[Advaita-l] BrahmaGYAna and jIvanmukti - 2 (The Caseof YAGYavalkya)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>bhaskar :
>
>correct prabhuji....to assess jnAni's behaviour we have to consider *all*
>his behaviour (but still I doubt :-))...shruti, here, which talks about
>yAgyAvalkya, does not give the *complete* biography of his overall
>behaviour & nor talks about his *complete* jIvanmukti status....and

This is because Sruti does not set out to describe a biography of 
yAjnavalkya. Rather, the upanishad only uses the episodes pertinent to the 
brahmodya-s in janaka's court and the final saMnyAsa of yAjnavalkya to teach 
tattva, through the mouth of yAjnavalkya himself.

>question remains for the readers that whether yAGYAvalkya finally realized
>his true nature & became jIvan mukta or not??  and also we have to accept

As a brahmavit, yAjnavalkya had already realized his true nature. His taking 
to saMnyAsa later in life is described in JMV as vidvat saMnyAsa. Kartik 
will no doubt explicate with further details from JMV in later posts. 
Sankara bhagavatpAda himself does not explicitly distinguish between vidvat 
saMnyAsa (renouncing the world after the rise of knowledge) and vividishA 
saMnyAsa (renouncing the world in order to gain knowledge), but the 
distinction is implicit in his bhAshya-s.

>that whatever statements we hear in janaka's court is from a person who has
>avidyAlEsha & who is greedy, arrogant in nature  & not a brahmanishta in
>perfect sense. And more importantly, shankara took this person's statements
>as *shruti pramANa* & written commentary on that !!!
>

>From the perspective of post-Sankaran advaita, avidyA-leSa goes hand in hand 
with jIvanmukti. It is distinguished from sadyo-mukti, where no avidyA 
remains. If we take a step back and realize that Sankara admits that the 
Sruti itself is within the ambit of mAyA, his writing commentaries on them 
is not surprising. Also, note that in gItA bhAshya, Sankara leaves room open 
for discussion on whether janaka himself was a brahmajnAnI or not. Note that 
this is a discussion of personalities in the upanishad texts, just as 
vidyAraNya does in a later time, about yAjnavalkya. It is not as if 
yAjnavalkya's statements in the upanishad are pramANa and janaka's are not. 
All of Sruti, taken as a whole, is pramANa.

>However, I am still finding it difficult to understand the difference
>between Sri Karthik prabhuji's description of a brahmajnAni who has
>completed infirm sAdhana-chatushhTaya, infirm BrahmaGYAna incomplete mukti
>etc. AND a person who has intellectual understanding of shAstra vAkya &
>quoting & talking authoritatively on brahma jnAna by memorizing the
>upanishadic teaching....I find hardly any difference between these two

Bhaskarji, we can immediately identify the latter, because we can recognize 
ourselves (at least I can :-) ) in that type! One should view the teaching 
of AcArya vidyAraNya in JMV as being descriptive of various stages of 
mumukshutva and jnAna, rather as an effort to set forth the darSana of 
advaita vedAnta itself.

namaskaras,
Vidyasankar

_________________________________________________________________
Stay in touch with old friends and meet new ones with Windows Live Spaces 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwsp0070000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://spaces.live.com/spacesapi.aspx?wx_action=create&wx_url=/friends.aspx&mkt=en-us