The Metaphysics of Meditation: Sri Aurobindo and Adi-Sakara on the Isa Upanisad (Bloomsbury Studies in World Philosophies)

In this book Stephen Phillips focuses on one of the most important poems about meditation in world literature, as understood by two of the greatest philosophers of India, one classical, one modern.Sankara’s commentaries on the Upanisads are a core of the Vedanta tradition and Aurobindo is a towering figure of 20th-century Hindu thought.This is the first time their approaches have been studied together. The Isa (c. 500 BCE) an “Upanisad” belongs to a genre of “adhyatmika” learning-concerning self and consciousness-in early Indian literature.According to the Ancient Indian tradition of yoga, meditation is antithetical to willful bodily and mental action.Breathing is all you do. In the conception of the Isa Upanisad, we are told that the best that comes from meditation is because of what the “Lord” is.In Sankara's interpretation it comes to block out the little “you,” whereas according to Aurobindo it comes as a divine connection, an occult “Conscious Force” belonging to truer part of one