Ebook: The Method Of The Vedanta: A Critical Account Of The Advaita Tradition

The present large-scale work is not exactly a history or a reference book or a reader, but it has something of the character of all three. Its purpose is to establish a clear view of the traditional Advaita Vedanta based on the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and Brahma Sutras as systematized by Gaudapada, Saakara and SureSvara, unencumbered by the mass of conflicting theories developed by later authors of the school.

Instead of crediting Sankara with an ontology, a cosmology, an epistemology and the other paraphernalia of traditional western metaphysics, the author concentrates on his theological method, and shows how he interpreted the texts that conmunicate to the student a direct awareness of his true nature as the Self of all by the process of ‘false attribution followed by later retraction'. The characteristic views of the later authors are examined, in varying degrees of detail, to see where they throw light on this teaching which leads to direct awareness of the Self, and where, more frequently, they misunderstand and obscure it. Attention is paid to Bhartrprapafica and other pre-Sahkara Vedanta theorists, and a chapter is accorded to Bhaskara as a characteristic representative of conscious opposition to Sankara within the Vedanta fold.

Original scans available at https://archive.org/details/the-method-of-the-vedanta-a-critical-account-of-the-advaita-tradition-swami-satchidanandendra