[Advaita-l] Re: Moksha (Badisa)

Aditya Varun Chadha adichad at gmail.com
Wed Aug 24 15:14:39 CDT 2005


Greetings,

In this discussion we must remember to clearly distinguish between the
gyAnI and his/her body/worldly state. The gyAnI by definition is one
who knows that all karma and thus the body, phenominal existence etc.
are unreal.

In this light, it is meaningless to ask how karma affects the gyAnI,
because in the first place the true Self is not the object on which
karma works. karma works only on the mAyA that is the gyAnI's (as well
as the agyAnI's) worldy existence.

The "event" of "becoming" gyAnI is the true and complete realization
that all karma and the body and all worldly (vyavhAric) existence is
an illusion. Once this is known, there is no question of being under
the effect of any form of karma (past/PRESENT/future). Remember that
this I am asserting for the realized gyAnI, not his body or worldly
"soul". They are mAyA and simply continue to undergo the effects of
karma which also is mAyA. But the Self has been realized by that who
once thought that worldly existence was real. Having realized this,
the gyAnI is unaffected by what his/her body goes through any more.
all the pain and suffering/pleasure/feeling/thoughts happen only with
respect to the body, and not the Self which is the true gyAnI.

Asking whether a gyAnI can "create the universe" etc. is useless
because a gyAnI finds no need to do so, and in anycase, doing all this
would just mean playing with mAyA, since the created universe and such
things are all part of the illusion from which the gyAnI has risen.

For all this please go through accounts of ramaNa maharshi's life, and
if you want Sruti references, then the well known shloka from the
gItA:

naenam chindanti SastrANi naenam dahati pAvakaH
na chaenam kledayantyApo na SoSayati mArutaH

is a trivial example that reminds us that the gyAnI (that is the
realized Self) is not affected by any form of karma - past, present or
future. in fact the entire gItA is saying just this. that true
knowledge is to realize that there is no suffering, there is no karma,
there is nothing but the Self, brAhmaN. Refer to any part or whole of
Sankara's commentaries for this. a good heuristic is to replace the
world "gyAnI" with Atman everywhere, then it will be clear to you what
am saying. Even though I (agyAnI) suffer, (my) Atman does not care.
becoming a gyAnI is the same as uniting my consciousness with that
Atman.

The gyAnI's body (worldly existence) is no different from an agyAnI's
body. both are just the same illusion. upon "death", only the worldly
appearence of the body's suffering ceases in the eyes of other worldly
existences (bodies). The entity called "gyAnI" is unattached to this
body, and thus while the body suffers its karma, the gyAnI does not
care.

Why then this obsession with the question of whether a gyAnI's body
undergos karma after the event of realization? instead of dissecting
words and sentences with mentality as narrow as a pair of tweasers,
just step back and see the beautiful picture that Sruti and its
advaitic interpretations draw for us. While we try to understand the
reality that this picture represents, we cannot appreciate it fully by
analysing each and every small part of it seperately subject to our
ignorant assumptions.

all the hoopla about creating universes and taking multiple
forms/positions at the same "time" is talking of our plane of agyAn.
there is no "form" or "position" or "time" in the plane of gyAn, and
so the gyAnI has no reason to demonstrate all this.

please remember that taking scriptural text literally is a good thing,
but making assumptions like:
"can create universes" means that we can see these universes being created
is just attempting to "understand" gyAn through an agyAnI's position,
which obviously is impossible to accomplish. Instead of staying
steadfast and arguing with our notions which are founded in ignorance,
why not concentrate on keeping the mind open so that maybe someday
some stroke of knowledge can burn all this away? somehow I find these
queries pointless, knowing whether a gyAnI's worldly existence suffers
karma (or not) does not help us in our search for Realization. instead
concentrating on knowing what the gyAnI knows is more helpful.

On 8/24/05, S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- ramesh badisa <badisa66 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> [..]
> 
> > It is ok when you understand that gyani has PK only from
> > vyavaharika drushti. That means in absolute sense he has no
> > PK. Right? That means he is the divine upon the dawn of gyan
> > while living. It means that gyani should have all features of
> > divine, and should be able to do all things as divine in
> > absolute sense. In that case,
> >
> >
> >
> > CAN A GYANI:
> >
> >
> >
> >    create the universe (w.r.t SB)?
> >    dissolve the universe (w.r.t SB)?
> >    take up multiple forms at the same time (w.r.t SB)?
> >    visit any where and any lokas with his mere will (w.r.t
> > SB)?
> >    be at all places at the same time (w.r.t NB)?
> >
> >  In other words, since gyani is divine due to dawn of
> > knowledge, there should be no limitation for him to perform
> > any thing, not from vyavaharika drushti, but from absolute
> > sense.
> >
> 

-- 
Aditya Varun Chadha
adichad AT gmail.com
http://www.adichad.com
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