Advaita Vedanta
Advaita Vedanta is a Hindu tradition of Brahmanical textual exegesis and philosophy, and a monastic institutional tradition nominally related to the Daśanāmi Sampradaya and propagated by the Smarta tradition. Its core tenet is that jivatman, the individual experiencing self, is ultimately pure awareness mistakenly identified with the body and its senses and with thought-constructs, and non-different from Ātman/Brahman or sat, the highest Self or Real. The term Advaita literally means "not-two" or "one without a second," which means that only Brahman, 'the one', is ultimately real while prapanca, 'the second', 'the world' or the multiplicity of thought-constructs, is not fully real. It is commonly rendered as "nonduality," and popularly interpreted as meaning that Atman is non-different from Brahman, and often equated with monism.
Advaita Vedanta is a Hindu sādhanā, a path of spiritual discipline and experience. It states that moksha is attained when knowledge of Brahman is attained, recognizing the illusoriness of the phenomenal world and disidentifying from body-mind and the notion of 'doership', acquiring vidyā of one's true identity as Atman/Brahman, self-luminous awareness or Witness-consciousness. This knowledge is acquired through Upanishadic statements such as tat tvam asi, "that you are," which destroy the ignorance regarding one's true identity by revealing that Ātman is non-different from immortal Brahman.
The Advaita vedanta tradition modifies the Samkhya-dualism between Purusha and Prakriti as the two equal basic principles of existence. It proposes instead that Atman/Brahman alone is ultimately real and, though unchanging, is the cause and origin of the transient phenomenal world. In this view, the jivatman or individual self is a mere reflection or limitation of singular Ātman in a multitude of apparent individual bodies. It regards the material world as an illusory appearance or "an unreal manifestation of Brahman," the latter as proposed by the 13th century scholar Prakasatman of the Vivarana school.
Advaita Vedanta is often presented as an elite scholarly tradition belonging to the orthodox Hindu Vedānta tradition, emphasizing scholarly works written in Sanskrit; as such, it is an "iconic representation of Hindu religion and culture." Yet contemporary Advaita Vedanta is yogic Advaita, a medieval and modern syncretic tradition incorporating Yoga and other traditions, and producing works in vernacular. The earliest Advaita writings are the Sannyasa Upanishads, the Vākyapadīya, written by Bhartṛhari and the Māndūkya-kārikā written by Gauḍapāda. Gaudapada adapted philosophical concepts from Buddhism, giving them a Vedantic basis and interpretation. The Buddhist concepts were further Vedanticised by Adi Shankara, who is generally regarded as the most prominent exponent of the Advaita Vedānta tradition, though some of the most prominent Advaita-propositions come from other Advaitins, and his early influence has been questioned. Adi Shankara emphasized that, since Brahman is ever-present, Brahman-knowledge is immediate and requires no 'action' or 'doership', that is, striving and effort. Nevertheless, the Advaita tradition, as represented by Mandana Misra and the Bhamati school, also prescribes elaborate preparatory practice, including contemplation of mahavakyas, presenting a tension between sudden and gradual approaches which is also recognized in other spiritual disciplines and traditions.
Shankaracharya's prominence as the exemplary defender of traditional Hindu-values and spirituality started to take shape only centuries later, in the 14th century, with the ascent of Sringeri matha and its jagadguru Vidyaranya in the Vijayanagara Empire, While Adi Shankara did not embrace Yoga, the Advaita-tradition by then had accepted yogic samadhi as a means to still the mind and attain knowledge, explicitly incorporating elements from the yogic tradition and texts like the Yoga Vasistha and the Bhagavata Purana, culminating in Swami Vivekananda's full embrace and propagation of Yogic samadhi as an Advaita means of knowledge and liberation. In the 19th century, due to the influence of Vidyaranya's Sarvadarśanasaṅgraha, the importance of Advaita Vedānta was overemphasized by Western scholarship, and Advaita Vedānta came to be regarded as the paradigmatic example of Hindu spirituality, despite the numerical dominance of theistic Bhakti-oriented religiosity. In modern times, Advaita views appear in various Neo-Vedānta movements.
Etymology and nomenclature
Etymology
The word Advaita is a composite of two Sanskrit words:- Prefix "a-", meaning "non-"
- "Dvaita", which means 'duality' or 'dualism'.
As Gaudapada states, when the unreal is taken as real, people grasp to the unreal, which is samsara. By realizing one's true identity as Brahman, there is no more grasping, and the mind comes to rest.
In a popular sense, advaita is often expressed as the famous diction that Atman is Brahman, meaning that jivatman, the individual experiencing self, is ultimately pure awareness mistakenly identified with body and the senses, and non-different from Ātman/Brahman, the highest Self or Reality;; the knowledge of this true identity is liberating.
The word Vedānta is a composition of two Sanskrit words: The word Veda refers to the whole corpus of vedic texts, and the word "anta" means 'end'. From this, one meaning of Vedānta is "the end of the Vedas" or "the ultimate knowledge of the Vedas". Veda can also mean "knowledge" in general, so Vedānta can be taken to mean "the end, conclusion or finality of knowledge". Vedānta is one of six orthodox schools of Hindu philosophy.
Advaita Vedanta
While "a preferred terminology" for Upanisadic philosophy "in the early periods, before the time of Shankara" was Puruṣavāda, the Advaita Vedānta school has historically been referred to by various names, such as Advaita-vada, Abheda-darshana, Dvaita-vada-pratisedha, and Kevala-dvaita. It is also called māyāvāda by Vaishnava opponents, akin to Madhyamaka Buddhism, due to their insistence that phenomena ultimately lack an inherent essence or reality."Advaita" is from Sanskrit roots a, not; dvaita, "customarily translated as dual." As Advaita, it is usually translated as "not-two" or "one without a second", and most commonly as "nondualism", "nonduality" or "nondual," invoking the notion of a dichotomy. Fabian Volker, following Paul Hacker explains that dvaita does not mean "duality," but "the state in which a second is present," the second here being synonymous with prapanca, "conceptual proliferation," and with jagat, "the world." Advaita thus means that only Brahman, 'the one', is ultimately real, while the phenomenal world, or the conceptual multiplicity, 'the second', is not fully real. The term thus does not emphasize two instances, but the notion that the second instance is not fully real, and advaita is better translated as "that which has no second beside it" instead of "nonduality," denying multiplicity and the proliferation of concepts "that tend to obscure the true state of affairs."
According to Richard King, a professor of Buddhist and Asian studies, the term Advaita first occurs in a recognizably Vedantic context in the prose of Mandukya Upanishad. According to Frits Staal, a professor of philosophy specializing in Sanskrit and Vedic studies, the word Advaita itself is from the Vedic era, and the Vedic sage Yajnavalkya is credited to be the one who coined it. Stephen Phillips, a professor of philosophy and Asian studies, translates the Advaita containing verse excerpt in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, as "An ocean, a single seer without duality becomes he whose world is Brahman."
Advaita tradition
While the term "Advaita Vedanta" in a strict sense may refer to the scholastic tradition of textual exegesis established by Shankara and the monastic institutions, "advaita" in a broader sense may refer to a broad current of advaitic thought, which incorporates advaitic elements with yogic thought and practice and other strands of Indian religiosity, such as Kashmir Shaivism and the Nath tradition. The first connotation has also been called "Classical Advaita" and "doctrinal Advaita," and its presentation as such is due to mediaeval doxographies, the influence of Orientalist Indologists like Paul Deussen, and the Indian response to colonial influences, dubbed neo-Vedanta by Paul Hacker, who regarded it as a deviation from "traditional" Advaita Vedanta. Yet, post-Shankara Advaita Vedanta incorporated yogic elements, such as the Yoga Vasistha, and influenced other Indian traditions, and neo-Vedanta is based on this broader strand of Indian thought. This broader current of thought and practice has also been called "greater Advaita Vedanta," "vernacular advaita," and "experiential Advaita." It is this broader advaitic tradition which is commonly presented as "Advaita Vedanta," though the term "advaitic" may be more apt.Monism
The nondualism of Advaita Vedānta is often regarded as an idealist monism. According to King, Advaita Vedānta developed "to its ultimate extreme" the monistic ideas already present in the Upanishads. In contrast, states Milne, it is misleading to call Advaita Vedānta "monistic," since this confuses the "negation of difference" with "conflation into one." Advaita is a negative term, states Milne, which denotes the "negation of a difference," between subject and object, or between perceiver and perceived.According to Deutsch, Advaita Vedānta teaches monistic oneness, however without the multiplicity premise of alternate monism theories. According to Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Adi Shankara positively emphasizes "oneness" premise in his Brahma-sutra Bhasya 2.1.20, attributing it to all the Upanishads.
Nicholson states Advaita Vedānta contains realistic strands of thought, both in its oldest origins and in Shankara's writings.