Freedom Through Inner Renunciation: Sankara's Philosophy in a New Light.

• Author: Taber, John A.
• Position: Reviews of Books - Book Review

Freedom Through Inner Renunciation: Sankara's Philosophy in a New Light. By ROGER MARCAURELLE. Albany: STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS, 2000. Pp. xvii + 269. $19.95 (paper).

A widespread interpretation of Sankara's Advaita Vedanta holds that Sankara considered the renunciation of all ritual duties and social obligations indispensable for the realization of self-knowledge. Numerous passages from his works support this interpretation: moreover, certain prominent Advaita teachers after Sankara insist upon it. It is certainly prevalent among Neo-Hindu and European interpreters, and has even been pronounced as official doctrine by modern Sankaracaryas. Nevertheless, this view stands in prima facie conflict with certain other statements Sankara makes. He argues explicitly at Brahmasutrabhasya (BSBh) 3.4.36-38, for example, that widowers and women are qualified for self-knowledge--indeed, he seems to say there that anyone who desires it is qualified. Women, however, are not eligible to undertake formal sannyasa, which according to Sankara is reserved for Brahmin men. On the other hand, he acknowledges that householders such as Janaka attained self-knowledge and liberation. Thus, the relinquishing of rites, essential to renunciation, cannot be a prerequisite. And, despite numerous passages where he stresses that the combination of knowledge and action--jnanakarmasamuccaya--is not the means of liberation, Sankara allows, in his Bhagavad Gita commentary, that Janaka and others attained liberation somehow "through action" (BhGiBh 3.20); in general, he embraces the karmayoga propounded in the Gita as a valid path. Finally, at BSBh 3.4.26 he argues that prescribed rites are, after all, somehow a means of self-knowledge!

What is one to make of these apparent inconsistencies? Are Sankara's writings too jumbled, too "unsystematic" (Hacker's charge)--consisting, as they do, mainly of commentaries on a by no means homogeneous corpus of scripture--for anyone to make sense of them? It is Marcaurelle's aim to show us that one indeed can, Sankara, he argues, presents a consistent, yet complex and nuanced, theory of the relationship of renunciation to self-knowledge in his writings, one which few, if any, scholars have comprehended to date. In the process, Marcaurelle offers an accurate and precise picture of Sankara's entire Erlosungslehre--an important contribution to Sankara studies.

The results of Marcaurelle's painstaking investigation can be stated succinctly: Sankara means at least three distinct things by "renunciation"--expressed by such terms as sannyasa, tyaga, nivrtti, uparati, etc.--in his works: (1) the physical renunciation that consists in a monastic or mendicant existence, which is prescribed for Brahmins who are seekers-of-liberation; (2) the cessation of the internal sense of agency that is part and parcel of self-knowledge, for the latter consists in realizing oneself to be Brahman, which is without activity and universal; (3) the spontaneous withdrawal from active life that is said to ensue for many upon the achievement of enlightenment, for one realizes that "what was to be done has been accomplished."

The first type is emphasized by Sankara often in opposition to those (mainly, Mimamsakas) who held either that liberation results from the performance of rites, or else at least that the neglect of obligatory duties would stand in the way of attaining liberation, and that the renunciation of ritual duties is always forbidden. By contrast, Sankara points out that scripture does in fact prescribe...