[Advaita-l] Sankara and Eckhart - By TMP Mahadevan

[Divya Shivashankar]

Sankara and Eckhart - By TMP Mahadevan

Part 1

Time and territory make no difference to the teachings of the Masterminds.
The distinction of East and West has no relevance to "Perennial
Philosophy". Great thoughts consitute the legacy of the entire mankind. No
matter when a sage or saint lived, or where, his message has universal
import. This truth may be exemplified by comparing two of the world's
greatest teachers - Acharya Shankara and Meister Eckhart. Sankara lived in
India, belonged to the Upanishadic tradition, and taught Advaita which, he
was convinced, was the culmination of all philosophical thought and
spiritual aspiration. Eckhart was born in Germany in the thirteenth
century, belonged to the Dominican Order of monks, taught and wrote his
sermons and works as a Prior or Provincial of the Catholic Church. Although
the Indian Acharya, Sankara, and the German Meister, Eckhart, lived and
flourished in different ages and hemispheres, they are "contemporaries" to
use Rudolf Otto's expression;for, as he explains, "contemporaries in the
deeper sense are not those who happen to be born in the same decade, bu
those who stand at corresponding points in the parallel development of
their environments."

There is close similarity between the two teachers in their metaphysical
teachings. According to both, the Ultimate Reality is the non-dual Spirit.
Brahman, for the Advaita of Shankara, is one only, without a second,
ekameva adviteeyam; without parts and without multiplicity, without any
distinctions and differences, nirgunam, nirvisesham. For Eckhart also, the
pure "Godhead" is Being though and through and nothing other than Being,
without any addition and qualification. Reality, in fact, is beyond the
reach of words, for the normal use of words is to distinguish and to
differentiate. "Wouldst thou be perfecct, do not yelp about, God" says
Eckhart. Citing an Upanishadic text, Sankara declares, "This Atman is
peaceful, quiet", santo yam atma.

Both the Masters contrast the Godhead with God, Brahman with Ishvara. The
supra-personal Godhead is above God and is the round thereof. In the pure
Godhead, there is transcendence of subject and object, knower and known.
Referring to the conception of the Godhead, the One, the Absolute, in
Eckhart, the American Philosopher, Josiah Royce, says that it is a old
conception, much older than the Neo-Platonic. "It is almost identical", he
goes on to observe, with the conception of the Absolute Self or Atman of
the earliest Hindu speculation. But Eckhart, Knowing nothing, of course, of
the remoter sources or counterparts of his conception, and himself learning
it in the main from Dionysius discovers the everlastingly fresh and
convincing verification of it in his own religious life."

Just as the two Masters agree in their conception of the Godhead, they
agree also in regard to the idea of God. Critics of Shankara wrongly make
him on to be a non-theist, it not an atheist, even as the Churchmen branded
Eckhart as a pantheist. The truth, however, is that both are theists.
Simply because, according to Shankara, the knowledge of the personal
Ishvara is lower knowledge, aparaa vidyaa, it does not mean that this
knowledge belongs to the region of error, avidyaa. Saguna brahman is not a
brahman different from the nirgunaa. Ishvara is brahman as the world
ground. He is the efficient as "well as the material cause of the world.
Shankara allows of no second beside God as the world cause. As Otto
correctly understands, "The nirguna Brahman is not exclusive opposite of
the saguna brahman, but it is superlative and a development of the
tendencies which lead to the saguna brahman itself." Only, while Otto uses
the term samucchaya (summing up) to describe Shankara's method of relating
the saguna and the nirguna brahman, we would prefer the expression
samanvaya (harmony).

To be continued...