mithyAjnAna

[Stig Lundgren]

Many thanks to Sri K. Sadananda and Sri Subhanu Saxena for their brilliant essays on Sankara´s Sutra-Bhashya!

Many thanks also to Sri Anand Hudli for his interesting contributions on the same topic. I have a small question, however. On September 13, 2000 Anand Hudli wrote:

"[...] the interpretation of mithyAjnAna which is the (material) cause (upAdAna) of adhyAsa."

My question is: Don´t you mean the other way around? As far as I understand, superimposition (adhyAsa) gives rise to wrong knowledge (mithyAjnAna). In "adhyAsa bhASyam" Sankara explains: "And yet, though these two principles [Atman and non-Atman] are utterly distinct in nature, there is a failure to distinguish one from the other, and each, together with its attributes, is superimposed on and identified with the other. And from that there results this natural wordly exeperience, based on wrong knowledge (mithyA-jnAna) and involving a synthesis of the real with the false, which expresses itself as 'I am this' and 'This is mine'."  [Translation: A. J. Alston, "Samkara on The Absolute" p. 94]


Warmest regards

Stig Lundgren






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>My question is: Don´t you mean the other way around? As far as I
understand, superimposition (adhyAsa) gives rise to wrong knowledge
(mithyAjnAna). In "adhyAsa bhASyam" Sankara explains: "And yet, though these
two principles [Atman and non-Atman] are utterly distinct in nature, there
is a failure to distinguish one from the other, and each, together with its
attributes, is superimposed on and identified with the other. And from that
there results this natural wordly exeperience, based on wrong knowledge
(mithyA-jnAna) and involving a synthesis of the real with the false, which
expresses itself as 'I am this' and 'This is mine'."  [Translation: A. J.
Alston, "Samkara on The Absolute" p. 94]
>

mithyAjnAna can be split either as mithyA-jnAna or as mithyA-ajnAna. Both
are grammatically correct. But both kinds of word splitting mean the same
thing. Without an a-jnAna (of something), there can be no mithyA-jnAna (of
that thing).

Causality in the term "material cause" does not involve one kind of material
before and a different kind of material after. When one says that gold is
the material cause of the ring, no change has occurred in the gold itself.
The change has happened only in the visual form, from a lump of gold to a
ring of gold. "Lump" and "ring" are two names for the same gold. The ring
can be melted back into a lump, without changing the gold.

Similarly, mithyAjnAna and adhyAsa are basically two different names for the
same thing. In the passage above, vyavahAra "results from" the
itaretara-adhyAsa (each superimposed on and identified with the other), is
"based" on mithyAjnAna, and "involves" satyAnRte-maithunI-karaNa (synthesis
of the real with the false).

Vidyasankar

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bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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