Antiquity of Advaita Vedanta (was Re: An Open Letter to All)

[Ashish Chandra]

>From: Rajiv Malhotra <rajiv.malhotra at WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
>
>Madhyamika does deny an absolute AS CONCEPTUSALIZED. An unconceptualizable
>non-'thing' cannot be imagined, spoken about, explained etc. Hence the
>famous silence of the Buddha.
>

Does Advaita talk of a conceptual pAramArthika state? And that is the only
reality that there is. What does Madhyamika's "unconceptualized" absolute
amount to then, if that is what you meant?

[...]
>
>Upon doing that, one calls it empty of this false conception. The other
>calls it full of what remains, which is unconceptualizable.
>
>
>The Vedanta risk is to reify (conceptualize) the absolute, which by
>definition means giving it form. The moment you conceptualize it, it is a
>representation in mind and hence not absolute. The tao you can think of is
>not the tao. Hence the trap some fall into. Both methods have this risk.
>

We talk of energy pervading the entire material world. Yet, no one has seen
it and still everyone insists that it exists.

I hope you don't mind but I am having some trouble with the
"conceptualizing" part. While it certainly might be too abstruse a thing to
simplify, I understand Shunyata better when it is defined as per the
four-fold negation and then whetever remains is not absolute => nihilism.
Logically, I find it hard to understand how one can say that an absolute is
the presence of nothing and absence of everything.

ashish
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