[Advaita-l] Re: The current advaita-dvaita debate

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

The following post may be moot, as Jay Nelamangala has been unsubscribed 
from this list, but I thought I should address a few points. If he is 
reading the archives, let it be on record that his parting comments did not 
go unanswered.

Re: the schools of vallabha and caitanya, Jay Nelamangala wrote:

>In any case,  none of these schools were started because they had
>difficulties with dvaita.

This comment misses the point. All those later authors who started new 
schools had ample opportunity to study dvaita literature and become members 
of the dvaita camp. They chose not to, and came up with a "Suddha"-advaita 
and an "acintya" bhedAbheda school, thereby indicating that they had to find 
a place for abheda/advaita somewhere in their own system. So much for the 
claim about how the scriptures do not teach advaita at all.

Re: brahman as jagadeka-kAraNa,

>aprAkrita JagadEka-kAraNa is the  kAraNa for prakrit also

In what sense is brahman the kAraNa for prakRti? If you accept that prakRti 
comes into being by brahman's will, where did it come from? Out of nothing 
or out of brahman itself? If the former, then one has to remember, nAsato 
vidyate bhAvaH. If the latter, then one has to accept that the changeless 
brahman can give rise to an effect that is full of change, i.e. prakRti, and 
yet remain unchanged in the process. Therefore, one has to accept that the 
properties of the effect can thus be diametrically different from those of 
the cause, and that the properties of the effect do not affect the 
properties of the cause.

It follows that what advaitins say about the reality or otherwise of the 
world, the effect, does not affect what they say about the reality of 
brahman, the cause. QED.

Vidyasankar

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