Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals :Ch-4. Part - 27.

Chapter-4. Swami Sri  Adi  Sankaracharya - The Genius ( Sankara Jayanti ) :

Part-27.

Unfortunately, today we have no proper expositions of the Vedanta philosophy.

They are all in bits and tracts, here and there; a complete philosophy of Sankara is not available in any single book.

We may read any book written anywhere, but we will not find a complete presentation of his philosophy.

There will be only a section of it, a part of it, a phase of it or an aspect of it presented, so that it always gives a wrong view of the philosophy.

This is unfortunate; but this is understandable, because it is not easy for a single man to write or to touch upon all the aspects of this single, all-comprehensive philosophy.

The Upanishads themselves are all-comprehensive and an exposition of them, which is the system of Vedanta, has naturally to be many-sided.

We cannot read any particular textbook and say we have understood Vedanta, because all textbooks deal with certain aspects – the theory of perception, or the logical part of it alone, or only the Sadhana aspects of it and so on, are touched upon.

We have masterly expositions of Advaita Vedanta given in such books as the Khandana Khanda Khadya of Sriharsha or the Tattva Pradipika of Chitsukha or the Advaita Siddhi of Madhusudana Saraswati, but we will not understand the spirit of Vedanta even after reading all these books, because they are only arguments leading to certain conclusions of Advaita, but not the entirety of it.

Even if we read the Brahma Sutra Bhashya of Sankara, we will not know or understand the entire teaching of it.

It requires study under a Guru to have a complete view of the entire perspective of Sankara's teaching.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ....