma-nimittatvād vidyotpatteḥ. gṛhasthasyaiva vihitāni karmāṇīty aikāśramyam eva. ataś ca yāvaj jīvādi-śrutayaḥ anukūlatarāḥ syuḥ. na; karmānekatvāt. na hy agnihotrādīny eva karmāṇi; brahmacaryaṃ tapaḥ satya-vacanaṃ śamaḥ damaḥ ahiṃsā ity-evam-ādīny api karmāṇi itarāśrama-prasiddhāni vidyotpattau sādhakatamāny asaṅkīrṇā vidyante dhyāna-dhāraṇādi-lakṣaṇāni ca. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4, VI.51-2.

[9]:

asaṅkīrṇatvād hiṃsādy-amiśritatvād ity arthaḥ. Ānandagiri on Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4, p.35.

[10]:

na; niyamābhāvāt. na hi, pratibandha-kṣayād eva vidyotpadyate, na tv īśvara-prasāda-tapo-dhyānādy-anuṣṭhānāt iti niyamo 'sti; ahiṃsā-brahmacaryādīnāṃ ca vidyāṃ praty upakārakatvāt, sākṣād eva ca kāraṇatvāc chravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsanādīnām. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4, VI.56.

[11]:

His thinking in this regard was most likely shaped by the Bhagavad-Gītā, specifically 18.5-6, which says that sacrifice, charity, and austerity should never be renounced, as they purify man, but should be performed with disregard for their result. 5.11 is also relevant, introducing the term ātma-śuddhi, and saying that yogis perform action with body, mind, words, and purified senses, but without attachment. The term sattva-śuddhi or purity of existence was also likely taken from sattva-saṃśuddhi in 16.1, although it appears also in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad 7.26.2

[12]:

Bradley Malkovsky has written a full book and an article (2000a, 2001) on the role of divine grace in Śaṅkara’s Vedānta, but other than pointing out that there is such a thing, and a prominent one, in Śaṅkara’s system, his work has little value for understanding the precise role of such divine grace. This is largely because of failing to comprehend that the arising of knowledge is relatively an early threshold in Śaṅkara’s soteriology, and not what directly brings down avidyā. In terms of strict soteriological contribution, the role of divine grace is exercised before one can begin engaging in brahma-vidyā.

[13]:

tam etaṃ vedānuvacanena brāhmaṇā vividiṣanti yajñena dānena tapasānāśakena. etam eva viditvā munir bhavati | etam eva pravrājino lokam icchantaḥ pravrajanti. The pronouns refer to “sa vā eṣa mahān aja ātmā yo 'yaṃ vijñānamayaḥ prāṇeṣu” in the beginning of the passage.

[14]:

Under Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22, Śaṅkara reads anāśakena as an adjective for tapasā, not a fifth independent action. That is, since tapas can refer to bodily mortification of any kind and anāśaka to starving that ultimately ends in death, the second should be read as an adjective of the first to give the meaning of not enjoying the objects of desire, kāmānāśana. In the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.26, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 8.5.1 is quoted to the effect that chastity is equivalent to sacrifice.

[15]:

Translation Olivelle 1998:197.

[16]:

Olivelle 1993.

[17]:

From the BGBh, it appears that the so-called smārta practices or the duties of the respective classes from the Dharma-Śāstras can be added to this class.

[18]:

Cf. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.27, III.739: “–But, I said that we do not see an injunction in the text ‘they aspire to know through sacrifice etc.’ [Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.4.22].–You surely did say that. Nevertheless, because the relation is unprecedented, an injunction should be postulated. For, this relation of the desire to know to sacrifice and the other practices does not obtain before the statement, by which fact [of obtaining otherwise] it could be a restatement.” nanu uktam—yajñādibhir vividiṣantīty atra na vidhir upalabhyata iti—satyam uktam; tathāpi tu apūrvatvāt saṃyogasya vidhiḥ parikalpyate; na hi ayaṃ yajñādīnāṃ vividiṣā-saṃyogaḥ pūrvaṃ prāptaḥ, yenānūdyeta.

[19]:

tapa eva dvitīyas tapa iti kṛcchra-cāndrāyaṇādi tadvāṃs tāpasaḥ parivrāḍ vā na brahma-saṃstha āśrama-dharma-mātra-saṃsthaḥ; brahma-saṃsthasya tv amṛtatva-śravaṇāt. Chāndogya Upaniṣad 2.23.1.

[20]:

kiṃ caivam evātmānaṃ svaṃ lokam icchantaḥ prārthayantaḥ pravrājinaḥ pravrajana-śīlāḥ pravrajanti prakarṣeṇa vrajanti sarvāṇi karmāṇi saṃnyasyantīty arthaḥ. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.22, IX.647.

[21]:

nanu viruddham idaṃ vacanam—apekṣate ca āśrama-karmāṇi vidyā, nāpekṣate ceti. neti brūmaḥ; utpannā hi vidyā phala-siddhiṃ prati na kiṃcid anyad apekṣate, utpattiṃ prati tu apekṣate. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.26, III.737.

[22]:

For instance, in the Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Taittirīya Upaniṣad 1.11.4.

[23]:

Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.2.23: tasmād evaṃvic chānto dānta uparatas titikṣuḥ samāhito bhūtvātmany evātmānaṃ paśyati. From the commentary: tasmād evaṃ-vic chānto bāhyendriya-vyāpārata upaśāntas tathā dānto 'ntaḥ-karaṇa-tṛṣṇāto nivṛtta uparataḥ sarvaiṣaṇā-vinirmuktaḥ saṃnyāsī titikṣur dvandva-sahiṣṇuḥ samāhita indriyāntaḥ-karaṇācalana-rūpād vyāvṛtyaikāgrya-rūpeṇa samāhito bhūtvā. Ibid.

[24]:

tasmāt viraktasya mumukṣoḥ vināpi jñānena brahmacaryād eva pravrajed ityādi upapannam. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, IX.677.

[25]:

atha evaṃ sati avidvad-viṣayāṇām āśrama-karmaṇāṃ balābala-vicāraṇāyām, ātma-jñānotpādanaṃ prati yama-pradhānānām amānitvādīnāṃ mānasānāṃ ca dhyāna-jñāna-vairāgyādīnāṃ saṇnipatyopakāratvam; hiṃsā-rāga-dveṣādi-bāhulyād bahu-kliṣṭa-karma-vimiśritā itare–iti. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Bṛhad-Āraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15, IX.676.

[26]:

tasmād yajñādīni śama-damādīni ca yathāśramaṃ sarvāṇy eva āśrama-karmāṇi vidyotpattāv apekṣitavyāni. tatrāpi evaṃ-vit iti vidyā-saṃyogāt pratyāsannāni vidyā-sādhanāni śamādīni, vividiṣā-saṃyogāt tu bāhyatarāṇi yajñādīnīti vivektavyam. Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya on the Brahma-Sūtra 3.4.27, III.739-40.