[Advaita-l] Advaita-l Digest, Vol 2, Issue 29

[Kotekal, Srinivas [Non-Employee/0200]]

Welcome the forum Mr. Nagarjuna ,
 
> >Sutra "janmAdysya yatah." clearly indicates Brahmn is the creator of this
 > >world. The world has to be real in order to make sense of what sutra is
> > saying. By denying the reality of this world you are either denying the
> > Sutra itself or the act of Brahmn. This sutra indicates explicit act of
> > Brahmn (i.e the creation), where as your example of dream is not an
> > voluntary process on the dreamer part (even if one wish to dream one can
not
> > dream accordingly). Hence by denying the content of dream as unreal you
may
> > not deny the dreamer I agree. But when we have an sutra statement saying
> > Brahmns explicit act of creation, I do not see how denying the realty of
> > world is **not same** as denying Brahmn.
 
> This sutra is probably the best justification for advaita. Shankara does
not say so however. But   
> if   the   dialectic of the buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna is applied, it
is not difficult to see why this sutra   
 > can  give justification to advaita alone.
 
> According to Nagarjuna's viewpoint, an existent effect in terms of
self-nature (svabhava) does not depend  
 > on anything else for its present existence. The above sutra "janmAdyasya
yatah" clearly indicates the absolute  
 >dependance of the world on brahman. If we now consider the viewpoint of
Nagarjuna, it should mean that the  
 >world by itself has no self-nature. If it had any self-nature, then it
would not have been dependant on brahman  
 >to exhibit it. This leads one to propose that the world is unreal interms
of its separate self-nature - separate  
 >from brahman. This forces one to conclude that this sutra clearly says
that brahman alone is the absolute  
 >reality. 
 
Well, we are talking about reality of world and not its self-nature or it's
independence from Brahmn. You are saying , world is unreal in terms of its
separate self-nature , and may I ask why there should be any condition (such
as "self-nature" ) for the definition of Reality ? What is the pramaNa for
such definition of reality ? Reality is nothing to do with dependence or
not. We do agree, this world and all these jIvas are eternally depends on
Brahmn. 
 
 
 >To consider an example - The sun is termed as luminous as it gives its own
light. The moon also gives light  
 >on  a full-moon day for example. But the moon is termed non-luminous
because its light depends on that of the  
 >sun. Luminosity cannot be the self-nature of the moon as the moon depends
on the sun to exhibit luminosity.
 
True, but, we need physical moon to begin with  to reflect the sun's light,
isn't it ? Sun itself is not Moon. Without moon, no moon light even if sun
light is there. Moon light depends on Sun light but also at the same time
moon is *as real as* the Sun itself.
 
Regards,
Srinivas.
 
 
 

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