[Advaita-l] Re: Advaita-l Digest, Vol 47, Issue 23

[Guy Werlings]

Dear SrI Senani,
Namaste |
Thank you very much for your kind e-mail and very useful comments: this is 
indeed very good food for thought.

DhanyavAdaH |

VandanAni |

Guy
----- Original Message ----- > Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:01:50 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Siva Senani Nori <sivasenani at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Advaita-l] vAda - criteria of truth
> To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
> <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Message-ID: <648545.56423.qm at web54215.mail.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Sri Werlings
>
> You had written:
>
> "I said that to be «true» any philosophic statement must be delimited by
> three boundaries: shruti, the Scriptures, yukti, reasoning and anubhUti,
> experience (it is there I think I made a gross and major mistake: I should
> have said «sArvatrika anubhava», universal experience, instead of 
> anubhUti,
> because anubhava is experience while anubhUti is realization - and that if
> all anubhUti is anubhava, all anubhava is not anubhUti).
>
> And I gave the following clarification: a statement acknowledged by a
> Scripture, but that cannot be established by reasoning and that cannot be
> experienced is at best a religious belief but not a philosophic truth."
>
> This set off a few thoughts:
>
> A. The starting point is quite orthodox (w.r.t. Advaita), but not the 
> conclusion differntiating religious belief and philosophic truth on the 
> basis of lack of experience. Such is the primacy of Sruti, that pending 
> svanubhava, the seeker is labelled a sAdhaka, as opposed to a siddha (one 
> who attained that being sought), rather than differentiating religious 
> beliefs and philosophical truths. Similarly, while it is comforting to 
> think that all Sruti statements can also be arrived at independently by 
> yukti, that does not seem to hold on closer examination. A few months 
> earlier, Sri Aditya Varun Chaddha of IIT, Madras had proposed on the list 
> that "chunky" can be theoretically established in the place of "Brahman" 
> by yukti and that was thought not to be so by the list members (not that 
> it makes it any more or any less true, but that angle was discussed).
>
> B. This differentiation seems to be based in a different system, and 
> though I have no exposure to 'philosophy' as commonly understood by 
> westerners, I suspect that such a system does not have as basis for Truth, 
> Sruti or Plato's dialouges for that matter: Yukti and svanubhava would 
> suffice.
>
> C. What place does humility have in the search for truth? What is the 
> possibility that a seeker does not know fully, and might do so later with 
> more exposure or thinking through?
>
> Regards
> Senani