A Questioning Approach:

learning from Shankara's pedagogic techniques

Jacqueline Suthren Hirst

University of Manchester, UK

Short title: A Questioning Approach

Published as: 'A Questioning Approach: learning from

Shankara's pedagogic techniques', Contemporary Education

Dialogue, Bangalore 2.2 (2005): 137-69.

Dr Jacqueline Suthren Hirst

Religions and Theology

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

Samuel Alexander Building

University of Manchester

Oxford Road

Manchester

M13 9PL

UK

Eml: jacqueline.hirst@manchester.ac.uk

2

A Questioning Approach: learning from Shankara's pedagogic techniques

In her article on 'Childhood and Schooling in an Indian Village', Padma Sarangapani

(2004) argues convincingly that many Indian school pupils carry attitudes to authority

which are underpinned by their expectations of dyadic relationships such as those

existing between elder and younger, parent and child, teacher and pupil. These form

part of a taken-for-granted and internalised worldview, which is further embedded by

educational material from publishers such as the Gita Press. From her own classroom

experience in one particular school, Sarangapani reflects that student-centred teaching

and learning methods which do not take this into account are doomed to failure.

We may compare this with a discussion which took place at a Seminar on Plagiarism

in a British university in Feb 2004,1 where the issue of different cultural attitudes to

plagiarism was raised. It was pointed out that, in some cultures, respect for the

teacher meant that students were not condemned but positively encouraged to repeat

material written or taught by their teachers, precisely because their teachers were the

respected authorities. They would therefore be best able to explain the issue. The

high stakes of getting a good grade formed a further consideration. One university

officer from a Malaysian background herself had been brought up with didactic 'chalk

and talk', no participation by pupils, rote learning and a lack of creativity. When she

came to the UK as an international student, she experienced a huge shock because of

the difference in academic cultures. While she was also lectured at in the UK,

contributions from students were expected in almost equal measure. However, she

found this very hard since it involved questioning the teacher, something at odds with

the respect she had been taught to hold and for which she had no tools, independent

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thinking being neither cultivated nor encouraged. She commented that such

engrained attitudes made it very difficult for a lecturer, as a consequence, to get

students to think analytically for themselves.

This is not, however, exclusively a South(-east) Asian or non-'western' issue. Older

mature students brought up in UK schools may have had similar experiences.

Furthermore, there is currently a growing tendency amongst some teachers in UK

schools to provide model answers for examination questions and to allow pupils to

download material from the internet without attributing their sources. The need for

English state schools (now ranked in league tables), and therefore for pupils, to be

seen to be getting good results is a major factor in such behaviour. Another is

possibly the teacher's insecurity and tendency to assume the greater authority of

material on the web. A simplistic view of pedagogy and cultural difference will

therefore not do in any of these contexts (though respect from junior to senior

members in dyadic relationships is bemoaned as a lost feature of the past by many in

the UK). What is needed is a dialogue which seeks to understand the multi-faceted

parameters and constraints within which learning takes place so that it may be

enriching for all.

It is in such a context that, in this article, I wish to argue that a critical appreciation of

the work of the great Advaitin teacher, Adi Shankara (c.700 A.D.), can provide

insights into processes of teaching and learning which may prove fruitful, though with

some important caveats, in the twenty-first century classroom, whether in India or the

UK. This may seem a surprising, perhaps even dangerous, claim, so first let me make

clear what I am not advocating.

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In the first place, I am not suggesting that Adi Shankara is an appropriate role model

because he in some way typifies a Hindu and therefore properly Indian teacher, nor

because he is revered as the founder of those Advaitin maths whose pontiffs bear his

name and whose organisations wield considerable political and socio-economic power

in the twenty-first century and which have also been centres of great scholarship

through the ages. They, and he, may indeed be cited as legitimising authorities by

organisations such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in their preparation of teaching

material on Hinduism for use in the UK (Prinja, 1998:3).2 However this alone might

be sufficient for some, including many Muslims and others, to doubt whether

Shankara is a suitable exemplar for the Indian (or UK) state school in the present

climate, or worse to suspect an agenda in which their own concerns and interests were

being marginalised under encroaching hindutva-isation of the school curriculum.

This is quite contrary to my concern. There are many figures who have contributed to

the history of India whose contribution to educational thought could be explored - al-

Biruni with his declared scholarly detached approach to his subject being one obvious

example (Ahmad, 1983:v-vi, and Al-Biruni's Preface: 3ff). In taking Shankara as my

example here, I have simply chosen one writer who is self-conscious about the way

his texts teach and a pupil learns and makes this explicit in numerous ways. I

accordingly suggest that, from Shankara's attitude to learning, we can all learn in turn,

whatever our own religious or secular background may be.

But there are two further objections which I need to consider, one possibly an

extension of the point being made above. Adi Shankara was a brahmin, whose

preferred pupils were not only brahmins themselves (Thousand Teachings, prose

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chapter 2.45) but preferably renouncers of the highest order (Thousand Teachings,

prose chapter 1.2).3 They were also assumed to be male. While Shankara as a

textual commentator had to recognise that there were women who received the

highest teaching in the Upanishads (Gargi and Maitreyi from Brihadaranyaka

Upanishad 3.6, 3.8, and 2.4, 4.5, respectively being famous examples), his assumed

reader/hearer/pupil is male. Only in one verse does he intimate that women can be

pupils too (commentary on Gaudapada's Karikas 4.95). Further he went to

considerable lengths to explain that shudras who received liberative teaching in the

Upanishads (for example, Raikva with the cart, Chandogya Upanishad 4.1f), was not

really a shudra but a grieving (√shuc) brahmin (Shankara's commentary on Ch Up

4.2.3). This is hardly an inclusive model for education for all4 in the twenty-first

century.

There are perhaps two main ways of dealing with this. The first is to argue that

Shankara has a more liberal attitude than might appear from the above. This would be

the consequence of comments by scholars such as Cenkner (1983:49) or Alston

(1990:6) (though writing in other contexts). The other is simply to recognise

Shankara's constraints for what they were, to reject them as inappropriate in the

context we are considering, to try to become aware of the parallel social and political

constraints within which we variously operate (and to which we contribute in our own

constructions of knowledge), and to look to other aspects of his work for inspiration.

It is the latter approach which I shall adopt here.

Finally, we need to recognise another dramatic difference between Shankara's context

and ours, namely that he located himself within the 'correct teaching tradition' of

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Advaita, whose interpretation was, in his view, given with the eternal text and whose

truth it was the Advaitin teacher's duty to pass on to his pupils. Now the issue of

appropriate relations between 'religion' and the State is a highly complex one in

different ways in both modern India and the U.K. (where the Prime Minister has been

a vocal advocate for increasing state schools with a religious foundation on the

grounds that they improve standards5). It is not one I wish to explore further here.

Suffice it to say that in my argument below I shall maintain that Shankara's

understanding of the learning process is transferable from the context of a particular

sampradaya directed towards a particular goal (see below), despite this being integral

to the way in which he conceived it himself. Before returning to that position,

however, it will be necessary to examine in some detail Shankara's understanding of

the learning process and the teacher's role, in his own context. To that we now turn.

The teacher's role and authority

For Shankara, the teacher's role is clear. It is to bring pupils to knowledge of

brahman,6 a knowledge that will liberate them from the endless round of death and

rebirth (samsara). This is in accordance with the whole purpose of his Vedanta

tradition, whose foundational text, the Brahma-Sutras or Vedanta-Sutras, begins:

'Then therefore the desire to know brahman' (BS 1.1.1). This might not seem a

promising basis for modern educational dialogue, except for those who still adhere to

an Advaitin path. After all, not only did the various schools of Indian philosophy

disagree amongst themselves as to what the purpose of teaching should be, and so of

what the teacher's role was, but there were many different interpretations of Vedanta

of which Shankara's Advaita was, and is, but one.

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This might seem to be confirmed when we consider the ramifications of the above

position. Given that the teacher's role was, for Shankara, to bring pupils to knowledge

of brahman, the way of doing this was by interpreting coherently the texts of Vedanta

in accordance with the correct teaching tradition, that is, Advaita. This was because

these texts, the 'triple foundation' comprising the Upanishads, the Brahma-Sutras and

the Bhagavad-Gita, were held by Shankara, as by other brahmanical exegetes, to be

the only valid means of acquiring knowledge of brahman, the only pramana. Sense

perception and inductive inference (itself dependent on sense perception) were indeed

appropriate for gaining knowledge of the conventional everyday world, but were

inapplicable to brahman, since brahman is by definition beyond such sense

perception.7

We will return to the issue of reasoning and textual hermeneutics below. Here we

simply note that the authority of the teacher is, for Shankara, grounded in his ability to

interpret these texts faithfully for the next generation. Without a correct

interpretation, the texts could not be efficacious, the pupil could not be brought to

liberation, the process of educating the pupil would be ineffective, the teacher's

authority nullified. Indeed it is this of which opponents accuse Shankara when they

argue that his system is ineffective, an accusation which Shankara seeks to refute in

arguing that there are those who are liberated while still living who are living proof

that the Advaitin approach is the one that works.8

Furthermore it is clear that respect for the teacher is expected by Shankara and his

school. He comments on Upanishadic stories, in which prospective pupils approach a

teacher fuel in hand, indicating their readiness to attend to the guru's needs in

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exchange for teaching.9 He shows respect to his own paramaguru in various praise

verses in his works.10

His own pupils' writings overflow with respect for their

teacher.11

Here is certainly one of the many roots which feed those dyadic

relationships Padma Sarangapani discusses, roots which of course are grounded in

Indian Islamic and other traditions too. Taken together, all this might suggest a

picture of authoritative teacher, requiring automatic respect of pupils, who transmits

received wisdom based on accepted sacred eternal texts, to effect a goal defined by

those texts over which, finally, there can be no discussion. Given, in addition,

Shankara's preference for brahmin pupils, it might be taken as endorsement of a static

social hierarchy in which knowledge benefits only those deemed eligible as elites, in

which the teacher lays down what is the case, in which pupils absorb this by rote. In

other words, here is justification for the type of education found in many Indian

schools like the one Sarangapani mentions, and indeed in many English classrooms

with more and more teachers 'teaching to the test'.

I shall however question such an approach. I shall argue that Shankara's search for

knowledge, his ways of interpreting texts coherently and his upholding of respect for

the teacher can yield a very different paradigm for modern education to consider, if

we explore his own methods and overt comments in more depth. In my forthcoming

book, Samkara's Advaita Vedanta: A Way of Teaching, I argue that Shankara holds

the Vedic, especially Upanishadic, texts,12

to give not so much a body of content on

brahman which the teacher must transmit and the pupil absorb correctly, but a series

of methods of teaching, which enable the teacher to draw the pupil to see things

differently until the point of epistemic shift, the point where the pupil goes, 'O, I see!'

Because Shankara holds such a position, his commentaries explaining the texts'

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methods become, explicitly in many instances and implicitly in others, a way of

teaching, of helping the pupil to learn. Far from assuming automatic acceptance of

the teaching of the Vedas, Shankara engages in strenuous processes of reasoning, not

least because this is what the Vedas themselves recommend and deploy. The pupil is

not expected to sit back and leave the teacher to 'fill him up' with the necessary

teaching. He (or sometimes she) is to take the initiative for his or her own learning, to

ask the questions which need to be asked, to disagree where the teacher's position is

not clear. While some prior respect for the teacher is envisaged, its enduring is

premised on the two fundamental qualities a true teacher must display: namely,

knowledge and compassion. If the pupil is expected to ask, the teacher should be able

to adapt his own knowledge compassionately to this particular pupil to enable proper

learning to take place.

There are many Upanishadic stories which contribute to Shankara's view as well as

the Bhagavad Gita. In a short article I cannot justify my position in detail. What I

shall do is to narrate two very well-known Upanishadic stories to show how

Shankara's position is underpinned, outline Shankara's commentary on Gita 4.34 and

then look more closely at his views on questioning, reasoning and citing authorities to

help us develop our own questioning approach.

The first story is from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The gods, asuras and humans

each approach their father Prajapati, the Lord of creatures, for teaching. To each, he

speaks the syllable 'da'. Of each, he asks, 'Do you understand?' The gods understood.

'You told us, "Be self-controlled (damyata)."' The humans understood. 'You told us,

"Give (datta)."' The asuras understood. 'You told us, "Be compassionate

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(dayadhvam)."' To each he said, 'Om, you have understood' (Br Up 5.2). Shankara's

commentary elicits several points of interest. Prajapati only teaches them after they

have lived the students' life of chastity and after they explicitly ask for instruction.

True learning requires preparation, be this the development of ethical qualities and

practice (here chastity), of a knowledge base (Vedic instruction would be assumed),

or of sufficient self-awareness to know what we need to be taught (self-control etc,

whatever is missing from our understanding). Unlike Shvetaketu, who returned to his

father after his period of Vedic studentship without asking, ' By which the unheard

can be heard, the unthought thought, the ununderstood be understood?' (Chandogya

Upanishad 6.1.3), these pupils asked for the needed teaching. And each group,

realising that they were respectively lacking in self-control, generosity and

compassion, heard what they needed to know, some say. But then since asuras are

not very nice, shouldn't we ignore compassion, the teaching given to them, a fictive

opponent suggests? Shankara rejects this and with a rather radical demythologisation

points out: 'There are no gods or asuras other than humans.' Some of these have each

of the failings the teaching addresses. Prajapati speaks directly to humans (Br Up Bh

5.2.3). He thus exemplifies the teacher who knows his pupils and can teach each what

is needed at the moment (compare his teaching to Indra and Virochana in Ch Up 8.7-

12). Such a teacher is himself compassionate,13

prepares his pupils appropriately and

affirms them in what they have understood.

Rather less compliant pupils can be found in Gargi and indeed in Arjuna. Gargi

persistently questions Yajnavalkya, using the metaphor of the two threads used in

weaving, to try to ascertain the foundation of the cosmos: 'On what is that woven like

warp and woof?' But at a certain point he warns her, 'Do not question too much,

11

Gargi, or your head will fall off!' She is not daunted by this, however, knowing that

he has not yielded to her the highest secret. Returning to the pursuit, she is rewarded

with the teaching about the Imperishable (Br Up 3.6 and 3.8). Now it is true that

Shankara comments that initially she is trying to use the wrong approach, her own

powers of inferential reasoning, rather than grounding herself in the Vedic texts. He

also interprets her further questioning as an attempt to trap Yajnavalkya into one of

two faults: that of not comprehending the question, or that of providing a

contradictory answer. By teaching about that brahman of which all qualities and their

opposites are denied he avoids, Shankara contends, both the first and the second.

Yajnavalkya then, according to Shankara, supports his view of brahman by adducing

a series of arguments to make brahman's existence plausible. Reasoning is not to be

denied, but to be correctly grounded. Gargi has been shown to be correct in her

contention that no-one could beat Yajnavalkya in a riddling teaching competition if he

could answer her final two questions, and she has been taught that which Shankara

goes on to show is the teaching of the whole Upanishads (3.8.12). Her persistence is

rewarded, as is Arjuna's in the Gita, when Krishna gives apparently contradictory

teaching time after time and Arjuna has to keep asking for clarification (e.g. GBh

2.10, 3.1, 5.1).

From these stories, we see a very different picture emerging, a picture not of the static

transmission of knowledge and hierarchically imposed discipline, but of engagement

with the issues, the pursuit of questioning, the recognition that learning can change

the one who learns. This is confirmed in BhG 4.34. Here Krishna tells Arjuna to

recognise that the men of knowledge who see the truth will teach him, through

prostration, enquiry (pariprashnena) and service. Shankara comments that such

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respect (prashraya), which includes rather insistent questioning ('What is bondage?

What is liberation? What is misconception? What is knowledge?') as well as the

expected prostration and service, will induce those wise ones who really do

understand the truth to explain the wisdom which the pupil needs.

What pupils need to learn

What is it then that pupils need to learn, according to Shankara? The stories above

give us certain clues. We can set these in the wider context of his commentaries as a

whole. It then becomes clear that the main task of the Advaitin teacher is to help the

pupil remove those obstacles which obscure understanding of brahman (the one

without qualities) as none other than the self (stripped of egoity and mind-body

individuation). From Shankara's point of view this is the correct teaching, the right

viewpoint, the truth.

It is not the place of a state school whether in India or the UK (unless its statutes

specifically provide for it) to advocate a particular position of this kind. Once again

though, if we look carefully at what Shankara says, we can see that the general

principle of the removal of obstacles to learning can be adapted. For removing

obstacles itself requires the correction of misperceptions, the exploration of language,

a consideration of intertextuality and how texts work and the ability to listen to, learn

from or refute the views of others. These along with questioning and reasoning are all

rich ways for the contemporary teacher to educate her or his pupils, to 'lead them out'

from where they are, to open up new possibilities, to recognise that all (whether we

story-tell about gods, humans or asuras, or type our students by class, caste, religion

or gender) are human and need to learn.14

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Questioning

'What makes a great teacher?' 'Asking powerful questions and encouraging learners

to challenge long-held assumptions are key,' according to Ken Bain, director of the

Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University.15

It is a position with which

Shankara would fundamentally have agreed. In the first prose chapter of Shankara's

Thousand Teachings, the teacher first asks the pupil about his name, stage of life,

caste and so on. As the teaching progresses he helps the pupil to acknowledge that he

is different from the body which suffers and dies, that the self is permanent and has no

characteristics. 'Why then,' the teacher questions, 'did you say, "I was the son of a

brahmin of a certain family, a student, or a householder, and now I am a wandering

ascetic?"' (Upad G 1.13). Though the pupil cerebrally follows the argument about the

permanent self, his long-held assumptions about himself as a member of a particular

social group and so on need challenging till he can see the implications of the view

about which he is learning for himself. Similarly it is his father's shrewd, well-

directed but also penetrating question which leads Shvetaketu to recognise that he has

been operating at the wrong level and so to ask his father for the teaching by which

the unheard can be heard (Ch Up 6).16

Research in the UK and USA has shown that many teachers, while asking numerous

questions, tend to ask rather closed questions, or questions which make pupils 'guess

what's in the teacher's mind'. Over 20 years ago, Nancy Lorsch and Shirley

Ronkowski (1982) urged that questioning which is effective helps, by contrast, to

develop critical thinking skills, reinforce student understanding and correct

misunderstanding, as well as providing feedback. William Wilen, a leading US

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educationist, has also researched effective techniques of questioning (e.g. Wilen,

1986, 1987). These are now quoted on north American university websites to support

teachers in Higher Education and others. The University of Hawaii summarises his

advice on what makes questioning effective:

• Plan key questions to provide structure and direction to the lesson.

Spontaneous questions that emerge are fine, but the overall direction of the

discussion has been largely planned.

• Phrase the questions clearly and specifically. Avoid vague and ambiguous

questions.

• Adapt questions to the level of the students' abilities

• Ask questions logically and sequentially

• Ask questions at various levels

• Follow up on students' responses

• Elicit longer, more meaningful and more frequent responses from

students after an initial response by -

• Maintaining a deliberate silence

• Making a declarative statement

• Making a reflective statement giving a sense of what the

students said

• Declaring perplexity over the response

• Inviting elaboration . . .

• Give students time to think after they are questioned.17

Bloom's taxonomy (1956-64; cf. Anderson and Sosniak eds., 1994; Anderson, Bloom

and Krathwohl eds., 2001) or the thinking skills frameworks (e.g. Marzano et

al.,1988; cf. Moseley et al. 2004) which underlie such an approach are many worlds

away from Shankara's. However, much of the repertoire of the aims and techniques

of good questioning may already be found in his Thousand Teachings as well as in his

major commentaries. Here are a few examples.

• It is clear that the teacher we mentioned above begins by questioning the

student about his credentials not just to ascertain that he was fit to receive

instruction (an adhikarin) but so that he would have a future reference point to

challenge the pupil's presuppositions. The direction of the teaching is planned,

15

though the pupil is allowed space to think. The challenge comes in an

expression of perplexity over the response: 'Why then did you say.....?'

• The teacher's questions are terse and to the point but sufficiently open to allow

a range of responses and for the pupil to answer at his own level: 'When the

pupil has grasped the characteristics of the supreme self from shruti and smriti

(sacred texts), in order to help him cross the ocean of rebirth, the teacher

should ask, "Who are you, my dear?"'18

• His questions - and teaching - , like those of many Upanishadic teachers, are

adapted to the pupil's own level, frequently being open enough for the pupil to

respond as he can at the present moment. When Indra and Virochana

approach Prajapati for teaching, he asks them, 'What did you want, that you

came to stay here?' (Ch Up 8.7.3, tr. Roebuck). They must identify their own

need, here the desire to know the self free from death, sorrow and hunger.

Prajapati first tells them, clad as they are in students' simple clothing, to look

at their reflections in a container of water and then asks, 'What do you see?'

(8.8.1). They then have to put on their finery and look again. He asks them

the question again, a question which can be answered at many levels, then

teaches them that this is the self. Whereas Virochana is satisfied with this

teaching and goes away, Indra sees the problem with regarding the mutable

body as the self and receives in turn further teaching that the self is the

dreaming self, the self in deep sleep and then the 'highest person'. Each time

he returns, Prajapati asks him why. Each time he teaches something which

appears to get a little nearer to the truth. But Shankara rejects this 'moon-

branch' explanation.19

No, at each stage Prajapati teaches what is true; it is

simply that it is only at the last stage that Indra is in a position to understand in

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what sense each is true. There is, from an Advaitin point of view, nothing

other than the self. The body, dream self, person in deep sleep are just

superimpositions of different kinds, like a snake wrongly imagined where

there is only a rope. The teacher's questions and teaching are rightly directed.

The pupil must come to see how for him- or herself.20

• In this Upanishadic story, Prajapati follows up Indra's response, with a

deliberate silence - for in each case he sends him away for long periods, thirty-

two years in the first three cases, five in the last! We may not have quite the

time in the modern classroom! But the point is that Indra cannot return and

ask the correct questions himself without time and space for reflection. As

Shankara stresses, it was as he was 'recollecting the words of the teacher again

and again' that Indra came to see the difficulty (8.9.1).

• Prajapati also makes declarative and reflective statements himself, helping to

shape his students' understanding as he does so. Shankara's commentary

constantly explains why Prajapati takes the action he does: to protect them

from being too dejected (7.7.4), to help them remove incorrect understandings

of the self (7.8.2), to speak words which they might misunderstand at the

moment but could come back to later (7.8.3) and so on.

Constantly then there is a movement between questioning and teaching which has a

shape to achieve its end yet is open to the pupil's current stage of development and

starts from the pupil's own questions. And this is very important for Shankara and, I

would contend, for effective modern pedagogy. The sources I have cited above tend

to concentrate on the teacher's role in questioning, a role Shankara himself feels called

upon to justify to show that it comes from a considered strategy rather than ignorance

on the teacher's part (Ch Up Bh 5.12.1, 8.9.2, Br Up Bh 2.1.16). Shankara is just as

17

interested, however, in analysing the pupil's questions or presenting them as part of a

dialogue to show how it is through such questions that learning can progress: through

acknowledgement of need, voicing of puzzlement to elicit further teaching,

questioning of (apparent) inconsistencies to see how a case hangs together (e.g.

throughout Upad G 2). For him, the great teacher not only asks powerful questions,

but recognises that presuppositions will only really be challenged when the pupil

starts to question them for him- or herself.

Reasoning

'Reason is the instrument of all philosophers,' holds Jonardon Ganeri, 'but conceptions

of the nature and function of reason vary along with varying ideas about the work for

which reason is properly employed' (2001:1). While Ganeri's project is the critical

evaluation of conceptual paradigms in Indian theory via the decontextualisation of

Indian arguments and ideas (2001:5), my aim in this section will be much more

modest: to outline some of the ways in which Shankara encourages the pupil to

deploy reason in order to further learning. There is much talk in current educational

circles about developing critical thinking skills.21

It would be inappropriate to suggest

that this is 'really' what Shankara is about. Rather what I want to argue, as in the

section above, is that Shankara operates with a paradigm of learning in which the

appropriate use of reason plays a part, a role which is not in contradiction with a

dyadic teacher-pupil relation of respect but is embedded in it. Shankara makes this

clear in several ways. In his commentary on the Brahma-Sutras, he rejects 'dry

reason', that is, reasoning which is independent of the Vedas and relies solely on

human logic, mainly on the grounds that it leads to the irresolvable conflict of

differences (BSBh 2.1.11). Thinker A says x, Thinker B says y and so on, and there is

18

no-one who can make the final adjudication. Nonetheless, as a fictive opponent

points out, Shankara's position itself relies on reason to help establish his own

coherent reading of the Vedas. This Shankara allows on the grounds that the Vedas

themselves recommend and deploy the use of reason (e.g. in Br Up 2.4.5).22

It is only

unaided human reason which suffers from the defects above. Proper use of reason,

then, is to be embedded not only in the sacred texts, but in the teaching tradition

which correctly hands them down.

Because of Shankara's reliance here on sacred text, even scholars such as Halbfass,

who is sensitive to Shankara's Vedically-based use of reason, hold that he has put

himself outside the court of open debate (1991:36). Perhaps this then confirms that

Shankara can only be used to uphold an insider Advaitin position dependent on

particular authorities rather than to provide any possibility of education dialogue?

There is perhaps another position which can be argued. It requires us to understand

that Shankara's view of Vedic language is radically removed from the notions of

written text and authored composition which many of us assume as part of 'common-

sense'. Rather, for Shankara, drawing on Mimamsa theories of language developed

out of reflection on Vedic sacrificial practice and the eternal Vedic language or sound,

word (shabda) is that which constructs the world as it is, making possible the

everyday, conventional world within which we all function and reason, and is prior to

all experience. That the Veda advocates the proper use of reason indicates for

Shankara, then, that the world is of such a kind, that it is reasonable to reason. That

would seem to be a presupposition that, working from very different starting-points,

we could share.

19

There is a further point which Shankara's stance on the Veda foregrounds. That he is

so self-conscious about the proper grounding of reason in the Veda might lead us to

examine the fundamental presuppositions of our own educational paradigms, rather

than assuming that ours are independent of such, by contrast with a scripturally-based

system. We shall return to this at the end.

How then does Shankara model reasoning in his commentaries and so get the pupil to

reason? As is well-known, he uses the standard format of vada in his writings.23

This is a formalised process of debate in which, at its simplest, an initial or opponent's

position is suggested (the purvapaksha), problems with this pointed out, alternatives

explored and the final position (the siddhanta) defended and shown to be established.

So, for example, in his commentary on the opening verse of the Brahma-Sutras:

'Then therefore the desire to know brahman' there is an issue about the meaning of the

word 'atha', 'then'. It suggests that something must come before the current study.

The opponent suggests that the necessary prerequisite is the understanding of ritual

actions. No, replies Shankara. Because it is possible for a person who has studied the

Upanishads, the 'end of the Veda',24

to desire to know/inquire into brahman, before

inquiring into dharma, that is, without studying the system of the Purvamimamsa, or

ritual exegetes, whose own sutras begin, 'Then therefore the desire to know dharma'

(Mimamsa Sutra 1.1.1). Shankara justifies his position by setting out the difference in

goals between the Purvamimamsa and his own Uttaramimamsa (or Vedanta) view.

Their goal of dharma is achieved by human decision and effort (following injunction

a by doing ritual x to achieve result y). It is thereby, in his opinion, dependent on that

effort, brought into being by that action, and so impermanent. The Vedantins' goal,

20

by contrast, he argues, relies solely on the nature of the one to be known, brahman

which is eternal. Pursuing such a goal cannot therefore be dependent upon injunctions

which lead to an impermanent result and so does not require study of Purvamimamsa

whose field is precisely those Vedic injunctions. Rather, Shankara concludes, the

necessary prerequisites for inquiring into brahman involve the rejection of

Purvamimamsa values, an orientation towards brahman and the development of a

personal discipline preparatory to that quest.

Succinctly expressed in a few lines is one of the major positions against which

Shankara establishes his own and the grounds on which he distances himself from it.

The pupil is shown: how to differentiate between two positions, the way to state that

difference, the implications of that difference. The assumptions of the two views are

clearly laid out, the corollaries of adopting the one rather than the other signalled at

the outset. This is a far cry from laying down a single view of an issue which is to be

accepted on the teacher's authority without question.

Now it is certainly the case that the opponent's position is presented by Shankara in a

manner which helps to establish his own point of view. And sometimes the

purvapaksha seems to have been created by Shankara (and other commentators)

specifically for that purpose. Thinking of the purvapaksha as a 'fictive opponent'

helps us to bear in mind Shankara's angle of debate. In turn we may encourage our

students to interrogate the ways in which different authors' views are represented ( or

misrepresented) in secondary sources and indeed in their own discussions. For the

alternative is not for the modern teacher to give students the 'right' interpretation to

reproduce. It is to help them learn how to represent others' viewpoints accurately

21

while understanding that such representations are always from a particular point of

view.

Even if Shankara's opponents are 'fictive', he does have discussions which represent

contemporary opponents' views more or less accurately and wrestle with

philosophical problems still current today.25

A good example concerns Shankara's

discussions with various Buddhists over the nature of consciousness and the status of

apparently external objects. Ingalls (1954) demonstrated that Shankara's arguments in

the Brahma-Sutra commentary and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad commentary

contain both standard Buddhist and other refutations of earlier Buddhist positions, and

a series of original arguments of Shankara's own, the purpose of which was to

establish the need for a permanent self over against both cognitions and objects of

cognition. Ram-Prasad (1993) has further pointed out that the 'idealist' position

against which Shankara argues is very similar to that of Vasubandhu, a fourth century

Yogachara Buddhist.26

In Br Up Bh 4.3.7, the discussion initially turns around the applicability of the

example of a lamp. The Buddhist contends that, just as a lamp needs no further light

to illumine itself, so consciousness needs no further self to account for perception (cf.

Upad P 18.151f). Shankara argues back that both lamp and jar require a perceiver,

for it is not the presence of the lamp which creates the perception of the lamp, but the

presence of a perceiver. Therefore the lamp is an inappropriate example for the

Buddhist's case. The Buddhist's response is that Shankara's position leads to an

infinite regress. For if Shankara argues that the lamp requires a separate perceiver to

perceive it, then a further perceiver will be required to perceive the perceiver and so

22

on, given his application of the lamp analogy. Shankara's riposte is that, because in

the everyday world, from which our analogies come, objects differ, some, like jars,

requiring light to make them cognisable, others, like lamps, not so requiring, it is not

legitimate to argue that something separate is required in every single case (which

would indeed lead to the undesired infinite regress). Rather, in the case of the self,

the self is sufficient for cognition, not requiring a further perceiver beyond itself.

Shankara then brings in an argument that the existence of external objects different

from consciousness is necessary to account for the type of world we experience. This

is in a challenge to the Buddhist's argument from dream referred to rather briefly here

but in more detail in BSBh 2.2.28-29. Since, the Buddhist contends, when you are

dreaming, there is cognition of external objects without there actually being external

objects, it is possible for apparently external objects to be reduced simply to the

cognition of external objects. And if this is the case for some apparently external

objects, it must be the case for all, including those perceived in the waking state, since

the cognition of an object as if external is not sufficient to guarantee that it is external,

given dream experience. In the Brihadaranyaka commentary (4.3.7), Shankara argues

back that the Buddhist's own usage recognises differences between the way in which

words like 'consciousness' are used compared with the way in which words like 'jar

and 'lamp' are used and indeed that the Buddhist assumes a difference between

himself and his opponent in arguing against him. This is tantamount, Shankara holds,

to accepting the existence of an external world.27

In the Brahma-Sutra commentary,

Shankara develops this argument further, pointing out that the ability to distinguish

between waking and dreaming is the crucial weak point in the Buddhist's argument,

for it demands recognition that there is a difference between them, the difference

23

being precisely, he maintains, that between cognitions where no external objects exist

(in dreaming) and cognitions where external objects do exist (in waking) (cf. 2.2.29).

Moreover, our experience is never actually of the cognition of objects but of the

objects themselves (2.2.28). So if the Buddhist purports to take experience seriously

as a starting point for debate, this point needs to be acknowledged to account for the

way cognitive experience works. A third prong of the debate in both commentaries

then centres around the need for a permanent perceiver to account for the memory of

objects perceived (Br Up Bh 4.3.7, BSBh 2.2.25, cf. 2.2.30-31). Against Shankara's

positing of the self, Yogacharin explains memory rather in terms of streams of

consciousness, alongside a theory of 'store consciousness' which accounts for shared

public experience in the waking state.

It is not my intention here to adjudicate on whether Shankara's arguments for 'the

general conditions' needed 'for a systematic cognitive order' are more plausible than

the Vijnanavada Buddhists' (for a rigorous discussion, see Ram-Prasad, 1993). The

above should be sufficient to support my point that reasoned argument in a public

arena, not simply the production of straw men, is important to Shankara and for his

pupils - and this is borne out in the application of such arguments between teacher and

pupil in his Thousand Teachings. Key examples include Upad G 2.45-73 discussing

the nature of the self and Upad G 1.25-32 where the teacher helps the pupil to see the

inappropriateness of regarding the Lord as an object of devotion over against the self.

In the elliptical but lengthy Upad P 18, Shankara weaves together complex arguments

on language, cognition and authority to establish his position on the self, against both

Purvamimamsaka and Buddhist opponents, to help the pupil arrive at the point where

he goes, 'O I see' and the liberating cognition occurs (see Suthren Hirst 2003). It is

24

therefore the case, I contend, that thinkers such as he cannot provide a paradigm for a

'transmit, learn and regurgitate' model of teaching and learning, where the pupil's

critical faculties and engagement are virtually bypassed.

As we saw above, Shankara believes the justification for rational argument to be in

the Veda's own recommendation and example, not least through the numerous

embedded inductive inferences (involving theses, reasons and supporting examples)

which he finds given in Upanishadic texts and transmitted by the Brahma-Sutras too

(see Suthren Hirst ? and 2005 in press, ch.4). Nonetheless, Shankara is then happy to

use such forms of argument, even when arguing against opponents who do not

recognise Vedic authority, the Buddhists being prime among them. And it is one of

his own main concerns that the pupil should not simply be able to reiterate such

arguments parrot-fashion, but should recognise their implications for himself ('Why

then did you say....?' Upad G 1.13).

What our consideration of Shankara therefore shows is that, even in a thinker for

whom the authority of the texts is so important, an ability to reason a case, and to

learn how to do so in the context of a respected teacher-pupil relationship, plays a

central role. Moreover, despite appearances, there is a risk involved in Shankara's

inculcation of the ability to argue in his pupils. For in fostering the ability to argue, in

allowing the pupil to question, in requiring the pupil to work out the implications of

his own position, there is the risk that the pupil will take a different view. The

hagiographies are full of people who moved from teacher to teacher till they found the

one who would induct them into the tradition they held to teach the truth, Shankara

himself included. Admittedly, one of their purposes is to emphasise that theirs is the

25

tradition in which to end up. Nevertheless, this can only be the case if the viewpoint

can be justified, the teacher trusted, the benefits of his viewpoint enjoyed.28

What is more, even within a teaching tradition, differences will occur, with pupils

developing the teaching in different ways. While originality was not considered a

virtue over correct adherence to the teaching tradition, this did not prevent Shankara

from developing an original position nor from stating overtly that he wrote his Gita

commentary to correct the fallacious and confusing views of those who had explained

it before.

In this section, then, once again, we have found no support for a form of teaching

which debars questioning and reasoning, though, given Shankara's self-consciousness

about his own Vedic grounding, we may have found one which challenges us to think

about our own presuppositions, forms of argument and the purposes for which they

are to be employed. In helping our pupils to develop critical analytical thinking, we,

like Shankara, can help them to develop good reasons for holding the views they do,

make links with their own experience to find examples which support their case,

evaluate whether another person's reasons hold, consider what degree of likeness is

required for a supporting example to fulfil its role. We can get them to look at the

different stages of an argument, to consider whether there are reasons for disagreeing

with its presuppositions, to examine the logic of the argument and its procedures, and

to uncover problems with its implications noting, for example, whether it leads to

contradiction or an infinite regress. And in examining the purposes of our own

arguments, we may ask whether dialogue, involving the genuine attempt to hear

others and understand their differences might not be a better model for education than

26

debate, which assumes the truth of one's own position over against that of the other

who is to be refuted.

Handling and citing authorities

We started this paper on questioning approaches to learning with the issue of

plagiarism.29

Plagiarism, as we stress to undergraduate students at my own

university, is intellectual theft. At its worst, it is the wholesale use of another's work

without acknowledgement, passing it off as one's own. But it can also cover the

inclusion of quotations from another's work without citing the source, as well as using

someone else's material and structure with only a few minor changes, without

attribution. It thus ranges from deliberate 'stealing' to a mistaken understanding of

what it is to draw on someone else's expertise 'in your own words'. Somewhat

differently, as our initial discussion suggested, it may also stem from a genuine desire

to reproduce the words of an expert, whose understanding is recognised as far

superior to the student's and whose wording is therefore considered worthy of such

reproduction. Indeed, this may be considered meritorious, not least as a way of

respecting honoured teachers.

I have argued above that, in Shankara's tradition, as in many others where the teacher

is honoured, respect is shown to the teacher in a range of ways from initial readiness

to receive teaching, through critical engagement with the teacher's ideas and those of

others, to personal awareness of the implications of what has been learned. While the

pupil is to have confidence in the teacher's understanding, there is no expectation that

the pupil will simply rote learn and reproduce what the teacher transmits. Time and

again, Shankara differentiates proper understanding of brahman from the rote

27

learning of Vedic study which has not been properly digested (e.g. Kena Up Bh 1.4,

cf. GBh 4.34). The story of Shvetaketu who returns from Vedic study without asking

the really important questions is perhaps the most famous example (Ch Up 6.1.1). He

needs his father's repeated teaching, 'You are that' to lead him to the realisation that

the self is none other than brahman. Quite different from his earlier rote learning, this

liberating realisation constitutes an epistemic shift which alters the whole way he sees

things.

We have already differentiated the task of the state school from the soteriological goal

of traditions such as Advaita. Nonetheless, we may continue with Shankara to see

good education as a process of smaller epistemic shifts, of changes in understanding,

which affect the way our students see things, which 'lead them out' from where they

start. If we wish our students to develop reasoned views of their own, they will need

to be able to consider the views of others, to assess their merits and weaknesses, and

to state the view which they, in the end, favour. We will not then foster rote learning

of a kind which acts against such a process nor the 'cut-paste-and-present-as-your-

own' mentality which many students in UK schools, seeking material on the world-

wide web, are currently, at best, not discouraged from using. This applies also to the

handling of other source material, in the many classrooms in the world where the

possibility of internet access is remote, as well as in those where the danger of its

being seen as the only authoritative (and/or plagiarisable) source can be deeply

problematic.

Despite Shankara's very different world, I suggest there are at least three aspects of

his pedagogical practice from which we can learn in helping our students not to

28

plagiarise, in addition to the questioning, reasoning enquiry we have already explored.

The first is linked with that. It is to give students who have been brought up in

conservative traditions of respect for teacher-pupil dyadic relationships awareness that

Shankara, as one great teacher among many, expected not conformity but questioning

till the point of change from his students, based on the very approach of the Vedic

authoritative texts.

The second I can only indicate here but have explored at length in my forthcoming

book (Suthren Hirst 2005 in press). It is the way in which Shankara, as a

commentator on those Vedic texts, envisages exegetical strategies as pedagogic

techniques. Showing in numerous ways how grammatical investigations grounded in

Mimamsa principles of exegesis can simultaneously enable the pupil to strip away

unwanted meanings from word in sentences and remove from the pupil the

superimpositions he mistakenly makes on brahman, Shankara brings the pupil to the

point of epistemic shift precisely through close engagement with the language of the

texts.

The approaches to reading texts to which we introduce students, the criteria we induct

them into using and the outcomes we expect will be radically different. What we can

learn from Shankara is that one of the most effective ways to combat plagiarism is to

enable students to engage with texts for themselves, to see why the issues discussed

matter, to expect to find their viewpoints challenged or to understand how they are

confirmed in a new light. It is to encourage them to raise their own questions, just as

we saw earlier in Shankara's own approach, and to help them learn that it is through

such a process of engagement that learning comes. Then, with the confidence that

29

there is no need to plagiarise to show proper respect for the teacher, their desire to

plagiarise may be removed once the student realises that it is in engagement with the

views of others that learning takes place.30

This leads directly to our third issue: the

appropriate incorporation of sources.

Shankara's writings abound in quotations from primary sources, mainly the

Upanishads but also other Vedic and smriti texts. Unsurprisingly, the conventions of

his day for quoting sources were different from now. While we try to get students to

give exact references for their sources for the reasons indicated above, Shankara

rarely gives the sources of his quotations (though editing hands often put these in).

This is not because the source is irrelevant, nor because all sources can be treated the

same, nor because Shankara is attempting intellectual theft! Rather, Shankara quotes

the first few words of an Upanishadic verse, confident that it will be familiar to his

readers/hearers who will anyway study the commentary in a teacher-pupil

relationship. Part of what the pupil learns is how to recognise these textual fragments

and so ways of reading texts in relation to one another.

To this end, Shankara quotes primary sources for a range of reasons, though all

support his fundamental view that the Vedas are coherent in their teaching of

brahman as self. Often he engages in discussion with a fictive opponent who quotes

verses to support his view. Shankara then shows how such a view does not make the

best sense of the passage concerned, adducing other texts to support a different view

and explaining in what sense the opponent's chosen verses can be better harmonised

with Shankara's interpretation. This is frequently the case in the Brahma-Sutras

where Shankara discusses whether the topic of a particular Upanishadic passage is,

30

for example, the individual self or brahman (e.g. BSBh 1.120f, 1.128f, 1.21 etc) or

argues with opponents such as the Samkhyans over the nature of brahman as cause

(BSBh 1.4.1f).

Shankara also shows that selecting different supportive verses can affect the way a

sutra is read, allowing that some sutras are capable of more than one interpretation.

A good example is found in BSBh 1.2.23, where Shankara draws on different verses

from the Mundaka Upanishad to yield two compatible though different

interpretations. At other times he shows how a sutra is open to radically different

readings yet allows these to stand side by side. The clearest example of this is of

Brahma-Sutra 1.1.3 (shastrayonitvat) where the Sanskrit can be read either as

'Because it [i.e. brahman] is the source of scripture' or 'Because the scriptures are the

source of [knowledge of] it'. The former is supported by quotations from e.g. Br Up

2.4.14 on brahman breathing out the Rig Veda etc to indicate how brahman can be

regarded as scripture's source. The latter is supported by a quite different series of

quotations showing that brahman is known from the Upanishads. These are verses on

what brahman is or how to know brahman, differentiated from verses giving

injunctions to action, which Purvamimamsa (to be refuted in BSBh 1.1.4) prioritised.31

A rigorous and careful exploration of primary sources, cited accurately and given

possible interpretations is therefore central to Shankara's approach to learning.32

Nor are his works lacking in direct quotations from secondary sources, including the

works of other schools, though these are fairly rare.33

More often, as we have seen,

Shankara charactises opponents' views himself, sometimes more sometimes less

accurately. However, it is interesting to note that where Shankara's opponent

31

recognises the authority of the Vedas, Shankara's argument will be liberally supported

by quotations from the Upanishads and other Vedic and smriti texts (like the

Bhagavad Gita, Laws of Manu, etc). By contrast, where the opponent, say a Buddhist

or Jain, does not recognise that authority, Shankara's argument proceeds without such

citations (e.g. Br Up Bh 4.3.7). This is formalised in Thousand Teachings Prose ch.1

whose approach has traditionally been identified as 'hearing', that is, hearing the

sacred texts. Here, multiple quotations abound. Quite different in style is Prose ch.2,

traditionally seen as an example of 'reasoning', where there is not a quotation in sight.

Authorities then are cited judiciously and only in appropriate contexts. The teacher's

example here is something which we can encourage our students to understand and

apply, in order to instil good practice, to help them avoid plagiarism and most

importantly to engage with the texts themselves, though the manner in which we do

so will differ considerably from Shankara's own.

However, just as we saw with questioning, it is not only the teacher who quotes.

Certainly in Thousand Teachings prose chapter 1, it is usually the teacher who

adduces plentiful quotations to support an Advaitin point of view. There are, though,

also occasions when it is the pupil who quotes, expressing puzzlement about how a

text may apply, given his own experience. Thus in Upad G 1.32, the pupil finds his

own experience of pain and hunger at odds with the teaching of Veda and smriti in

texts like 'The self is not affected by evils, is free from old age, death and grief, is not

affected by hunger or thirst' (Ch Up 8.1.5). In Upad G 1.39, it is the apparently

incompatible teachings of the texts that worry the pupil. On the one hand,

Upanishadic texts speak of the self as pure consciousness like a mass of salt (cf. Br

Up 4.5.13) denying all difference. On the other, Veda, smriti and everyday

32

experience bear witness to the differences between aspirant, means and goal. It is left

to the teacher to explain, with due textual back-up, that difference is caused by

misconception and it is the Veda that can remove this (Upad G 1.40-43). Helping our

students to conduct 'conversations between sources', to address their own questions to

sources, to get them to see why sources differ, whether they can be reconciled as

interpretations or which is to be preferred if not, is another important part of

encouraging the engagement with and acknowledgement of sources which help to

combat attitudes underlying plagiarism.

In this section, then, we have suggested that, while standing in a tradition grounded in

respect for texts and teachers, Shankara gives no support for a picture of learning

where the pupil simply reproduces the words of the teacher. Rather, in multitudinous

ways he encourages critical engagement with and citation of sources, including the

teacher's words, so that the pupil makes their wisdom his own.

Conclusion

What then can we learn in a modern dialogue from Shankara's pedagogical

techniques? Throughout this article, I have been careful to indicate how Shankara's

techniques must be understood in the context of his own eighth century AD Advaita

Vedantin approach, which is different in so many ways from state school education in

the twenty-first century whether in the UK or India. I have also stressed that

Shankara is one among many figures from a wide variety of traditions, including

Indian Islamic ones, who might be engaged with on such an issue. Notwithstanding

this, Shankara's self-conscious references to pedagogic explanations, his emphasis on

33

learning as a method (of coming to know brahman) and the importance of the dyadic

teacher-pupil relationship in his writings make him an interesting starting-point.

I therefore return to my title: questioning approaches. In its first sense, I suggest that

looking at the pedagogical methods of great teachers in other ages can help us look

afresh at our own, can put 'modern' approaches - e.g. pupil-centred ones, or critical

reasoning - in a longer perspective, and can help us question received assumptions -

say, the cultural antiquity of an inevitable link between respect for the teacher and

uncritical, passive rote-learning. This is not least because, in its second sense, as we

have seen, Shankara's pedagogical approach is fundamentally one which is based on

getting the pupil to question those assumptions which are 'common-sense', taken-for-

granted ways of looking at the world. The emphasis he places on explaining the

function of questions in his Upanishadic texts and the ways in which his

commentaries and other writings encourage the pupil to develop methods of reasoning

and assessing evidence in interpreting these and other texts justify our description of

his pedagogical techniques as ones involving questioning. Yet importantly this is all

done without in any way undermining a profound framework of respect based on the

teacher's wisdom and compassion.

In our classrooms, whether at school or university level, in India or the UK, we

encounter pupils (and parents and colleagues) who have very set assumptions. As

Sarangapani argued, we cannot simply bring in new teaching methods such as pupil-

centred learning in the modern sense of the term if this is seen to be incompatible with

fundamental cultural values or expectations about what education should provide.

However, we can challenge such assumptions in the light of the approaches of those

34

who have gone before (and who may be mistakenly believed to uphold the

assumption being challenged). We can appreciate the need for a learning

environment which is sufficiently structured to enable pupils to make progress, yet is

open to their questioning and ideas. And we can also reinterpret the need for critical

thinking in our own different contexts, interrogate our own goals and methods and

thereby enable our pupils to do the same.

Notes

1 Led by Professor Sally Brown of the then Institute for Learning and Teaching in

Higher Education, U.K.

2 For a critique of such material, see Mukta, 1997.

3 Scholars such as Cenkner (1983:49) and Marcaurelle (2000) have recently argued

that Shankara was far more open than this would suggest, the latter arguing that a

careful study of Shankara's understanding of renunciation reveals a stress on the

renouncing of desires within the householder life and the former suggesting from

BSBh 3.4.37 that Shankara did envisage Advaitin teaching being open to all varnas

(the four ideal social groups of brahmanas, priests - teachers of the Vedas, kshatriyas,

warriors and rulers - protectors of the kingdom, vaishyas, merchants - producers of

wealth and shudras, artisans and servants - serving the interests of others in society)

35

amongst whom traditionally only the first three groups, the 'twice-born' were allowed

to hear the Vedas, which form the only valid method of acquiring (Advaitin)

knowledge (pramana) as Shankara states over and over again. For a critical appraisal

of their views, see Suthren Hirst (2005 in press, ch.2).

4 cf The Swann Report (1985), Education for All, whose advocacy of an education

system and curriculum which included all children in the UK whatever their ethnic

background is now regarded as still widely unrealised (see e.g. LDA (2004) and The

Guardian leader for 7 Sept 2004 referring back to Swann,

http://www.observer.guardian.co.uk/race/story/0,11374,617115,00.html, date

accessed 20 Sept 2004.)

5 Education White Paper (2001) para 5.30. And cf. 'It's good to have faith', Times

Educational Supplement, 9 Sept 2001.

6 'ultimate reality', the reality which grounds the cosmos, which for Shankara simply is

consciousness, free of specific context (cf. Ram-Prasad, 2001: 171).

7 e.g. Br Up 2.4.14 'For where there is duality, one smells another, one sees another,

one hears another, one speaks to another, one thinks of another, one knows another.

But where everything in one has become self, how can one small - and whom? How

can one see - and who? How can one hear - and whom? How can one speak - and to

whom? How can one think - and of whom? How can one know - and whom? How

can one know that by which one knows all this? How can one know the knower?'

Shankara's commentary on Br Up 2.3.6: 'Where there is any distinguishing mark:

name or form or action or difference or class or quality, a word can denote. There is

no such distinguishing mark of brahman.'

36

8 See e.g. Thousand Teachings, metric ch. 18.183-191, cf. Gita Bhashya 6.27, the only

verse where Shankara actually uses the term jivanmukta (see Fort 1998, ch.2 and

p.196 n.2).

9 e.g. Chandogya Upanishad commentary 5.11.7, 8.7.2, cf. Mundaka Upanishad

commentary 1.2.12, Prashna Upanishad commentary 1.1.

10 Taittiriya Upanishad commentary introduction; Thousand Teachings metric

chapters 17.2-3, 17.88, 18.2, 18.230, 19.28; Gaudapada Karika commentary, final

three verses. There has been some discussion on the authenticity of some of these (see

Pande 1994, p.105).

11 e.g. Totaka's Shrutisarasamuddharana; Padmapada's Panchapadika invocation

verse 4; Sureshvara's sub-commentary on Shankara's Taittiriya Upanishad

commentary invocation verses 3 and 4; and his Naishkarmyasiddhi 1.5-6.

12 Each Veda has four 'layers' of texts: the Samhitas (collections of hymns used in the

Vedic ritual), the Brahmanas and Aranayakas each of which reflect progressively on

the ritual correspondences between macrocosm and microcosm, and finally the

Upanishads in which the search to brahman takes priority, though there is much

overlapping material in each. The Vedanta set of schools, of which Shankara's

Advaita (non-dual) tradition was one, focused on the Upanishads.

13 cf. Ch Up Bh 6.14.2, Br Up Bh 2.1.20.

14 Even Shankara who would greatly prefer pupils to be brahmins allows that some

shudras may be able to gain liberation if they have been properly prepared or taught

in previous lives. His demythologization of the da, da, da story suggests that we may

extend the principle more radically.

15 The Times Higher, 7 May 2004: 23, referring to Ken Bain, 2004.

16 For further examples, see Suthren Hirst, 2005 in press, ch. 4.

37

17

www.hcc.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebook/teachtip/effqu

est.htm, date accessed 21 June 2004, citing Wilen, 1986. See also e.g. Cheelan

Bo-Lin (n.d.) Effective Classroom Questioning, Instructional Development,

Center for Teaching Excellence, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,

available at http://www.oir.uiuc.edu/Did/docs/questioning.htm, date accessed 21

March 2005.

18 A useful classroom exercise in itself, if students are put in pairs, one simply to

question the other continually, 'Who are you?' until no further response can given.

Getting them to analyse their responses will enable them to see all sorts of issues

about how we variously identify ourselves, within what frameworks and in what

circumstances.

19 Pointing out the moon to a companion by first pointing to one branch, then to

another so that the eye is gradually drawn up to see the moon beyond (Ch Up 8.12.1)

20 And compare the points at which the teacher himself questions in Upad G 2 as well

(2.63, 2.69, 2.73, 2.87).

21 For a review of some of the main literature, developed in the 1980s, see 'Critical

Thinking Skills in Teacher Education', ERIC digest 3-88, available at

www.ericfacility.net/databases/ERIC_Digests/ed297003.html, date accessed 9 Aug

2004. See also the website of the USA National Council for Excellence in Critical

Thinking, www.criticalthinking.org/ncect.html, date accessed 9 Aug 2004.

22 For further reading on the relation between sacred text and reason in Shankara's

thought, see Satchidananda Murty, 1959, Halbfass,1991, Suthren Hirst, 2005 in press,

ch. 3.

23 For a detailed discussion of forms of argument, see Esther Solomon (1976).

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24

i.e. vedanta.

25 Though his misrepresentation of for example the Madhyamaka notion of emptiness

(shunyata) as 'the void' I have discussed elsewhere (Suthren Hirst 2005 in press: ?)

26 Yogachara was known by Shankara as Vijnanavada and by Buddhists also as

Cittamatra, both meaning 'Consciousness-Only' school, consciousness, which as

Shankara accurately points out in the Brihadaranyaka commentary (4.3.7), is

regarded as assuming the tainted form of subject-object distinctions due to conceptual

construction.

27 The Buddhist, of course, accepts that differences are perceived in ordinary

experience but rejects their final status as other than the tainted form of consciousness

(see note above).

28 This is not to ignore the point that social status, competition between rival groups

and so on were not also important factors.

29 Plagiarism may minimally be defined as 'the presentation of the ideas, work or

words of other people without proper, clear and unambiguous acknowledgement'

(Plagiarism and Other Forms of Academic Malpractice, The University of

Manchester Policy and Procedures Website 2005-2006,

www.manchester.ac.uk/policies/Plagiarism%20Staff%20Guide.pdf, para 4, date

accessed 17 Mar 2005). The University's Guidance to Students on Plagiarism and

Other Forms of Academic Malpractice adds: 'It could also include a close paraphrase

of [someone else's] words or a minimally adapted version of a computer program, a

diagram, a graph or an illustration etc, [which might be] taken from a variety of

sources without proper attribution'

(www.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/policies/Plagiarism%20Students.pdf, para 7,

date accessed 17 Mar 2005).

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The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of UK universities now funds a

Plagiarism Advisory Service which is in process of developing a website to support

institutions and students (www.jiscpas.ac.uk , date accessed 17 Mar 2005).

30 This is not though to be naive and to realise that students plagiarise for a variety of

other reasons, lack of time when earning money to support their studies being only

one of the more frequent nowadays in UK universities. Setting appropriate forms of

assessment which make plagiarism hard or not worthwhile has to be part of a modern

teacher's strategy as well.

31 These include Ch Up 6.2.1 'In the beginning, Being alone, one only without a

second'; Aitareya Aranyaka 2.4.1.1 'In the beginning, all this was self, one only'; Br

Up 2.5.19 'This is brahman without cause, without effect, without inside, without

outside; this self is brahman, the all-perceiving.'

32 For an extended discussion of ways in which he interprets some of the most

important passages on Upanishadic language, such as 'You are that' (Ch Up 6.8.7 etc),

'Not thus not thus (Br Up 2.3.6.) and 'Brahman is reality, consciousness, infinite'

(Tait Up 2.1.1), see Suthren Hirst (2005 in press), chs. 7 and 8.

33 Examples include quotations from Panini grammatical rules 1.4.20, 2.1.50 and

6.4.158 in BSBh 1.4.23, 1.4.11 and 1.3.8 respectively; Nyaya-sutra 1.1.2 and 1.1.18 in

BSBh 1.1.4 (arguing that the logician's view supports his) and 2.2.37 (arguing against

views of causality espoused by Samkhya, Yoga, Maheshvara Shaivas (some of whom

were Nyaya exponents) and Vaisheshikas, with help from the Nyaya foundational

texts); the Buddhist Dharmakirti's Pramanavarttika 2.354 in Thousand Teachings

18.142 (though this may be an interpolation), where Shankara argues against the

Buddhist. Contemporaries would also have recognised his indirect portrayal e.g. of

the Yogacharin Buddhist Vasubandhu's position in BSBh 2.2.28 discussed above.

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