[Advaita-l] The current advaita-dvaita debate

[Nagarjuna Siddhartha]

> Advaita holds that the identity of jIva and Brahman
> is chaitanya itself.
> Chaitanya is svaprakAsha or self-evident.  Yet it is
> not so manifest
> during the life of an individual.  How are we to
> reconcile these two
> positions?.   Further,  chaitanya is signified not
> only by the word
> chaitanya,  but also by various other names as
> Brahman and Atman.
> Has each name its own signifance or not ?  If it
> has, then Brahman
> must have various properties corresponding to the
> various
> signifacances of various names.  If it has not, then
> there is no point
> in calling the same entity by different names.  
> Further,  advaita says
> different things about Brahman.  Chaitanya is
> self-evident.  It is not
> opposed to beginningless ajnAna.  It is One.  It is
> satya.  It is jnAna.
> It is ananta.  It is Ananda.  It is akhanda and so
> on.
> 
> Has each expression here its peculiarity or not?  If
> it has not,
> then it is useless.  If it has, then  it is to
> attribute different
> properties
> to Brahman.  If these properties are identical with
> Brahman,  how
> can there be the thought of the properties of
> Brahman, which points
> to their difference from Brahman?.


What was written above is mostly non-sense. By saying
that since chaitanya, ananda etc, has its own special
significance, they must therefore be properties, the
above writer has demostrated his glaring ignorance of
the fundamental concepts of advaita. Why are sat, cit
and Ananda not properties? Because -

1. They are not independant of each other. 

Properties like the blueness and geometery of an
object are independant of each other. I have a round
pot with me which is painted blue.But if I paint it
green, its blueness goes, but its rotundity is not
going to be affected in any way.  The same is not the
case of sat, cit and Ananda. Take away sat, then cit
and Ananda are unreal. Take away cit, then brahman
would be inert with no Ananda. More over, since any
object existent, has to  be invariably and inherently
manifested by brahman-intelligence(cit), to show its
existence, in the absence of a manifesting cit, there
is no more sat. Thus sat, cit and Ananda are not
independant.


2. All properties must depend on something else also.
But sat, cit and Ananda are not dependant on anything
else.

For example, even the property of omni-presence of
Ishwara, must depend on the creation of AkAsa or
space, because without space, the idea of
omni-presence is meaning-less. Thus, omni-presence is
dependant on something else. If Ishwara is to be
all-powerful, then there must be something else other
than Ishwara to exercise his powers on.(This is why
brahman is not defined as strength, in advaita) Thus
even all-powerfulness is dependant on something
else.But sat, cit and Ananda are not dependant on
anything else.  They are there irrespective of
anything else. Which is one more reason why they are
not called as properties. They are treated as nature,
inherent to brahman, where the mention of one thing
inherently implies others.

In conclusion, writers here, especially the dvaitins,
are advised to take the trouble of reading the advaita
concepts, if they want to comment on it. Otherwise
they would be making fools out of themselves.

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