[Advaita-l] diction of mantras

[praveen.r.bhat at exgate.tek.com]

praNAm,

Manish-ji wrote:
I won't say that there is any other philosophy, everything is degraded or upgraded aspect of advaita... for the purport of advaita is "to make a path through all these" to a state of transcendence, where its true meaning percolates...

... The philosophy of eat, drink, marry and sleep as propounded by charwaks, even that can be considered as much a part of advaita "though degraded to greatest extent", for in advaita "if you attain a higher stand point only then you can see why it is so"...

... I hope all of you on this advaita list will try to present your thoughts as boldly as you feel like. There is a discussion, and an understanding, and no argumentation.


praveen:
With the invitation in the last para above, I've taken the liberty to mark some of your own words in quotes since my comments are in the context of those. 

When you say that there is a purpose to *following* advaita and then say that all that there is is a degraded (or upgraded) form of advaita, and only after attaining a higher stand point, one knows why, didn't you see some contradiction? IMHO, what Amuthan-ji and others tried to point out is quite that. If one follows advaita, one walks the path in the traditional way to whatever extent possible; even so, Chaarwaaks having a degraded version of advaita or "anything goes" is meaningless till one attains a so-called advaitic position. After that, what one does is best known to a jnaani. In some way, even when you mention the extreme of Chaarwaaks, you don't suggest that following that path realizes oneself. So, the goal being (advaitic) realization, there is no scope for mixing up any other psychology or philosophy into advaita because all is some form of advaita. All those rest only as argumentative logic for correction, nothing more. They can't be brought on to the traditional advaita as a following.

My apologies if this sounds harsh, but I'm reminded of a friend's Guru telling him about why sandhyaavandana is done in a pooja room and not in front of a gutter, even though the Lord is everywhere! (I hope this is not seen as my naming other philosophies as gutters; I respect them all)

shivam shaantam advaitam,
--praveen