Vivarana Advaita

One of the later schools of Advaita
Vedanta, a philosophical school, the greatest figure in which was Shankaracharya.
The Advaita school upholds a philosophical position known as monism, which is
the belief in a single impersonal Ultimate
Reality, which they call Brahman. For
Advaita proponents, reality is “nondual”
(advaita)—that is, all things are nothing
but the formless Brahman, despite the
appearance of difference and diversity in
the perceivable world. For the Advaitins,
this assumption of diversity is a fundamental misunderstanding of the ultimate
nature of things and a manifestation
of avidya. Although often translated as
“ignorance,” avidya is better understood
as the lack of genuine understanding,
which ultimately causes human beings
to be trapped in karmic bondage,
reincarnation (samsara), and suffering.
Because the real problem for the
Advaitins is this mistaken understanding,
this means that realization (jnana)
was the best spiritual path to gain final
liberation (moksha).
The Vivarana Advaita school is based
on the thought of Padmapada (9th c.),
one of Shankaracharya’s disciples,
but takes its name from a commentary
written by the thirteenth-century
Prakashatman. The latter is traditionally
a disciple of Padmapada’s, but this seems
problematic. As with the Bhamati
school, the Vivarana school took definitive stands on several points on which
Shankaracharya had remained silent.
One of these was on the locus of ignorance, which the Vivarana school
describes as being located in Brahman.
In explaining how this can be, since it
seems to compromise the integrity of
Brahman, the Vivarana Advaitins invoke
the theory of reflectionism to explain the
apparent difference between Brahman
and the Self, although, in fact, the Selves
are identical with Brahman. Their position seems based more than anything on
an uncompromising affirmation of
Brahman as the sole “reality,” in which
anything that exists must belong to it.
766
Vitthalnath