[Advaita-l] logic and shastra

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

some comments on things you have written.

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, Mahesh Ursekar wrote:

> Shruti is a pramana, I agree. But according to Vedanta, pratyaksha is also a
> pramana and is on par with Shruti.

on a par with is not equivalent to the same as.  Otherwise having multiple 
pramanas is redundant.

  If you say that Shruti's word is final
> then that is makes it a dogma and not a pramana!

And why can't a dogma be logical?  Why can't a dogma be a valid means of 
truth?

> Infact if you think that
> science is bedevilled by observation, Shruti suffers from interpretative
> maladies! The same scripture means vastly different things to different
> schools. I was talking with an ISKCON monk the other day and his belief is
> that consciousness is a product of the soul and Krishna is supreme reality.
> For him Brahman of Advaita was insignifcant. And his pramana was the same
> Shruti you use for your Advaita!

Well actually no it isn't,  The Gaudiya school didn't exist before the 
15th century.  They didn't get around to commenting on the Brahmasutras 
till the 17th century, their primary scriptural emphasis is on the 
Bhagavata Purana and the Gita not the upanishads, they came from an area 
of India where Vedic tradition was very week...the point is the educated 
man suffers much less from interpretative maladies than you might think.

>
> So, can you give me a reason, other than faith, why you would consider the
> pramana of Shruti to be more important than pratyaksha?

Can you give me a reason other than atheism why you would consider the 
pramana of pratyaksha to be more important than Shruti?

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>