Satchidanandendra Saraswati


Sri Satchidanandendra Saraswati Swamiji was monk-scholar in the Shankara Advaita tradition. He is the founder of the Adhyatma Prakasha Karyalaya in Holenarasipura, Hassan district, Karnataka, India. He was a great Vedantin of Advaita Vedanta.

Life

Swami Satchidanandendra Saraswati is an exponents of traditional Advaita Vedanta in modern times. Born as Sri Yellambalase Subbarao, he worked as a school teacher in the Indian state of Karnataka. He gave lectures and wrote articles on the Vedanta in English, Kannada and Sanskrit. His books, articles and lectures have made an impact on disciples, pandits, sadhus and scholars in the field of classical Indian philosophy. Satchidanandendra Swamiji authored some 200 works, and he dedicated his life to teaching about the pure Advaita Vedanta philosophy of Shankara.
Satchidanandendra Saraswati was a philosopher who dedicated all his life for the Vedanta sadhana and attained Brahma-jnana. He was known as a Jivanmukta sage. He was an example of a Sanskrit saying, "One should spend one's life until sleep and until death only in Vedantic contemplation".
Having grown up in an orthodox South Indian Brahmin family, young Y. Subbaraya Sharma became attached to Vedanta and Hindu philosophy. In 1910 he was initiated into the study of Shankara's scriptures by the Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Sringeri Peetham. He learnt Vedanta from Virupaksha Shastri and K.A. Krishnaswamy Iyer. Swami Satchidanandendra Saraswati soon became well known for having shown that the later Vedantic tradition had in fact deviated from the teachings of the classical acharyas Gaudapada, Shankara and Sureshvara. In 1920 he founded the organisation Adhyatma Prakasha Karyalaya, which is still very active today. He was initiated into sannyasa in 1948. As a sannyasi, Satchidanandendra Swamiji lived a very simple and secluded life at his small ashram in Holenarsipur.

Teachings

According to Satchidanandendra Saraswati, Shankara employed a method called Adhyaropa Apavada, in which a property is imposed on Atman to convince one of its existence, whereafter the imposition is removed to reveal the true nature of Atman as nondual and undefinable. For example, Atman, the real "I," is described as witness, giving "it" an attribute to separate it from non-self. Since this implies a duality between observer and observed, next the notion of "witness" is dropped, by showing that the Self cannot be seen and is beyond qualifications, and only that what is remains, without using any words:

Literary works of Satchidanandendra Saraswati

Books written in English

  • Adhyatma Yoga
  • Avasthatraya or The Unique Method of Vedanta
  • Collected Works of K. A. Krishnaswamy Iyer
  • Essays on Vedanta
  • How to Recognize the Method of Vedānta
  • Introductions
  • Intuition of Reality
  • ĪS'āvāsyōpanishad
  • Misconceptions About Śaṅkara
  • S'ankara's Sutra-Bhashya
  • S'uddha-S'āṅkara-Prakriyā-Bhāskara
  • Salient Features of Śaṅkara's Vedānta
  • Śaṅkara's Clarification of Certain Vedȧntic Concepts
  • The Basic Tenets of Śāṅkara Vedānta
  • The Method of the Vedanta. A Critical Account of the Advaita Tradition
  • The Heart of Sri Samkara
  • The Pristine Pure Advaita Philosophy of Ādi Śaṅkara
  • The Reality Beyond All Empirical Dealings
  • The Science of Being
  • The Unique Teaching of Shankara
  • The Upanishadic Approach to Reality
  • The Vision of Ātman

The Method of the Vedanta

In The Method of the Vedanta. A Critical Account of the Advaita Tradition, Satchidanandendra Saraswati gives a critical account of the Advaita tradition. Satchidanandendra Saraswati argues that most of post-Shankara Advaita vedanta actually deviates from Shankara, and that only his student Suresvara, who's had little influence, represents Shankara correctly. In this view, Shankara's influential student Padmapada misunderstood Shankara, while his views were maintained by the Suresvara school. According to Satchidanandendra Sarasvati, "almost all the later Advaitins were influenced by Mandana Misra and Bhaskara."