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If ātman already is brahman, what is left for liberation to do?

Rohan Desai Fellow
· 5 replies
Mysticism & spiritualityIndianMimamsaVedantaAdi ShankaraUddālaka Āruṇi#advaita#liberation#moksha#self-knowledge
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Recently I started on Advaita Vedānta, and one idea has stopped me cold.

As I understand it, the claim is that the self (ātman) already is ultimate reality (brahman). "Tat tvam asi", you are that, as Uddālaka tells his son in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad. Liberation (mokṣa) is therefore not achieving something new; it's recognising what was always the case.

But then why does the tradition prescribe years of study, discipline and meditation? If I'm already free, what is all that practice for? And isn't there a danger that "you're already liberated" becomes an excuse to do nothing, which, frankly, is attractive to someone in my state?

I'd like an explanation from someone who knows Śaṅkara well.

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Arjun Iyer

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    You've put your finger on the centre of the system, so the answer has to start there.

    For Śaṅkara, liberation cannot be produced by action. Anything produced by action is an effect, and effects are impermanent; a liberation that was manufactured could be lost. So mokṣa must already be the case. What stands in the way is ignorance (avidyā): we superimpose on the self qualities that belong to body and mind, "I am tired, I am this name, I am this failure", and take them for what we are.

    The old teaching story makes it vivid. Ten men cross a river and count themselves on the far bank. Each counts nine, forgetting himself, and they start mourning the one who drowned. A passer-by says, "You are the tenth." Nothing is added. The tenth man was there all along; one sentence removes the error.

    So the practice is subtractive. Study, reflection and contemplation (in the Upaniṣad's words, hearing, thinking it through, and meditating) don't build anything. They remove the misperception, and the disciplines that come before them make the mind quiet and clear enough to hear the teaching at all.

    And on your worry: "I'm already free" said by an unquiet mind is still ignorance talking. The tradition is quite strict about that.

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Other answers

  1. Rohan Desai

    Fellow

    The ten men. I think I've been counting nine for about three years. And "subtractive" is exactly what burnout recovery felt like: not doing more, but dropping what I'd mistaken for myself.

  2. Govinda Prasad Upadhyaya

    Fellow

    A Mīmāṃsaka's footnote, since this was one of the great arguments of Indian hermeneutics. My school held that the purpose of the Veda is to enjoin action: every scriptural sentence ultimately tells you what to do. Śaṅkara's reply is that the Upaniṣadic sentences about brahman are informative, not injunctions. They tell you what is, the way "you are the tenth" does. Which side is right about how scripture works is still a live question in Varanasi.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Nirmala Jayasekara

    Fellow

    A Buddhist caution, offered with respect. Some Mahāyāna writers also say there is "nothing to attain", and Western readers often treat that as the same teaching. It isn't. For Śaṅkara there is a self to recognise; for the Buddhist schools there is no permanent self at all, and the path is the gradual uprooting of craving. The two traditions argued about exactly this for a thousand years. The similarity of the slogans hides a very deep difference.

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    1. Arjun Iyer

      Fellow

      Nirmala is right, and it's the most important false agreement in Indian philosophy. Rohan, if you read further, read the Buddhist critics alongside Śaṅkara. Advaita is sharpest when you see what it was answering.

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