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The Fourth Lesson: The Vedanta System.1181
all.” He also says: “Other philosophies do exist and have some following, but
Vedanta has the largest.”
While the Vedanta flourished from its conception, still its great progress
has been made since about a.d. 800, the date of the great decline of
Buddhism in India. Buddhism had driven many of the old orthodox dogmas
from the minds of the Hindu people, and yet its doctrine of Negation and
Nothingness did not satisfy the cravings of a race that always had clung close
to the spiritual ideals. To return to the old forms was impossible, and yet
the new, cold doctrine of Gautama, the Buddha did not satisfy, although it
had been tried for a thousand years or more. Then, in response to this need,
the followers of the Vedanta began to do some propaganda work, in the
tolerant, broad spirit that has always characterized the Hindu teachers, who
would always admit Truth in the conceptions of their opponents, but at the
same time would claim “a greater Truth” in their own. And the Vedanta, with
its broadness and willingness to admit outsiders without requiring them to
cast overboard all of their preconceived and cherished ideas, appealed
to the people of India at this time. The Brahma-Sutra, the earliest Vedanta
work, was supplemented by the most able and brilliant commentary, called
the Sariraka-Bhasya, from the mind of Shri Sankaracharya, who is regarded
by the Vedantists as one of the greatest philosophers that the world ever
produced, and who was the “second-father” of the system.
It is most difficult to state in a few words the fundamental conception
of the Vedanta philosophy, for the reason that it has an inner and an outer
doctrine—the outer, or rather several outer ones, being for the masses who
are not able to grasp the higher conception of the inner, the latter being
reserved for those whose rare philosophic minds enable them to grasp
the Absolute Idealism of the inner teachings. As we have said, the doctrine
concerns itself with the “inquiry into the Brahman” and the manifestation
of the latter as the phenomenal universe with its individual soul. The
Vedanta fathers found the doctrine of that; The Absolute; Brahman; firmly