Sw. Vivekananda's misplaced views on Shankaracharya

[Prashant Parikh]

Assuming you had *no* prior knowledge of who wrote this, would you consider the person's views deeply flawed, if not ridiculous? Unfortunately Sw. Vivekananda's opinions seem too conditioned by the contemporaneous Bengal Reformist movement. His writings often took on a temperamental, hyperbolic emotional fervor. Particularly the below.

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Quote: "Shankara's intellect was sharp like the razor. He was a good arguer and a scholar, no doubt of that, but he had no great liberality; his heart too seems to have been like that. Besides, he used to take great pride in his Brahmanism — much like a southern Brahmin of the priest class, you may say. How he has defended in his commentary on the Vedanta-Sutras that the non-Brahmin castes will not attain to a supreme knowledge of Brahman! And what specious arguments! Referring to Vidura* he has said that he became a knower of Brahman by reason of his Brahmin body in the previous incarnation. Well, if nowadays any Shudra attains to a knowledge of Brahman, shall we have to side with your Shankara and maintain that because he had been a Brahmin in his previous birth, therefore he has attained to this knowledge? Goodness! What is the use of dragging in Brahminism with so much ado? The Vedas have entitled any one belonging to the three upper castes to study the Vedas and the realisation of Brahman, haven't they? So Shankara had no need whatsoever of displaying this curious bit of pedantry on this subject, contrary to the Vedas. And such was his heart that he burnt to death lots of Buddhist monks — by defeating them in argument! And the Buddhists, too, were foolish enough to burn themselves to death, simply because they were worsted in argument! What can you call such an action on Shankara's part except fanaticism? But look at Buddha's heart! — Ever ready to give his own life to save the life of even a kid — what to speak of " — For the welfare of the many, for the happiness of the many"! See, what a large-heartedness — what a compassion!"

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[Vinodh]

It appears that the author of the quote below overlooks the fact that a Jiva which takes many births does not have any particular varna of its own.  Owing to its vaasanas and karma from its previous births, its varna in the current birth is decided to enable it to experience the corresponding results. The varna is simply a particular distribution of the three gunas, sattva, rajas, and tamas. The sattva guna enables one to perceive clearly, the rajas guna enables one to act, and the tamas guna enables one to stop action. The varna with a high level of sattva guna is the Brahmana varna. And sattva guna is essential for the Jiva to be able to grasp the Truth correctly. The other two gunas only help the Jiva in performing and stopping actions. Therefore, it is natural that a Jiva before attaining knowledge of the Truth and attaining moksha must have had a birth with a high level of sattva guna for it to be able to grasp the knowledge of the Truth. When this broader context is understood, one would not arrive at such wrong conclusions as given in the quote.

Om tat sat 🙏 

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[Srini Nagul]

Hari OM

Please share any reference(s) for the quote, that appears incomplete and even mixed with others' opinions.

Simple reason it raises doubt about the exact quote is the language!   Swami Vivekananda's English is impeccable and rarely, or never, have I found any 
grammatical error in his utterances. Furthermore, they bear a stamp of a unique style of expression. The style of the language of this apparently attributed quote seems far from it.

In Sanskrit, we have may interpolations called "prakshiptas" and suspect that this also may be one such.

Hari OM
Srinivas 

[Prashant Parikh]

Harih Om
Source for the aforementioned quote by VIvekananda on Sri Adi Shankaracharya
Citation: The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 7/Conversations And Dialogues/II
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complete_Works_of_Swami_Vivekananda/Volume_7/Conversations_And_Dialogues/II

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[Srini Nagul]

Hari OM

Thanks for sharing the reference.

According to the same reference, the quote is preceded by:

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Thus the talk went on, and gradually drifted to the topic of Shankaracharya. The disciple was a great adherent of Shankara, almost to the point of fanaticism. He used to look upon Shankara's Advaita philosophy as the crest of all philosophies and could not bear any criticism of him. Swamiji was aware of this, and, as was his wont, wanted to break this one - sidedness of the disciple.
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Which injects compiler's (?) own opinion on Swamiji's motivation for the response. Which goes to tell that the quote has a backdrop and no telling how complete the context may be.

Even so, Shankara gives best evidence of his own error with the famous "Maneesha Panchakam".

How Swami Vivekananda's views are misplaced on Shankaracharya, and how Shankaracharya's views are misplaced on Chandala, only seems to reflect how much our own views are misplaced 

than what is really their teachings and what is helpful for our Sadhana. 

Hari OM /\

Srinivas

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