Chandogya Upanishad: Clay and Vessels made of Clay

 “A classic Advaita illustration of this, based on Chandogya Upanishad 6.1.4, is a causal substance such as clay shaped into new names and forms, like a pot or plate. The latter effects arise and resolve back into their cause. They have no existence apart from their metaphysical ground, the persisting clay content. Clay is therefore the reality (satyam). Not only does the clay possess more reality than either the pot or the plate because it continues through each form, but the individual existence of either artifact is entirely ontologically dependent upon its clay content. The clay is analogous to Brahman which is the underlying existence of the universe. For Sankara, each temporal artifact is simply a name (nāma) and form (rūpa), and unreal because it can be reduced to its cause.”

(Neil Dalal writing on Sankara’s Advaita Vedanta in ‘The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Vedanta’)

Let me pick a nit and pop it.  An illustration is on the same level as that which it illustrates e.g. Dickens illustrates the cruelty of the Murdstones in his novel ‘David Copperfield’ by  ....

An analogy attempts to guide us towards understanding by the use of an example that is removed from the area of difficulty.  The relation between pure Being and individual forms of being is difficult to comprehend because in our fallen state we have no experience of pure Being or Being as such.  The analogy drawn from the potter’s trade helps us towards an understanding or orients our attention towards this relationship.  That task completed the analogy retires from the scene.  The clay and vessels made of clay is not an ontological outline in a classic metaphysical theory.  Pure changeless Being may be more real, under a certain definition of ‘real’ than the fleeting manifestations of mundane being.  The clay/vessels does not partake of that disjunction of more and less real.  A cup or a marble is just as real as a lump of clay.   The final cause differentiates them; the one will hold a liquid and the other roll down an inclined plane.  The lump of clay is also an individual entity.  There is no ontological clay.  Substance or Prime Matter is another story and should not be conflated with the analogy of clay/vessels.