Pages

Pages

Hinduism - Who Was Mandana Mishra?

 

Mandana Mishra (early 9th c.) Founder of the Bhamati school of Advaita Vedanta, who is said to have lived about the same time as Shankaracharya, the Advaita school's greatest figure.

The Advaita school adheres to the philosophical idea of monism, which claims that all things are essentially different manifestations of a single Ultimate Reality.

Despite the appearance of difference and variety, Advaita proponents say that reality is non-dual (advaita)—all things are nothing but the formless, unqualified Brahman (the greatest reality in the cosmos).

The assumption of variety, according to Advaitins, is a fundamental mental misunderstanding of the ultimate essence of things, a symptom of avidya.

Although sometimes translated as "ignorance," avidya is more accurately defined as a lack of actual insight that leads to karmic bonding, reincarnation (samsara), and pain.

Mandana proposes the vivarta ("illu sory manifestation") causal linkage to demonstrate how the unchanging Brahman is linked to the seen universe.

Superimposition (adhyasa) is a notion that describes how people project a faulty understanding onto the correct knowledge.

A piece of rope, for example, is mistaken for a snake.

Despite the fact that this judgment is incorrect, one is genuinely observing something real, in this example the rope, but "superimuting" a false identity on it, therefore "transforming" it into something it is not.

Human awareness, it is believed, starts with the existing reality (Brahman), which is already there, but superimposes something that is not (the judgment of a diverse world).

Mandana also disagreed with Shankaracharya on a number of matters, which caused difficulties for his subsequent disciples.

One of these judgements was that the source of ignorance was in the Self, since it was ludicrous to think of Brahman as ignorant; another was that there were several Selves, because the liberation of one person did not result in the liberation of others.

Mandana's remarks imply the presence of a common (though illusory) reality over which he felt compelled to pass judgment; he eventually dubbed it anirvachaniya—"that which cannot be named." 

Mandana defined two types of ignorance in his analysis: a primary "covering" that prevents one from seeing the truth and a "projective" ignorance in which humans intentionally conceal facts.


You may also want to read more about Hinduism here.

Be sure to check out my writings on religion here.