This chapter will illustrate the triple weave of epistemology, metaphysics, and soteriology in Advaita Vedanta, focusing on that advanced by the master exponent of Advaita, Shankara (c. 800 CE). Drawing from the work of Alvin Plantinga and William Alston, the paper will show that Shankara’s soteriological and metaphysical reflection is supported by internalist and externalist epistemologies, with the most important being internalist, owing to Shankara’s metaphysical presuppositions. These epistemological heuristics are deployed to gain insight into Shankara’s religious epistemology and then to stimulate an extended discussion of – and argument for – the epistemic merit of religious testimony and religious experience. Successfully doing all this will illuminate the epistemic value of those two mechanisms but also illustrate the triple weave of philosophical reflection in India, a single intellectual rope, as it were, now constituted by the strands of metaphysics, epistemology, and soteriology. While the focus of the chapter is Shankara’s thought, it will point to other Indian thinkers and systems that similarly – and, arguably, invariably – employ this threefold strand of reasoned reflection to establish and advance their own fundamental philosophical positions.

The first chapter of this twenty-first-century reassessment of Beckett’s dialogue with Buddhist concepts investigates Beckett’s early source of Buddhist philosophy in Schopenhauer’s transmission of Eastern thought. The chapter addresses the doubt expressed by some Beckett exegetes about Schopenhauer as a viable source by detailing recent archival findings and the judgment of scholars of Buddhism on this question. Building on these findings, a section on Schopenhauer’s understanding of Upanishadic and Buddhist concepts counters doubts about his ability to distinguish between the two. The brief survey of what these two systems of Indian thought share and where they part ways is intended to lessen the chance of mistaking one for the other or singling out one, when it could be either, thereby setting the stage for the next chapters. An example of such a mistaken identity by Beckett scholars at the end of the chapter is intended as a cautionary tale.