man in making the world
is not actuated by a motive in the ordinary sense, for that would
imply human action and passion, but by a sportive impulse:[776] "We
see in every-day life," says Sankara, "that certain doings of
princes, who have no desires left unfulfilled, have no reference to
any extraneous purpose but proceed from mere sportfulness. We further
see that the process of inhalation and exhalation is going on without
reference to any extraneous purpose, merely following the law of its
own nature. Analogously, the activity of the Lord also may be supposed
to be mere sport, proceeding from his own nature without reference to
any purpose."[777] This is no worse than many other explanations of
the scheme of things and the origin of evil but it is not really an
explanation. It means that the Advaita is so engrossed in ecstatic
contemplation of the omnipresent Brahman that it pays no attention to
a mere by-product like the physical universe. How or why that universe
with all its imperfections comes to exist, it does not explain.

Yet the boldness and ample sweep of Sankara's thought have in them
something greater than logic,[778] something recalling the grandeur of
plains and seas limited only by the horizon, nay rather those abysses
of space wherein on clear nights worlds and suns innumerable are
scattered like sparks by what he would call God's playfulness.
European thought attains to these altitudes but cannot live in them
for long: it demands and fancies for itself just what Sankara will
not grant, the motive of Brahman, the idea that he is working for some
consummation, not that he was, is and will be eternally complete,
unaffected by the drama of the universe and yet identical with souls
that know him.

Even in India the austere and impersonal character of Sankara's
system provoked dissent: He was accused of being a Buddhist in
disguise and the accusation raises an interesting question[779] in the
history of Indian philosophy to which I have referred in a previous
chapter. The affinity existing between the Madhyamika form of Buddhist
metaphysics and the earlier Vedanta can hardly be disputed and the
only question is which borrowed from the other. Such questions are
exceedingly difficult to decide, for from time to time new ideas arose
in India, permeated the common intellectual atmosphere, and were
worked up by all sects into the forms that suited each best. In the
present instance all that can be said is that