The essence of Sanatana Dharma, with its all-embracing message of Love, Compassion and the Universality of Humankind was completely lost in the blind performance of these rituals. Shankaracharya challenged various eminent scholars and leaders of various religious sects in vigorous disputes. They championed their own interpretations of the scriptures but the prodigious boy sage was easily able to overcome all of them and make them understand the wisdom of his teachings.
These men of stature then accepted Shankaracharya as their guru. They started to practice in accordance with his guidance, and this change in their lives also wrought a change in the lives of their innumerable followers, who came from all strata of society.
He established 4 ashrams in four corners of India and entrusted his four disciples to teach and propagate Advaita through them. People were totally blind to the underlying common basis of the One God. For their benefit, Shankaracharya formulated the six sect system of worship which brought to the fore the main godheads — Vishnu, Siva, Shakti, Muruka, Ganesha and Surya. He also formulated the rituals and rites to be followed in most of the major temples in India.
Apart from his immense intellectual and organisational abilities, Shankaracharya was an exquisite poet, with a heart brimming with Love of the Divine. He also wrote 18 commentaries on the major scriptural texts including the Brahma Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita and 12 major Upanishads.
He also authored 23 books on the fundamentals of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy which expound the principles of the non-dual Brahman. Considered to be an incarnation of Lord Siva, Sri Shankara lived only a short life span of 32 years. There are many inspiring legends about him. During his travels across the length and breadth of India, he established four maths ashrams to unify the scattered and diverse groups of Sannyasis.
Four maths were established, about AD, in four different corners of India. He selected four of his senior-most disciples to head each of these maths. Each of these maths was assigned the task of maintaining and preserving for posterity, one of the four Vedas the main scriptures of Hinduism and a Maha Vakya. Shankaracharya reorganised all the Sannyasis in India into ten main groups the Dasanami Sannyasa Tradition allocated to different maths.
Historical and literary evidence also exist which prove that the Kanchi Kamakoti Mutt at Kancheepuram, in Tamil Nadu, was also founded by Shankaracharya. Chatur Dhams. According to the tradition set forth by Adi Shankaracharya, the Puri Sannyasa tradition is characterised by the following — formal allegiance to the Sringeri Math.
The Supreme power assumes form from time to time to bring erring humanity back to the correct path. Leaving His all pervading spirit unaffected, He incarnates choosing a form, place and time. The form and nature He takes will depend on the cause and circumstances leading to the Avatara. Avataras differ in the vehicles or medium through which the Supreme manifests itself, according to the requirement.
The ultimate purpose of an incarnation is always the re-establishment of right values, of Dharma in the world. Sri Bhagavatpada Shankaracharya, was not only a great thinker and the noblest of Advaitic philosophers but he was essentially an inspired champion of Hinduism and one of the most rigorous missionary leaders in our country.
When the Vaidic mode of communion with the ultimate was in jeopardy, with the rejuvenation and reassertion of its wisdom being a pressing need, Adi Shankara strode like a majestic lion across the country taking all other lions in his stride and converted even die hards making them opt for the path illumined by Upanishads, such a powerful leader was needed at that time when Hinduism had been almost smothered within an enticing entanglements of atheistic views and consequently the Hindu Society came to be disunited and broken up into numberless sects and denominations each championing a different new point and engaged in mutual quarrels and endless argumentations.
It was into such a chaotic intellectual atmosphere that Sri Shankara brought his life giving philosophy of non-dual Brahaman of the Upanishads.
It can very well be understood what a colossal work it must have been for any one man to undertake in those days, when modern conveniences of mechanical transport and instruments of propaganda were unknown. Also as a peerless mystic, Adi Shankara could well have united his ambit to only the fortunate ones. He could as well have been totally reclusive and stayed away from it all.
He was fully awakened and totally aware of the intricacies of the unknown, yet he was humble and wise, as only the truly great ones can be. In His missionary work of propagating the great philosophical truths of the Upanishads and rediscovering through them the true cultural basis of our nation, Acharya Shankara had a variety of efficient weapons in his resourceful armory.
An exquisite thinker, a brilliant intellect, a personality scintillating super think tank with the vision of Truth, a heart throbbing with industrious faith and ardent desire to serve the nation, sweetly emotional and relentlessly logical, Adi Shankara was the fittest Spiritual General to champion the cause of Upanishads.
It was indeed a vast program that Shankara accomplished within the short span of 20 effective years for at the age of 32 he had finished his work and had folded up his manifestation. From masculine prose to feminine soft songs, from marching militant verses to dancing songful words, be in the halls of Upanishadic commentaries or in the temple of Brahmasutra expositions, in the theatre of his Bhagavad Gita discourses or in the open flowery fields of his devotional songs, His was a pen that danced to the rhythm of His heart and to the swing of His thoughts.
But pen alone would not have won the war of culture for our country. He showed himself to be a great organizer, a far sighted diplomat courageous hero and a tireless servant of the country. Before the advent of Sri Shankara numerous ritualistic cults engendered unclear practices which cried for reform. She was a worshipper of Krishna, indicating Vaishnava roots. From Central India, Shankara moved to Kashi where he encountered a chandala, keeper of the crematorium, the most polluted of professions in the Hindu caste hierarchy.
Shankara was steeped in the traditional varna-ashrama-dharma, where caste purity and pollution mattered, so his acceptance of the chandala as his guru holds special significance. The incident led him to compose the Manisha-panchakam where he looks beyond divisions that create dualities dvaita and affirms non-duality advaita. Wisdom is seen here as the tool to transcend caste.
Shankara then encountered the great Mimansaka scholar Mandana Mishra at Mahismati in Bihar and convinced him of the superiority of knowledge gyana over ritual karma. When the celibate Shankara pleaded ignorance, the lady asked him how he could claim to have understood the world without experiencing sensual pleasure and emotional intimacy.
What followed is shrouded in mystery, and edited by latter-day puritans. Shankara used his yogic powers to enter the corpse of Amaru, the king of Kashmir, and animate it long enough to enjoy all kinds of pleasure of the flesh.
Legend has it that it led Shankara to write erotic love poetry known as Amaru-shataka. In Kashmir then, and later in Shringeri, in present-day Karnataka, Shankara established temples to his personal deity, Sharada, who is commonly identified as Saraswati as she holds a book.
Was the goddess inspired by Ubhaya Bharati, or his mother, who kept presenting householder wisdom? We can only speculate. This was his promise to her when she finally gave him permission to become a hermit, after he survived an attack by a crocodile. However, in Vedic tradition, having renounced household life, a hermit cannot perform household rituals like funerals.
As a hermit, Shankara had given up his role as son, and so had no obligations to the woman who was once his mother. But Shankara here displayed the spirit of a defiant revolutionary. He then proceeded to travel across India, establishing his institution matha in the four corners of India, all the while visiting and mapping pilgrim routes.
He is said to have established the various akharas of hermits who were told to use their knowledge and their physical and yogic powers to protect Hinduism. He even organised their movements across pilgrim spots and their meetings during the Kumbha mela. Shankara died at the young age of 32 in the Himalayan region. The story goes that his father, on being given a choice by the gods, wanted a great son with a short lifespan, rather than an ordinary son with a long lifespan.
According to legend, a child prodigy, he was supposed to die at the age of eight, but was given an extension of eight years so that he could excavate the truth of the Vedas.
His commentaries and monographs were so brilliant that Vyasa, the mythical organiser of the Vedas, himself extended his life by another 16 years to spread his ideas to the world. Scholars wonder if Shankara, the philosopher, who valorised knowledge, was also the Shankara who composed devotional poetry?
Was the Shankara who established pilgrimages the one who also spoke the futility of mindless ritual, so beautifully expressed in Bhaja Govindam? Was he Vedic or Tantric? Was he Shaivite, Vaishnavite, or Shakta? Is he this or that, or both, or neither? Was he anti-Buddhist or a subversive pro-Buddhist?
The diverse fragments of his life mirror the diverse fragmented worldviews that shaped India in his time, and continue to do so today.
It bewilders the world.
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