advaita and buddhism (was RE: [Advaita-l] discussion about panchayatan puja)

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

> however, it is certainly true that certain *practices*
> may be borrowed from other darshana-s, if necessary,
> provided they do not conflict with our siddhAnta. for
> instance, aShTA~Nga yoga has been traditionally
> integrated within advaita though the siddhAnta of yoga
> (sA~Nkhya) is certainly not acceptable to advaita.

We have have had many discussions earlier on yogic practices, in the
specific sense of meditation/breathing, etc (as opposed to the general
sense of "any spiritual discipline" such as karma yoga, j~nAna yoga,
etc) in the advaitin tradition. There have been discussions on the
yogasUtrabhAShya, yogasUtrabhAShyavivaraNa, yogatArAvali,
tatvavaiSAradI, etc.

On the advaita-vedanta.org website Vidyasankar states the following:

Quote
-----------
 "In any case, there seems to be a large overlap in subject matter
between the "yoga" upanishads and the "sam.nyAsa" upanishads, pointing
to the close relationship between yoga practice and sam.nyAsa as an
institution. This also raises the possibility that the traditional
association of yoga with sAm.khya in terms of the six darSanas may be
slightly misleading. In this connection, it is interesting to note
that the most important texts on the yoga system are by teachers of
advaita vedAnta, from Sankara downwards, although all these
commentators explain yoga more or less in sAm.khyan terms. Another
interesting observation in this connection is that advaita vedAntins
have completely internalized yoga practice as an aid to meditation and
to realize the non-dual brahman."
------------
Unquote

While many teachers of various kinds of yogic practices, including
kuNDalinI yoga, kriyA yoga, etc are advaitins (and maybe some of these
were initially developed by advaitins), is there any yogic discipline
that has an exclusive association with the advaitin tradition? I
understand that the former SR^i.ngerI AcArya Sri abhinavavidyAtIrtha
was a master yogin. So is there any discipline that is specifically
followed by the SR^in.gerI maTha?

Similarly do the many advaitin maTha-s in R^iShikesh follow any
specific yogic tradition ? (maybe Sanjay Srivastava could answer this
one)


>
> while on this topic, i'd like to make a small
> observation. to my knowledge (and strictly in my
> opinion), certain buddhist descriptions of meditation
> (especially those of the theravAda vipassana schools
> based on the 'visuddhimAgga') are far better any of
> the recently composed texts on meditation. if used
> properly, they can be very effective in generating
> nityAnitya viveka, vairAgya or sAdhana chatuShThaya
> sampatti. besides, most of these buddhist meditations
> are essentially 'observe-and-know' processes and hence
> *cannot* conflict with advaita for precisely the same
> reasons why a properly conducted scientific experiment
> cannot clash with advaita. hence, imo, there is ample
> scope to integrate certain forms of buddhist
> meditation within advaita.

What are the recently composed texts you are referring to?
And in the same vein, do we have any traditional meditative practices
in advaita-vedAnta that are equivalent to the theravAdin vipassana?

dhanyavaadaH
Ramesh