[Advaita-l] mithyaa / anirvachaniiya and asattva

Venkatesh Murthy vmurthy36 at gmail.com
Sat Mar 16 00:17:42 CDT 2013


Namaste

A Vandhya Putra in modern day is not contradiction. A lady can make
another lady be a surrogate mother and have her child. Then the
surrogate mother will give the child back to its mother. That child is
Vandhya Putra but it is a real child.

With genetic experiments many strange animals can be produced. Rabbit
with horns may become reality.

An Aeroplane can create colour smoke in the sky to draw a flower
picture in the sky. Then the Flower in sky is Gagana Kusuma.

On Sat, Mar 16, 2013 at 7:14 AM, Naresh Cuntoor <nareshpc at gmail.com> wrote:
> [Replying to both Sri Sadananda's and Sri Subramanian's notes.]
>
> Pranam.
>
>>> "Vandhyaa putraH is logical contradiction "
>
> I don't see how it is a logical contradiction. Isn't it simply a
> restatement?
> 1. A woman who does not have children is called vandhyaa
> 2. A woman who does not have children (i.e, vandhyaa) does not have a son.
>
> So where is the contradiction here?
>
>
>
>> The idea of 'asat' 'objects' was conceived with a view to have examples for
>> 'a knowledge or idea arising out of use of words while the object
>> corresponding to that knowledge / word is not there'.  Thus, when
>> 'vandhyAputra' word is used one conceives of a barren woman and a person
>> but when asked to show the person, he draws a blank. There are other
>>
>>
> So if I understand this correctly, (a) what is thought of as tAtkAlika asat
> today could indeed turn out to have a vyaavahaarika sattva tomorrow. (Mad
> scientists designing a shashaviShaaNa or kUrmaroma,  a kavi popularizing
> megha as gaganakusuma, and so on). (b) The proverbial snake which has
> vyaavahaarika sattva turns out to be asat, and is therefore designated
> mithyaa.
>
>
>> Even here Vedanta has an unassailable point.  Who is using the anumAna,
>> etc. to predicate the existence of the world at a distant past independent
>> of human or any other being's perception ?  Is it not a human, the
>> intelligent one?  So, the existence of this world independent of anyone
>>
>
> perceiving it is dependent on an observer who uses anumAna, etc. to posit
>> its existence then.  It is this crucial 'dependence' on an entity external
>> to itself that decides the anirvAchyatva/mithyAtva of the world.  It is
>>
>
> Isn't it the same human mind that is thinking about 'sat' as well? Then
> does the existence of sattva become paratantra to intelligent thought?
>
> By statements like  "world does not exist", then what is meant is the
> "world is mithyaa". Is that correct?
> The context to this question is a recent offline discussion in which
> incidentally, one of Sri Sadananda's articles was offered in support of
> arguing for a less nuanced point "world does not exist / world exists in
> the mind / etc." where mithyaatva fell by the wayside.
>
> It is one thing to say that we cannot be certain about the existence or
> lack thereof of something (e.g., did a tree fall in the forest just now? I
> don't know. I'm not in the forest now.), but quite another to say that it
> does not exist.
>
> - Naresh
> _______________________________________________
> Archives: http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/


-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh



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