Ideas of Liberation in Medieval Advaita Vedānta

Classical Indian soteriological systems such as the various forms of Vedānta, Yoga, Buddhism, and so on are characterised by dense interrelations between specific metaphysical accounts of the nature of reality, diagnoses of the human condition, and elaborations of praxes which will lead individuals towards human fulfilment. For these systems, the repeated cycles of life and death ( saṁsāra ) are a convenient summary of human ills, and they propose distinctive patterns of liberation from empirical existence that is structured by spiritual ignorance ( avidyā  ). The various strands of Advaita Vedānta had to grapple with a certain paradox that shapes its practices of liberation. On the one hand, the liberation that it speaks of is an always already established ‘fact’, which is not produced through a series of human efforts, but, on the other hand, it prescribes to human beings the practice of certain forms of insight to ‘realise’ their true identity. We will discuss this paradox of practice by tracing some lines of continuity from, as well as highlighting some differences of emphasis between, Śaṁkara (c. 800 CE) himself and a few medieval Advaita authors in their respective engagements with its structure. While both argue for the cruciality of practice at the ‘conventional’ level, while denying the reality of human agency from the ‘transcendental’ perspective, the texts we will consider, namely, the Pañcadaśī , the Jīvanmuktiviveka , and the Vedāntasāra , place a greater degree of emphasis than we find in Śaṁkara on certain practices related to yogic self‐control. We will highlight certain reasons that underlie this conceptual‐experiential shift.