17: Sankaracharya and Buddha.  The great sage Sankaracharya who is known to us all as the leading head of the adwaitic movement that was set on foot subsequent to the time of the equally great Sage known as Gautama Buddha, the head of the doctrine of Buddhi or Buddhism.  Both are great Masters of compassion and may be conceived as the two hemispheres of the burning globe of light that is placed on the central mental mount to impart light to the East and the West.  The two great Masters are mystically connected, if you will listen to H. P. B., and to understand the natures of these two beings is to understand the nature of the entire cosmos divisible as two hemispheres, the one being the land of the sun-rise of thought eternal and the other being "the Pillar to the West upon whose face the rising sun of thought eternal poureth forth its most glorious waves."  They are representatives for us (the poor children of the dust of the ground) of the two great powers known in the Puranas as Siva and Vishnu, the universal sower and reaper, who by their interaction are said to support the universe of progress.—Some Thoughts on the Gita, pp. 92-3.