post-Sankara teachers in advaita - prakAshAnanda

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Thu, 3 Jul 1997, Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian wrote:

[..]

> Hence, DSV is _quite influential in the living advaitic tradition_, as it
> walways has been. It is however not popular with the Western academics who
 have
> no idea about the DSV and the way it is utilized in the traditional advaitic
> maTha-s.

Probably because the academic world can only get an idea of post-Sankaran
advaita from the written texts. In itself, this might be a Western
cultural legacy (Judeo-Christian?) where greater value is attached to the
written word than to oral instruction. In traditional Vedanta, of course,
the personal instruction obtained from a guru is of the utmost importance.

> specifically asked him to. The vedAntasiddhAntamuktAvali and the TIkA thereof
> are also quoted in the book. I haven't read the vedAntasiddhAntamuktAvali
> myself, however the quotes given by the author seem to follow shrI gauDapAda
> very closely. Anyway, the book will certainly help clearing the cobwebs
> created by western academia (and  sadly these days, Indian academics also).

Well, Indian academics tend to follow the lead of the Western academics...

> Worse still are writers who pay lip service to advaita and write complete
> drivel in their books, like Aghehananda Bharati.

Agehananda's views are certainly prArabdha-vaSAt! Given his varied
history, one cannot expect him to be very true to the advaita tradition.

Also, I think a distinction must be made between true advaitins and those
sannyAsins who are originally from the advaita tradition, but hold
completely different philosophies. AnandatIrtha (aka madhva) is one of the
earliest examples.

Vidyasankar