The Phenomenological Attitude in the Samkara Vedanta

Author(s): Ramakant Sinari

Source: Philosophy East and West, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Jul., 1972), pp. 281-290
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press
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Ramakant Sinari The phenomenological attitude in the
Samkara Vedanta

There may be no rules regarding the transition, in a philosophical mind, from

the commonsense belief that the world as we experience it is real to the suspi-
cion that perhaps it could be otherwise or not be there at all. When, for
instance, Martin Heidegger says that "Why are there essents, why is there
anything at all, rather than nothing?" is the foremost among all questions, he
undoubtedly signals all those who take for granted that philosophical thinking
has to begin with an acceptance of the reality of the world not to go by
what may appear to be obvious truths.' Indeed, Descartes, with his remarkable
aspiration for attaining clarity and distinctness about all ideas, remains the first
radical doubter. ".. . And so I felt that I must one day rid myself of all the
opinions I have hitherto adopted," wrote Descartes, "and start the whole work
of construction again from the very foundation, if I aspired to make some solid
and lasting contribution to knowledge."2
Although Descartes began in a revolutionary way, his program of ridding
himself of all opinions could not go very far for the simple reason that his
persistence was exhausted as soon as he thought of "indubitable"mathematical
phenomena. "We may reasonably conclude," he said, "that physics, astronomy,
medicine, and all other sciences which have composite objects, are indeed of
a doubtful character, but that arithmetic, geometry, and those sciences which
have the simplest and most general objects, without much regard to their
real existence, have in them something that is at once certain and indubitable."3
But the man who stretched the Cartesian program further, through a period
when scientists' confidence in the possibility of an objective knowledge of the
universe was almost complete, was Edmund Husserl, the founder of
phenomenology.
Husserl's genius finds its full expression in his treatment of the perennial
philosophical problem that he engaged himself to solve: how and from where
could one obtain absolute certainty in knowledge. The aim of this article is to
show that the process of doubting our knowledge regarding the
objectivity
of the world and searching for its "real" foundation in our own
subjectivity
-though not as strictly epistemologically oriented as Husserl's phenomenol-
ogy-is present in garhkara's Vedanta. Besides, the rigor which Husserl
wanted his method to achieve as the "science of Essential Being,"4 is of a type
that is reflected in Sarhkarain what can be called the Vedanta method.5

Ramakant Sinari is a member of the Department of Philosophy, Sies

College, Bombay.
India.
An Introductionto Metaphysics, Ralph Manheim,trans. (New York:
Doubleday & Co.,
1961),p. 1.
2Discourse ontMethod, Arthur Wollaston, trans. (London: Penguin
Books, 1960), p. 101.
3 Ibid., p. 104.
4 EdmundHusserl,Ideas,W. R. BoyceGibson,trans.
(New York: CollierBooks,1962),
p. 41 (hereaftercitedas "Husserl,Ideas").
5 The Vedintaschoolhassprungup froma set of ideas in theconcludingsections
appearing

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282 Sinari

It is true that the Vedanta method never planned anything like a systematic
reexamination of the basic theories and principles of knowledge as phenomenol-
ogists have done. The scope of the Vedanta method does not extend to prob-
lems in logic or psychology, where phenomenology has well-defined goals to
achieve. The principal concern of the amhkaraVedanta being the suffering-
infected world (saiisaira) and man's unsuccessful attempt to live peacefully
in it, it could hardly deviate from the fundamental ethical question of how to
attain salvation or ultimate liberation (moksa). But this need not becloud the
fact that both gamhkaraand Husserlian phenomenologists belong to the same
set of metaphysical thinkers inasmuch as they represent a distrust in the uni-
verse given through sense perceptions and a profound urge for self-exploration
and transcendence.
A phenomenologist begins with the total suspension (called epoche) of all
the presuppositions about the knowing mind and the world. The suspension or
"bracketing" of our natural perception of the spatiotemporal phenomena im-
plies a deliberately chosen attitude. Although such an attitude, psychologically
speaking, amounts to a kind of reversion of the very act of experiencing, its
purpose is to carry consciousness to its preexperiencing state and examine the
emergence of experience itself. The epoche is not fully a logical activity; rather
it is an inward attention-practice directed toward seeking the prelogical
threshold of logic. To a phenomenologist, this is the eidetic or essential opera-
tion from which a new perspective of existence would evolve.
The Eidos (essences), or the eidetic axioms, denote the true forms of
things. One of the distinctions upon which Husserl has built his philosophy is
between a fact and an essence. No particular spatiotemporal position is neces-
sary for a fact. That is to say, though a fact is usually recognizable in terms of
its spatiotemporal characteristics, such characteristics have nothing necessary
about them. ". . . Every fact," Husserl writes, "could be 'essentially' other than
it is ... it belongs to the meaning of everything contingent that it should have
essential being and therein an Eidos to be apprehended in all its purity."6
The very notion of contingency (Tatsichlichkeit) derives from the accidental
nature of facts and implies the sense of it is thus, but could be otherwise. Our
consciousness of the contingency of the entire phenomenon of the world is itself
owing to our innately Eidos-oriented being. For all phenomenologists and
existentialists, as for Husserl, man is the only being that transcends the realm
of facts, or refuses to stay contained within them, as the necessary forms of
Reality.

of the Vedas. It representsthe principaltenor of Indian thought and has prevailedthrough

nearly 2500 years. Sarhkarais the most respectedcommentatoron the Vedanta. Gifted with
extraordinarymental energy and creativeness,he has left for posterity numeroustreatises
of philosophicalimportance.
8 Ideas, p. 47.

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283

What is true of the "facts" in the world is also true of the conventional
norms of thought and knowledge. When they are suspended by means of the
epoche, the suspension comprises their interruption until the time one intuits
them anew and develops a conviction in them. What Husserl suggests is that
once we proceed to bracket whatever is offered to awareness, the procedure
could stop only when a certainty about the total conditions of what is known
develops. He describes the state of mind under certainty as the experience of
"apodeictic self-evidence" or the "in-seeing of an essence."7
The evidence and the certainty Husserl speaks about have their origin in the
domain of what he calls the "transcendental-phenomenological self-experi-
ence."8 An evidence, phenomenologists hold, is the grasping of something that
excludes all doubt, all suspicion about its possible falsity, at least at the
moment when the evidence is present to the mind. In apodeictic evidence, there
is some sort of identity between the thinker and the thought. Actually, the
term "apodeictic"is intended by Husserl to suggest that there is such a thing
as the evidence and that it is established by means of mind's immediate and
direct act, a "seeing," which, although possibly different in the case of dif-
ferent individuals, entails an absolute inward guarantee.9
Man's day-to-day view of the world is conditioned by numerous presupposi-
tions, interests, motives, and dogmas. We are constantly influenced by our
sociocultural habitat, logical and linguistic heritage, intellectual and emotional
commitments, and in general by the entire inner and outer milieu in which we
live. The rules of meaning and expression, of selection and elimination in
perception and comprehension, the act of interpretation and valuation, totally
govern our approach to the world. A sustained reflection would convince us
that though our full being is involved in this approach, or in our very contact
with the world for that matter, there is nothing necessary about the logic of
the approach itself. Not only is it modifiable, but even its raison d'etre can be
revised. The phenomenological attitude springs up as soon as we question our
ordinary consciousness of the world, doubt what is given to this consciousness,
and by disconnecting ourselves from it and all that goes with it withdraw
inwardly to seek a new foundation for what we are and what we experience.
The phenomenological attitude, in the Husserlian sense, has the single pur-
pose of reestablishing the world within experience. Mainly analytical as it is,
the phenomenological method deals with questions that fall within the purview
of universal knowledge. To look upon the world phenomenologically is to posit
it in one's consciousness in a presuppositionless way, to reestablish one's
Weltanschauung with regard to it, and to penetrate through the diverse "fur-

Ibid.,p. 253.
8 EdmundHusserl,CartesianMeditations,DorionCairns,trans. (The
Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff,1960),p. 26.
9 Husserl,Ideas,pp.353-354.

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284 Sinari

niture" of knowledge with a view to construing its fundamentals.While defining

the function of the phenomenological philosophy, Marvin Farber remarks,
"The phenomenological method requires a well defined attitude, for which all
mundane beliefs are not merely suspended temporarily, but for always as a
matter of principle. . . . This attitude is fundamentally different from the
natural attitude, which is the attitude of all of us, including the phenomenolo-
gist when he is not engaged in his investigations, in our normal living and
thinking."10
It is clear, therefore, that to the phenomenological attitude the world would
purport a view, a significance other than what it would purport to the com-
monsense attitude. At the same time, the relevance of the commonsense atti-
tude must not be overlooked. Insofar as a phenomenologist has to begin with
the empirically given world for the epoche procedure, he must yield, at least
provisionally, to the commensense attitude before he takes a "flight" to the
essential or eidetic domain. The ordinarily understood reality of the world
would be necessary for the phenomenological attitude and method as a field
of operation. It is in this sense that the main objective phenomenologists have
before them is the epistemologically complete reorganization of the cognitive
consciousness on the ground of the direct "seeing" of the essences of things
and their emergence in the ego.
That the SarhkaraVedanta, one of the most influential metaphysical systems
in Asia, has recommended a severe intellectual discipline of the withdrawal
of one's consciousness from the empirically observable world is widely known.
The basic motivation of Samhkara'sthought is ethical: How can man liberate
himself from bondage, suffering, and ignorance-the elements which always
characterizehis being-in-the-world? An unrestrained and world-denying trans-
cendentalism, where the highest constitutive background of all experience is
grasped through thought and words, is the professed goal of Sarhkara's
system.
The SarhkaraVedanta defines its objective quite unambiguouslywhen it says
that the highest human ideal (parama puruisartha) is the attainment of that
knowledge (jnana, viveka) which would help man to emancipate himself from
the succession of lives (sarhsara).l Sarhkara'sendeavor is not dispassionately
to reach the foundation of consciousness and know it for its own sake; it is to
seek, through the knowledge of this foundation, an exit from the wearisome
worldly existence. The final assessment of every activity in terms of its sig-
nificance for man's salvation (moksa) has always remained central to Indian
philosophy. And the Sarikara Vedanta, since its ancestral form in the
Upanisads to its modern expositions, has endured not only as an embodiment
10"Phenomenology"in Living Schools of Philosophy, D. D. Runes, ed. (New Jersey:
Littlefield,Adams & Co., 1962), p. 309.
11 See Sarhkara's Brahmasfitrabha.sya IIi.3.14-16.

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285

of such an assessment but also as a view of life, a philosophy of existence, and

an exploration into the purpose of consciousness. Far from having any con-
structive knowledge-building plan, and far from even suggesting that his intel-
lectual enterprise might have a bearing on our practical life, what Samhkara
was bent upon showing is that the whole world-consciousness of ours is onto-
logically founded on something formless (nirguna) and self-luminous (svapra-
kasa). This formless and self-luminous something is Brahman or Atman, the
genesis of everything and the sole end of life's activity.
The phenomenological method of epoche, like the Cartesian method of
doubt, has for its subject matter the empirical world and its impressions on
the cognitive consciousness. Of course, both Descartes and Husserl have
made no secret of the fact that at the start of the philosophical inquiry we
attribute contingency not only to the phenomenal world that is given to us
through senses but also to ourselves as perceiving subjects. However, they
were not prepared to compromise their confidence in the reality of the world,
and, therefore, they might have thought it wise to expect from their method
only a temporary suspension of the empirical experiences. But Sarhkara acted
differently. The single purpose of his philosophic search is the mapping-out of
the structure of the self with a view to determining its transcendental reach.
As a matter of fact, at no stage has Sarhkara considered the spatiotemporal
correlates of experience or the need for a factual and scientific study of the
universe. It is on account of this preeminently transempirical interests-and-
pursuits-orientation that he, unlike the phenomenologists, set forth in his
method a kind of one-way passage, from the outward to the inward, from the
contingent to the necessary, from the mundane to the transcendental.
According to Sarhkara, our perception of phenomena (vyavaharikasatta)
gives us only the empirical and pragmatic reality. The standpoint to which we
are accustomed in our ordinary life originates, not from our pure conscious-
ness (Brahman or Atman), or essential Being, but from a
deluding and mis-
guiding agency, called avidya or ignorance, operating on us. Avidya is of the
nature of nescience. It distorts knowledge by causing a wrong
apprehension
of the given. Indeed, for Samhkara,the very appearance of the
"given" in
experience, the entire phenomenon of the world "binding" consciousness to it,
is owing to the superimposition of the unreal on the otherwise
pure and ab-
solutely free self. Avidya veils the real shape of things from us. ". .. .It is a
universal sleep," states garhkara, "in which are lying the
transmigrating souls
destitute for the time of the consciousness of their individual character."12
Thus, although Samhkaraand his interpreters have not gone to the extent of
contending unilaterally that the spatiotemporal world does not exist at all,
12Ibid., II.3.36. In The Vedanta Sitras: With the commentaryof Sankaracarya,vol. 28.
GeorgeThibaut,trans.,The SacredBooksof the East,editedby F, Max Muller(Oxford:
The Clarendon
Press,1890),pp.204-207,242.

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286 Sinari

they have emphasized that it is there for consciousness because of conscious-

ness's naive commonsense outlook.13Man remains a victim to this outlook so
long as he continues to be governed by the subject-object duality and has
atttained no enlightenment (jidna, vidya) to transcend it.
In Sarhkara's Vedanta, avidya or ignorance is believed to be the agency
causing our phenomenal or pragmatic (vyavaharika) view with regard to
existence. Sarhkara expresses a phenomenological attitude when he tacitly
maintains that the worldly phenomena, which practically appear to be real, are
ontologically dubitable and that the only course for resolving this contradiction
is to have a total vision of one's own self, to attain atmajiana. As phenomenol-
ogists today observe, the expression "phenomenological attitude" should
essentially mean a philosophical view emanating from a kind of concentrated
inward perception, an ego-exploration, whose verdict about the nature of exis-
tence invariably differs from that of the ordinary view of an outer-directed
perception.14Before a persistent practice of the phenomenologicalattitude, our
everyday outlook of things and events would fade out as something superficial,
and a transcendental perspective would take its place. For Husserl, such a
transition from the plain experienceable world to the primordial essential
foundation in transcendental consciousness signifies the fulfillment of the
phenomenologicalmethod.
As soon as one's ordinary conception of the world gives way to an en-
lightened "seeing," one would discover the naive and false (mithya) character
of the former and the authenticity of the latter. The spirit with which phenome-
nologists contrast the natural or empirical attitude (that is, the attitude of the
ordinary intellect conditioned by spatiotemporalfactors) with the phenomeno-
logical or transcendental attitude, and characterize the first as "unreal" and
the second as "real," is inherent in Sarhkara'sVedanta. Sarhkaraindicates that
the phenomenal or pragmatic (vyavahdrika) and the absolute or transcendental
(paramarthika) are in a gradation. It is the transcendental alone that would
provide the highest and the most reliable knowledge (brahmanubhava). What
is perceived as the phenomenal is a false image of the real and the eternal. Its
locus, though veridical to the senses, originates from our distraction from the
transcendental. The entire world-phenomenon, according to gamrkara,arises
out of an element of error (bhranti or bhrama) in our mind, and it would
vanish as soon as consciousness comes to grasp the beyond, the Universal
Being (Brahman), and attains a new enlightened outlook. The transcendentally
enlightened, or paramarthika, outlook, like the phenomenological one, is the
outlook of a person who has, by dint of hard concentration and directedness

13For a keentreatmentof this idea,see Eliot Deutsch,AdvaitaVeddnta:A Philosophical

Reconstruction(Honolulu:East-WestCenterPress, 1969),pp.28-33.
14See MarvinFarber,The Foundationof Phenomenology(New York: Paine-Whitman
Publishers,1962),pp.522-523.

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287

of attention, pierced through the mask of the given and settled within the inner-
most region of ego-consciousness. It is in this ego-consciousness, a kind of
self-illumination by which one's essential being is thrown open to oneself, that
Samtkara,like Husserl, located the genesis of absolute certainty.
Actually in the SatmkaraVedanta the theory of experience that had already
been suggested by Gaudapadafinds its most systematic expression. Gaudapada,
a Vedantin who preceded Sarmkaraby about three hundred years and is said
to have taught Sarhkara's teacher Govinda, is known for his thesis of the
dichotomy between the practical and the real. The world spread around us,
Gaudapada had said, is wrongly imagined, like an appearance (abhasa) or an
error (viparydya).l1 Therefore, the status of the world, as against that of the
transcendentally real (paramartha-satya), is relative or empirical (sainvrtti
or vyavaharika).l1 The world would have a place in our consciousness so long
as we do not throw a deep and intense glance at the foundation of consciousness
itself and figure out its genealogy, as it were. For this purpose, and indeed for
the purpose of positing oneself as a seeker of the transcendental truth (para-
marthacintaka), Gaudapada had recommended a specific form of psychic
discipline called asparsayoga.l7 What Samrkaradescribes as atmavidya (the
knowledge of the self) is his own version of asparsayoga, and that Samikara
prescribes it for the same ultimate arrest of mind as that suggested by
Gaudapada is a subject that needs no treatment in the present context.
In his commentary on the Veddnta Sutra, Sarhkara presents a highly
phenomenological inquiry to the question of the intuitive basis of knowledge.
Although the principal aim of this inquiry is to come upon a clear solution to
the eternal riddle of suffering in life, the rational procedure that Sarhkara
adopts leads him to a disciplined analysis of the elements of knowledge. He
demonstrates that, in order to be instrumental to salvation (moksa), knowledge
must be free from the subject-object distinction and must attain a depth at
which one is able to grasp transcendental Being or Brahman as the ground of
the world. But how does this subject-object distinction occur? "It is a matter
not requiring any proof," says Sarmkara,"that the object and the subject
whose respective spheres are the notion of the 'Thou' (the nonego) and the
'ego' and which are opposed to each other as much as darkness and light are,
cannot be identified. ... In spite of this it is on the part of man a natural
procedure-which has its cause in wrong knowledge-not to distinguish the
two entities (object and subject) and their respective attributes,
although
they are absolutely distinct, but to superimpose upon each the characteristic

15T. M. P. Mahadevan,Gaudapada(Madras:
University of Madras, 1954), p. 150.
1s Ibid., p. 151.
17 Asparsayoga, meaning
literally the yoga in which perceptionby touch is suspended,is
the procedureby which one can cease to be affected by external sensations. The
goal of
aspariayoga is identical with that of yoga proper.

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288 Sinari

nature and the attribute of the other, and thus, coupling the real and the
unreal. ..".18
Now, the Atman or the individual self, which is an absolute distinctionless
spirit (nirvisesacaitanya), has no reason to participate in the phenomenon of
superimposition. The superimposition is caused by the fact that a mysterious
veil of nescience works on the knowing subject and twists his impressions
regarding the outside world. The world observed by us is there, Sarmkara
maintains, only in the sense that nescience (avidyd) makes us aware of it,
posits it as spatiotemporal,and subjects us to its vicissitudes. Superimposition
and nescience are names of one and the same naivete that invariably accompa-
nies our knowledge of phenomena in the world.
While under the sway of the nescient agency, the Atman is "yoked" to such
processes as mind (manas), intellect (buddhi), ego (aharhkara), body
(sar4ra), and senses (indriyas). These processes have no direct bearing on the
essential and eternal substance of Atman. Neither are they Atman's manifesta-
tions, nor can they enslave Atman. And yet, when viewed from the mundane
level, they appear to pervade Atman, putting it in contact with the contingent
and finite universe. The entire experience of living in the world is a kind of
veil (kosa) on pure consciousness. This veil is not "glued" to pure conscious-
ness, for the latter is able to throw it off when it reaches the apex of self-
realization. Man, misled by superimposition, argues Sahakara,is under the in-
fluence of an error "founded on the non-apprehension of the difference of that
which is superimposed from that on which it is superimposed."19"Extra-
personal attributes are superimposed on the self," says Samhkara,"if a man
considers himself (his self) as stout, lean, fair, as standing, walking, or
jumping ... attributes of the internal organ when he considers himself subject
to desire, intention, doubt, determination, and so on."20
The dissolution of the elements of superimposition and the disconnection of
consciousness from the knower-known or subject-object dichotomy should
amount to the total cessation of one's being-in-the-world. And, according to
Sarhkara, since consciousness's freeing itself from the superimposition is the
only thing that matters in the ultimate analysis, the attainment of transcendence
and the complete rejection of one's worldly interests must be looked upon as
the ideal one must tend toward. Sarhkara heavily draws upon the Upanisads
when he points out that the course from the sphere of ignorance to that of
supreme transcendental knowledge (brahmdnubhdva) implies consciousness's
movement toward its own proper destination. Although consciousness has
actually "fallen" into the mundane layers of existence, it is forever in search
18Samrkara,Brahmasutrabhdsya,Introduction,op. cit., pp. 3-5.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.

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289

of its own transcendental foundation. Hence, man has to be skeptical about

everything and surpass everything sometime or other, except his own essential
Being.
The phenomenological attitude reflects a way of thinking beyond the given,
an introspective analysis of the essences of things, a shaping of the view of
existence born out of one's own subjectivity. The Sathkara Vedanta furnishes
the unique instance of this attitude in the Orient. Sahkara, like Husserl,
adopts a skepticism about the phenomenal world, because nothing in the
phenomenal world is ontologically necessary, and further because our ordinary
knowledge of this world is the result of a set of unexamined presuppositions.
For Sarhkara,the absolutely self-validating knowledge of one's own conscious-
ness, the jnana, by which alone one's skepticism could give way to a vision of
truth, does not emanate from any region except that of one's inward subjectiv-
ity. Thus, what Sarhkara describes as the knowledge founded on the self-
luminosity (svaprakdsatva) of pure consciousness represents the central quest
of his Vedanta method.21 And in this, Sarhkara'sargument is close to that in
phenomenology.
There is indeed no way of achieving the absolutely indubitable knowledge or
the self-luminosity of pure consciousness, other than a breakthrough in the
"normalcy" of experience. Such a breakthrough acts as a self-generated and
presuppositionless insight to which the phenomenal manifests what is lower
and inauthentic. Besides, it denotes the limit of all analysis, for there is nothing
that analysis can do the moment the transcendental realm of life is thrown
open to it. The analytical stage of phenomenology would thus merge into a
philosophy of reconstruction, a spelling-out of the new vision of the world
as soon as it lands on pure consciousness, the Atman, which Husserl called
"the wonder of all wonders" and Sarhkara,"the self-luminous witness (saksin)
of self-consciousness." However, so far as the question of the technique is
concerned, the descent into this core of self-experience is no easy task. One's
adherence to the phenomenal world is apparently so complete that a permanent
shift from it to formless and unfathomable transcendental Being necessitates a
fundamental change in one's perspective. As Maurice Natanson puts it, while
defining such a change in the phenomenologists' thinking, "The central and
most cunning feature of the taken for granted everyday world is that it is
taken for granted. As commonsense men living in the mundane world, we
tacitly assume that, of course, there is this world all of us share as the public
domain within which we communicate, work, and live our lives."22 A transi-

21For a treatment of this point, see D. Sinha, The Idealist

Standpoint (Visva-Bharati:
Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy, 1965), pp. 59-60.
22Alfred Schutz, CollectedPapers, Maurice Natanson, ed. and intr., vol. 1 (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. xxvi.

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290 Sinari

tion from this world to the domain of transcendental Being requires a difficult
channeling of one's entire Weltanschauung, an inner transformation con-
sciously brought about within one's being. Sarhkaraargues that so long as the
individual self does not surmount nescience (condensed form of what phenome-
nologists after Husserl call naivete), and does not rise to the ontological level,
it would not realize the true foundation of itself.

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