Adi Shankara
788-820 · Hindu Darshanas · Prominent
Shankara was an Indian philosopher who compared the world of many separate things to mistaking a rope for a snake in poor light. The fear is real enough, and the snake is not. Brahman alone is real, and the self inside you, ātman, is that same reality under another name. He called the appearance of many things māyā, and gave Advaita Vedanta, the school teaching that reality is nondual, one without a second, its systematic form.
Signature
The position Shankara is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity
- Theology
- Pantheism
Positions on the 10 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (75 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Universals
- mildly leans Realism (38 on a 0–100 scale from Realism to Nominalism)
- Identity
- leans Unchanging (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Order
- leans Vertical (25 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Unity (0 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Truth
- leans Objective (75 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Ignorance
- mildly leans Bondage (38 on a 0–100 scale from Bondage to Bliss)
10 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Shankara refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Pantheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Union with God
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- No Real Distinction
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Phenomenalism / Idealism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Tradition / Grounded in God / Testimony
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Virtue
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Emanation
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Block Universe
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Apophatic Pointer
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Divine Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Union with the One / Karmic Cycle
What happens at death? - Role of Emotion
- Obstacle to Reason
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Other
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- The Divine
What is your primary bond and loyalty?