There is something profoundly counter-intuitive about Advaita Vedanta. Nothing is more obvious to both the philosophical as well as the non-philosophical observer than the fact that multiplicity constitutes the basic datum of our experience. Variety is not only the spice of life-it is a cardinal fact of life. T he doctrines of Advaita Vedanta shock us by flying in the face of this fact and by denying any ultimacy to that plurality and variety which we experience so intimately. This naturally raises the question: how does Advaita Vedanta render its doctrines credible in the face their apparent implausibility. This book is an exploration of one of its central illustrative devices with which it tries to accomplish this daunting task.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arvind Sharma
ARVIND SHARMA was born in Varanasi, India. He earned a B.A. in History, Economics, and Sanskrit from Allahabad University in 1958 and continued his interests in economics at Syracuse University, earning an M.A. in 1970. Pursuing a lifelong interest in comparative religion, Dr. Sharma gained an M.T.S. in 1974 and then a Ph.D. in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard University in 1978. He succeeded to the Birks Chair of Comparative Religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and was the first Infinity Foundation Visiting Professor of Indic Studies at Harvard University. He has published over fifty books and five hundred articles in the fields of comparative religion, Hinduism, Indian philosophy and ethics, and the role of women in religion. Widely cited as an authority on Hinduism, amongst his most note-worthy publications are The Hindu Gita: Ancient and Classical Interpretations of the Bhagavadgita (1986), The Experien-tial Dimension of Advaita Vedanta (1993), Our Religions: The Seven World Religions Introduced by Pre-eminent Scholars from Each Tradition (1994), The Philosophy of Religion: A Buddhist Perspective (1995), Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction (2000), and The Study of Hinduism (2003).
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