Did Shankaracharya accept Krishna’s form as transcendental?
Thank you Question from Ankur Sharma Prabhu Did Shankaracharya accept that Narayana has no material form what was his understanding of the form of Narayana Prabhupada quotes about this in the Bhagavad Gita so what was Shankaracharya's exact position Prabhupada quotes from Shankaracharya's Gita commentary Narayana par avyaktat avyaktat and sambhavat so from the avyakta from non-manifest the universe comes out and Narayana is par avyakta is beyond the transcendental so beyond the unmanifested now if we look at the overall philosophy of Shankaracharya he had been sent by the supreme lord lord Shiva himself he had been sent by the supreme lord for a particular purpose that we must we have heard about this earlier how he was came to actually counter Buddhism prachandam bauddham uchyate now within that context he established a particular message the message of absolute oneness but he also made statements which hindered towards personalist understanding so now when Vaishnavas studied the writings of Shankaracharya and when they studied in the context of the understanding of the broader mission of the lord then such statements will stand out for them this is here Shankaracharya is speaking about things where he is talking about a higher reality so now if you look at the way impersonalist the Advaitins will look at it they will try to interpret this sentence in a different way and they will quote something else from Shankaracharya and they say how ultimately there is oneness there is something we have to go beyond Narayana also so what we should do here is once we get into technicalities we are not Advaitin scholars nor do we have to be Advaitin scholars when Prabhupada is quoting Shankaracharya Prabhupada's point is simply to reinforce the essential point that Krishna Krishna's form is beyond matter Krishna's form is transcendental now the the essential and Prabhupada substantiated from different sources so the important point is not getting into the technicalities of the specific substantiation the important point is to understand the essential principle and we focus on that essential principle and move on in our lives so when we take a specific Acharya's statements and naturally they are capable of getting interpreted in different ways but the point is that he didn't make the statement Narayana and Prabhupada quotes that so for us as followers of Sri Prabhupada we can focus on the essential point which he is making which is that Krishna's form is transcendental and we can see that he is strategically quoting from Shankaracharya also to substantiate this point.
Thank you.