[Advaita-l] Newton's "laws"

[Kiran B.R.]

Dear Bhadraiah,

The fact that Indian works like those of Gaudapaada are "a million
times more generic and deeper" is exactly what makes them useless in
the production of anna.

These works simply take the mind away from the production of anna and
possible innovation therein. The real point about these works is NOT
"limited anna". One may attain mukti or become a brahmaj~Ja, but will
remain useless to a hungry man knocking on the door. What he needs is
"limited anna" and not nonsense about the brahman being personal or
impersonal or the world being real or unreal or the body being a mass
of urine and excreta.

I do not mean to say that brahmaj~JAna is unimportant! What I mean is
- brahmaj~JAna is useless when it comes to "unimportant" and "limited"
anna! Of course you can reverse-engineer and claim that it "also has"
all the cool stuff about quantum mechanics and aerodynamics and and
what have you, but the fact remains that outside movies, fantasies and
stories, works like those of Gaudapaada or Shankara or Madhva or
Buddha or Ramanuja or Mahavira have not helped grow rice in the fields
or calculate sines and cosines of angles. Others have, yes, but not
these people.

Whether Gaudapaada's works "have the potential" to help grow anna is
irrelevant. What is relevant is - has it helped grow? Nope. Were they
written with the aim of helping grow? Nope. In this sense,
Gaudapaada's works are as useful as are Newton's works as spiritual
guides.

Now you bring up Aryabhatta, Bhaskara, Lilavati and others. They are
slightly different from Gaudapaada, aren't they? Were they ever known
for describing a yOga of "unlimited anna"? Or was Gaudapaada ever
known for describing a method for calculating sines and cosines of
angles? Why bring irrelevant people into the discusison?

I completely agree with you that Indian mathematics was destroyed due
to colonization, and I dislike that fact too, but Gaudapaada has
nothing whatsoever to do with Indian mathematics. Gaudapaada is
different from Aryabhatta in a very basic way. I'm not aware of any
text written by Gaudapaada meant for (as opposed to "also seemingly")
advancing "limited anna" science. If there is such a text, you win
this argument and my apologies.

Cheers
Kiran

-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------
achchakannaDigara baLaga!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/kannaDakannaDi
-------------------------------------------------------------------