Sankara: From Temporal To Eternal
Among path finders to the Eternal, Sankara stands out. He spent his entire life, short though it was, in urging his felowmen to move from the ephemeral to the abiding, from the fleeting panorama of temporal life to the spiritual felicity of life eternal. So far as earthly living and its demands go, there is no distinction between humans and animals.Sankara explains that there is no difference in the behaviour of humans and animals so long as the moving factors are appetition and aversion, and activity consists in a going forth towards external sense objects. However, man is endowed with a certain other characteristic which, if properly cultivated, will make for a distinction. Sankara defines it as the eligibility for karma, willed action and knowledge. He cites a scriptural text: “The Atman is expanded only in man. He, indeed, is endowed with intelligence. He gives expression to what is known. He sees what is known. He knows what is to come. He knows the visible and invisible worlds. He perceives the immortal through the mortal; thus is he endowed. But with the other animals, eating and drinking constitutes their knowledge.”
t is because of this special ability to discriminate and discern the truth that birth of a human being is said to be precious. It is in virtue of this endowment that man quests for the eternal, and eventually succeeds in gaining it.
Sankara sets forth the qualifications that would make one eligible for the quest eternal -- discrimination of the eternal from the non-eternal, non-attachment, having virtues like calmness, equanimity and a longing for liberation. All this only implies cultivating the right philosophical attitude. What blinds us is attachment to selfish enjoyments. The mind longs for them and so is unable to see the truth when it is in the grip of passion; it cannot understand even empirical truth, and so it goes without saying, says Sankara, that, the mind needs to be thoroughly cleansed before it can realise the truth of the inner Self.
The mind that has been freed of passions should be strengthened by cultivation of the cardinal virtues. With the right attitude and having gotten rid of defects, the mind must acquire whatever is excellent. Then the aspiration for release will firmly get established in the mind. This aspiration should not be confused with any passionate desire.
Explaining this point, Suresvara, a disciple of Sankara's, says that the longing for supreme happiness which is release, is not attachment; if this be attachment, then the wish for solicitude and so on, could also be thought to be so, which is not the case.
Release which is regarded as the highest value is the same as the Supreme Self which is the sole reality, according to Sankara's vedanta known as Advaita. It is the reality that is referred to in the Upanishads by such terms as Atman and Brahmn. One may deny everything else, but not the Self, for it is the very nature of one who denies. In the empirical world it appears as limited and as many. As conditioned by the psychological complex called the body and by things that constitute the world, it is spoken of as anubhava or experience. Courtesy: Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham.