[Advaita-l] Re: Is an ISvara compatible with advaita?

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

For advaitins shruti pramaaNa asserts non-duality, example the
bR^ihadaaraNyaka says yatra hi dvaitam etc. So there is no Ishvara and
jIva distinction in reality, as per this passage. Before asking
questions about Ishvara, etc., it is necessary to understand that for
advaitins this assertion of shruti pramaaNa alone is enough. Blueness
of sky etc are _illustrations_ meant to help the ignorant, not the
true state of reality. If the illsutration matched reality perfectly,
what is the use of yato vaaco nivartante" etc?

The other schools try to explain these passages usually by resorting
to "re-interpretation" since it "conflicts" with pratyaxa. Sankara for
example also says any amount of shruti statements to the contrary
cannot make fire cold. But advaita differs from other schools **in
what constitutes enough reason for re-interpretation of shruti
texts**. This is understood when the basic principles of advaita are
understood from a text like upadeshasaahasrii.

Like Kartik, I too did not wish to participate in this discussion. It
just has too many mis-understandings of advaita. It seems in almost
periodic intervals we have mainly vishishhTAdvaitins posting questions
such as these, in a somewhat combative tone (my personal opinion). I
have had extensive phone conversations etc stemming from discussions
on the bhakti list and it seems that some basic homework is required
on the part of the vishishhTAdvaitins before they ask questions about
Ishvara, etc. First they should understand advaita from texts like
upadeshasaahasrii and not books like "Advaita and Vishistaadvaita: A
comparative approach". It's just riddled with many  misinterpretations
of advaita.

Rama

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 10:56:44 -0800 (PST), S Jayanarayanan
<sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I did not want to participate in this thread, but there are just
> too many misunderstandings in this posting.
>