Returning from his mid day bath in the Ganga, and thus in a state of unusual ritual purity, the master and pupils found a Chandala in their path. The chandalas are the untouchable castes, even the shadow of whom is supposed to pollute the brahmin. The disciples urged the man to move aside with harsh words. Whereupon the chandala directly questioned Shankara. " You preach the live long day that the atman and the Brahman are the same, the only imperishable truth and that all distinctions are barriers in the realization of that supreme truth. So am I to move my body, which is a transient state of being or my atman which is eternal? How come you have such distinctions as brahmin and chandala still in your mind when you argue that the imperishable atman is the same in all people? You preach the Brahman and identify with the bodily differences amongst people." Shankara immediately realized that he had been provided a great lesson on walking the talk and prostrated himself before the chandala, stating that anybody who has the consciousness fixed in the Self like this was his guru. It is a measure of his greatness that he could do so unhesitatingly and a measure of the degeneration of India that this story is still a valid one in a social context. After this lesson Shankara's power seemed to grow even more. He traveled the length and breadth of the country holding disputes on the nature of the soul and the true faith, and everywhere he went he was triumphant in establishing his point of view. As one over-enthusiastic biographer put it, " Other philosophies howl like jackals in the woods, but all flee when roars the Lion of Vedanta." He was by now universally known as Shankara-acharya, Shankara the Teacher. The heads of the maths or monasteries that he founded all over India are still called Shankaracharchayas after him. There remained only two great rivals in India. Kumarila Bhatta and his disciple Mandana Mishra maintained the supremacy of the ritualistic path to god. Kumarila was on the verge of death when Shankara finally met him, but the old warrior was impressed by the young lion and asked him to have a Tarka, or organized debate with his disciple on the value of their different viewpoints. Mandana Mishra was at first skeptical in meeting a sannyasi in philosophic debate, having no time for 'shaven headed vagabonds' as he put it. To his discomfort however he was losing on every point of argument that was raised and he had almost nothing left in his quiver. His wife, Bharati, saved him. This lady was so learned that even Shankara had accepted her as the judge in the debate between him and her husband! It says a lot about the times and also about the position of women in those days. The good lady raised the valid point that since the issue at stake here was the claim that each had the supreme and complete knowledge of all valid learning Shankara was hopeless at one aspect of that. Since he was a celibate since childhood he had no understanding of sexual relations and his perspective on life and moral and ethical issues was thereby limited. Shankara, to the amazement of all concerned, agreed that it was indeed a valid point and took a three-month break from the debate to learn about this thorny issue. The legend says that he infused his spirit into the body of a dying king and spent the next three months in learning about this fascinating subject. Since his body never touched a woman he was technically celibate, though he got the knowledge he wanted. He returned with his new found knowledge and convincingly won the debate. Mandana and his wife became his disciples. Then the classifying, codifying intellect of the brahmin proved too much for him and the great Shankara wrote a Kama-sutra to record his experiences! He had great intellectual integrity and he did not think that any aspect of knowledge is not a worthy thing. It is a standing embarrassment to all the pious and devout to this day and hurriedly passed over in conversation and impossible to find as a text. Shankara intuited that his mother was going to die and hastened back to Kerela to keep his promise. When he announced to his brahmin neighbors that he was resolved to perform her funeral rites they excommunicated him and refused to even give firewood for the cremation. (A sannyasi is dead to the world and cannot perform ritual actions.) They did not know the formidable will of the man they were dealing with, not of his utter indifference to any law but that of his soul. He heaped up dry plantain stems (which are still mostly water) around his mother's corpse and allowed it to smolder away to nothing. The brahmins of Kaladi were degraded in status by the king when he got to know how they had treated the great acharya. This done he took to the road again, traversing India in a great out-flame of energy. He was always up and doing, preaching, writing, establishing monasteries, reestablishing and purifying abandoned sites of worship, and upholding the flag of the Vedanta. It is interesting that though he was an incarnation of Jnana, pure knowledge, he is also a great Bhakta, devotee, and he did a lot for those who wished to follow the path of worshipping the personal God. By now his life was coming to an end and he traveled to Kashmir and the temple of Mother Sharada there. The southern gate had never been opened in the temple as nobody from the south of India could pass the gauntlet of questions posed by the resident scholars. Shankara took this act of rudeness as personal challenge and beat off all comers in the rather surreal debate that took place as he victoriously advanced to the inner sanctum and the throne of knowledge there. Finally he went to Kedar in the Himalayas and literally disappeared in the midst of the intense cold and snows. Shankara was only 32 when he died but he had created the shape of Hinduism for the next 1200 years. Even the Kumbha mela is supposed to have been organized by him. In theological terms, the Advaita Vedanta is about as far as the Mind goes. There is nothing beyond it as a theory; there is only experience. Shankara's impact on the country is therefore immense. India lives mostly by the parameters he designed for religious life even today. - Rohit Arya <<back Archive