Antiquity of Advaita Vedanta

[Anand Hudli]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000 09:27:33 PDT, nanda chandran <vpcnk at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:

>
>>It sure changed my previously held
>>(misinformed) opinion of mAdhyamika as mere nihilism.
>
>Be prepared to change it again.

 This is unlikely. The final equation that nAgArjuna gives is
 pratItya-samutpAda = shUnyatA . This is made very clear also in the
 VigrahavyAvartanI. And what is pratItya-samutpAda? It is the relative
 reality of all things or the interconnected-ness of all things.

 This is in a nutshell what he says. If you understand pratItya-samutpAda,
 you have understood shUnyatA, and viceversa. This equation is his
 tight-rope balance - the Middle way. There is no absolute reality;
 there is no nihilism either. To realize the pratItya-samutpAda is
 to realize the shUnyatA which is again nirvANa, the "blowing out."
 He never says the world vanishes in nirvANa, like it does in the
 advaitin's mokSha.

 Anand

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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