[Advaita-l] creation ex nihilo

[S Jayanarayanan]

Dear Narayana Murthy,

--- NARAYANA MURTHY <malahanikareswara at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

> > Namaste
> > 
> > Let me illustrate this. Suppose you buy your first DVD recorder
> and
> > you
> > find yourself not knowing how to operate it. What would you
> > attribute
> > the ignorance to? Would it be something in your head that
> obstructs
> > you
> > from knowing how to operate it or is it the absence of the
> > 'operating
> > knowledge' of the DVD Recorder? The ABSENCE of the 'operating
> > knowledge'
> > caused an EXISTENT effect of not knowing what buttons to press.
> 
> In case you are unaware of what Causation is:
> 
> CAUSATION MUST INVOLVE CHANGE.
> 
> In your above example, what is the CHANGE involved? Let us see:
> 
> Ignorance (Absence of Knowledge) -> Ignorance (Absence of
> Knowledge)
> 
> Note that there is NO CHANGE INVOLVED IN YOUR EXAMPLE. HENCE THERE
> IS
> NO CAUSATION.
> 
> Again, note that Anand's example is different from yours,
> principally
> because he took into account Ignorance as not merely Absence of
> Knowledge, but PRESENCE OF ERRONEOUS COGNITION. In other words,
> Ignorance can come in two forms:
> 
> Ignorance = Absence of Knowledge (CANNOT BE A CAUSE)
> 
> Ignorance = Presence of Erroneous Cognition (CAN BE A CAUSE)
> 
> It is the second kind of Ignorance that can be considered a CAUSE
> for
> Perception of the World.
> 
> Regards,
> Kartik
> 
>   Dear kartik
>    
>   pranam. Although shri Anand addressed the issue from a different
> perspective, the issue of a non existent cause resulting in an
> existent effect was not addressed in that reply.  The event -a real
> life experience -could not be termed a fallacy. It remained a
> riddle and your above reply was helpful to break the same.
>   The error then is in the analogy. The error is in connecting two
> events under cause effect relationship which requires a change
> which was not there in the analogy.
>    
>   In this connection, I have another doubt.
>    
>   on occurence of two events - where the occurence of first event
> results in the occurence of the second event, could the first event
> be called as anything other than cause? - say a *pretext*
>    

It can be -- provided the effect is ALSO a "pretext"!

I plan to soon write a short article about avidyA and causation,
where I hope to cover the above question.

>   Regards
>   N.Murthy
>    
>    
>    
> 
>        
> ---------------------------------
>  Office firewalls, cyber cafes, college labs, don't allow you to
> download CHAT? Here's a solution! 
> _______________________________________________
> Archives: http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/
> 
> To unsubscribe or change your options:
> http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/advaita-l
> 
> For assistance, contact:
> listmaster at advaita-vedanta.org
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com