The dvaita/advaita debate revisited!

[egodust]

Greetings Friends.  Namaste.

I was surprised the other day to find an adherent of dvaita write
a favorable note to me.  In fact, he's the webmaster for THE DVAITA
HOME PAGE (http://www.rit.edu/~mrreee/dvaita.html), Shrisha Rao,
who also informed me that he already included a link to my site
(obviously dedicated to advaita: http://ddi.digital.net/~egodust).
Quite interesting, no?

At any rate, I just finished scribing a letter to him, offering
my opinion on the need to transcend not only the dvaitic but
the advaitic approach as well.

For anyone interested, here's a copy of the letter:

**************

Namaskaar.

Even though we're of two rival schools, I would be remiss in not
[also] acknowledging your excellent website.  Nevertheless, please
allow me to offer the following observation. (I just happened to have
had an involved debate with someone along similar lines, and since
you've rekindled some memories of this classical rivalry, I hope I'm
not being presumtuous in expounding on it here, perhaps prematurely?)

I believe the following expresses the deeper significance [than what
is historically represented as] dividing our respective approaches:

        Where a dvaitin is a proponent of dvaita,
        an advaitin is *not* a proponent of advaita.

By this I mean: Dvaita considers its 'philosophy of division' to
be permanent and, in fact, an end in itself.  Whereas advaita is
merely a means to an end--where the end (jivanmukti) renders
advaita philosophy itself obsolete.  (After the wound is healed,
why save the bandage?)

Advaita, not unlike zen, is a direct assault on the reasonable
Mind.  Why?  For the express purpose of lifting the intellectual
veil that covers/distorts the pure experience at the source of
What IS.  Its culmination resolves into the ineffable primal current
of what must be the very foundation of Reality, because the [apt]
description, satchidananda, is the only interpretation that can,
in the last anaysis [in retrospect of the nirvikalpa samadhi],
make any sense at all!  Its translogical experiential dynamic
shatters virtually the entire structure of the relative
mechanistic world of form/expression.  To the point that even the
idea of advaita itself becomes irrelevant!  (Simply because in
order to uphold the idea of nonduality, duality must be assumed
to exist; otherwise nonduality would have no meaning.  And this
applies equally to ALL relative values.)  This is the aftermath
of the Brahmastram of advaita; and when it has effectively
annihilated the mithya of sohamidam, it too gets destroyed on the
battlefield.  There's nothing left on the screen of the Self but
satchidananda [yet not the thought of This either!].

The net result is an immaculate simplicity.  No obstacles of
ideas or ideals to trip over.  This is the sahaja samadhi state
of the jivanmukta.  Where can the argument originate--how can it
be justified--that jivanmukti is impossible for the jiva alive in
a body, if the experience of the state finds it impossible to
even fathom the existence of such body?  Can we argue with a
love-tremor in the heart?  Or with ananda that pulverizes our
mundane judgment?  Can we argue with No-thing--but Spirit?

OM NAMAH SIVAYE.

praNaam.