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

[সপ্ত Rishi]

There is a bit of conceptual problem in the above essay, eckhart is known
to have derived his leanings from neo pagan thoughts, unlike that our
bhagavan bhashyakara from Upanishad.

But the whole Non-dual thing has a different meaning there too, since they
see their "God" as the "only" divinity.

Therefore Non-dual in status of that deity.

Where here the very fabric of reality itself is Non- Dual and that can only
be known through a Pramana like Vedam.

And nothing else.

On Sun, 9 Mar 2025, 14:03 Divya Shivashankar, <divyameedin at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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...
>
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