This chapter focuses on a similar argument made by Parmenides and Śaṅkara involving the claim that boundaries between everyday entities are superimposed and not real. I hereby continue my exploration of the similarity of the arguments of the two philosophers, who, so far, have been compared only either as adherents of monism, or in order to show historical dependence, mostly of Greek thought on the Veda. I will show how Parmenides and Śaṅkara argue that any boundary that we believe to be real and capable of separating the many individuals and things can be proven to be superimposed by humans on being rather than being real.

As a foil, I will mention an alternative metaphysical framework – which has been adopted for instance by Descartes, and which might be regarded as part of the default everyday Western metaphysical framework – according to which reality is fundamentally fragmented in separate things and individuals.

Parmenides and Śaṅkara acknowledge the existence of a fundamental reality: undivided being or Self. The other side of the coin of an undivided being is the lack of reality of the boundaries superimposed on being. The question is: what makes them regard anything that differentiates one thing from the next as a superimposition, which is less real than undivided being? I will show that the argument involves the ‘epistemological weakness’ of what is superimposed on undivided being. This argument points at the impossibility of ‘knowing’ – in a special sense that is radically different from having opinions – anything other than being, which involves the impossibility of knowing any boundary. The step from the impossibility of knowing anything other than being to the lack of reality of any second being might sound like a fallacy, since it takes an unwarranted step from epistemology to ontology.