advaita-siddhi 14 (MadhusUdana's reply contd.)

[elmec]

Thank you so much, Anand . You have taken so much of trouble to even
provide
a simple , understandable example to illustrate the three different
orders of
reality. So it is sort of a hierarchy where the paaramaarthika occupies
the
highest place ( so high a place that we sometimes lose sight of it ! )

Thank you again,
Hari Om,
Latha Vidyaranya

Anand Hudli wrote:

> On Sat, 18 Mar 2000 00:51:50 +0530, elmec <elmec at GIASBG01.VSNL.NET.IN>
> wrote:
>
> >Hari Om,
> >
> >I am really getting bugged by this phrase "order of reality". When you
> >say
> >lesser order of reality does that mean it is less real than the other
> >one which
> >it superimposes and which looks more real but is also not really real
> >??? KIndly
> >explain.
>
> Strictly speaking, there are no orders of reality, because Brahman
> alone is real. There is only one Reality. It is only for convenience of
> explanation that we introduce three orders of reality - pAramArthika,
> vyAvahArika, and prAtibhAsika. PrAtibhAsika or illusory order is
> "less" real than vyAvahArika or empirical order, and vyAvahArika
> is "less" real than pAramArthika. I agree this notion of one order
> being "less" real than another is rather confusing. One way to understand
> it is as follows. An object that is prAtibhAsika is superimposed on
> a substratum that is vyAvahArika, but the vyAvahArika substratum
> itself is superimposed on the pAramArthika substratum. Take the example
> of the snake-on-rope illusion. The illusory snake is superimposed on
> the rope. But the rope itself is only vyAvahArika and is superimposed
> on the pAramArthika Brahman. Although only the pAramArthika substratum
> is ultimately real, we can say in some sense that the vyAvahArika rope
> is "more real" than the prAtibhAsika snake.
>
> What the objection says is that if the negation or denial of something
> is itself sublatable, then the reality of the thing that is negated is
> not affected in any way. But MadhusUdana shows that this is true only
> if the order of reality of the negation is less than
> the the order of reality of the thing negated. This has practical
> applications! For example, we often resort to denying the reality of
> a situation that we don't like. But our mere denial turns out to be
> only counter-productive and does not change the situation one bit.
> I may deny the fact that I am an ordinary human being and start
> considering myself to be someone I am not, say Superman. But as soon
> as I try to carry ten bags of groceries all at once, I find out that
> my denial of being an ordinary human is itself negated. And this
> brings me back to my senses and shows that I am an ordinary human
> after all. This happened because my earlier denial was born of an
> illusion that I am someone different from what I am in a vyAvahArika
> sense. The denial of who I am empirically was of a "lesser" order of
> reality.
>
> Anand
>
> --
> bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam
>
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