[Advaita-l] Advaita and Madhyamika Buddhism

Venkatraghavan S agnimile at gmail.com
Mon Sep 19 07:07:14 CDT 2016


The meaning of antya pramANa is more profound than that sir. The bhAshya of
the yaa nishaa sloka goes into it a bit. What it means is that after jnAna,
the very pramAtritvam of the pramAta is destroyed. Hence there is no more
pramANa for such a one.

Also I didn't say that any text can do so. I said that any text that is
based on the veda, taught by a guru. Reading a novel that has the hero
saying I am Brahman, does not count :)

As I told Chandramouliji, I presented my views. You are welcome to disagree.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On 19 Sep 2016 12:59 p.m., "Bhaskar YR" <bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com> wrote:

> praNAms
> Hare Krishna
>
> This topic is briefly dealt with in a work called Vichara Sagara - you may
> be familiar with it. There the author, Nishchala dasa considers the
> question whether vedAnta shAstra needs to necessarily be in the Sanskrit
> language or not and concludes that 1) provided that the teaching is in line
> with shruti 2) is taught by a shrotriya guru, is sufficient for jnAna. The
> important thing is that the message is shruti sammata and is delivered by a
> competent authority.
>
> >  if that is the case then the status of 'shruti' as antya pramANa will
> be in question.  I have heard something like this earlier also, saying any
> 'advaita' vAkya in any text in any language would be  sufficient to fetch
> the 'ekatva' jnana to eligible adhikAri.  That means we don’t have to rely
> entirely on shruti in Sanskrit as pramANa for brahma jignAsa and
> realization. Any text (some novel also) would sometime be sufficient for
> realizing the Atmaikatva jnana when the same thing heard through one's
> guru.  Under these circumstances what exactly does it mean when saMpradAya
> says shruti is the antya pramANa in brahma jignAsa and brahma jnana,  when
> any paurusheya texts / sentences also would be capable of giving that
> jnana??!!
>
> Therefore the answer to the first part of your question, "can the teaching
> be in a language other than in Sanskrit", at least in my view, is yes.
>
> >  ofcourse it is agreeable that Atmaikatva jnana does not bound by any
> language, but again how can this stand be tenable with the shruti as untya
> pramANa!!?? Just wondering.
>
>
>
> The answer to the second part of your question, "can the learning be
> through a book, without a live guru", is sadly no. Of course there can be
> exceptions to the rule, but we need to observe the rule, not the exceptions.
>
> >  again, a (any paurusheya) book in any language taught by living guru
> directly to his pupil is sufficient without adhering to the traditional
> obligation that shruti is the ultimate pramANa?? And yes, I think that will
> be the case as we have jnAni-s from other varNa-s also who donot have
> adhikARa for vedAdhyayana.
>
> Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
> bhaskar
>
>


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