Sankhya vs. Advaita Vedanta

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

Vivekananda Centre <vivekananda at BTINTERNET.COM> wrote:

>Scholars (pandits) like to make a great deal of the possible
differences
>between these two schools of philosophies. The only real difference
is in
>the final conclusions both these philosophies draw.

What is this supposed to mean? If I look at you and say you are human
being and some other guy comes and looks at you and says that you are
a tiger, does that make both of them right?

>Samkhya perhaps can be considered to be the first rational philosophy
the
>world ever saw. Other schools of philosophy - specially the Yoga and
Vedanta
>philosophies have drawn a lot from the Samkhya of Kapila. They just
made few
>final adjustments in the conclusions.

"adjustments"??!!

>The maya of Advaita and prakriti of Samkhya are interchangable.


This is completely incorrect.

>Whenever I study Samkhya,  I get a thrill,  the findings of Samkhya
are that
>exciting!

Whenever I read a Dortmunder novel by Donald Westlake I get a thrill
too.

>Kapila - this ancient sage - after acquiring perhaps the highest
knowlege
>known to mankind  - sat down and imparted this highest of
philosophies to
>his mother!
>How poetic and sweet. Kapila was not bothered to rush out and impress
the
>masses, he decided to share this first with his mother!!

?!!! Sha.nkara ridicules this kind of sentimentalistic regard of
kapila explicitly.  As a pUrva-paxa argument he states that kapila is
held as a revered sage in some smr^iti texts and hence sA.nkhya cannot
be incorrect. He basically laughs at this and says there is no proof
that it could not have been some other person named kapila.

Rama

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