[Advaita-l] mithyA from archives

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> ItarEya, prashna, chAndOgya etc. give different accounts of the same..In> this scenario, it is difficult to understand the efficacy of paNchikaraNa> theory in brahma jignAsa..Though there is an exclusive prakaraNa work> called paNchikaraNa in the name of bhagavatpAda & vArtika on it in the> name of surEshwara (savArtika paNchikaraNa), I dont know how this work can> effectively explain the theory of creation *in line* with shruti...For> example, mundaka shruti says brahman becomes fat through tapasya and from> it is born food etc. and taitirIya explains all the five elements come from> brahman...etc..how this can be reconciled with paNchikaraNa theory which> talks about the division of these elements into parts, and different> combinations of the same etc..
The chAndogya upanishat, in the sadvidyA section (dialogue between uddAlaka and his son), talks of a division of three elements into parts and intermixing of these parts. This is called trivRtkaraNa. In his bhAshya on this upanishad, Sankara bhagavatpAda explains, in two powerful short sentences, exactly how the pancIkaraNa theory applies in brahmajijnAsA. "pancIkaraNe 'pi samAno nyAya iti. ..." The "samAna nyAya" is with respect to trivRtkaraNa, which is given in Sruti. The reason pancIkaraNa is brought in here is to arrive at samanvaya of the various accounts of creation in the different texts.
 
And if one reads the pancIkaraNa work itself, one realizes that the emphasis is not really on 'explaining' the process of creation. Rather, the idea is to use the pancIkaraNa theory as a take-off point for teaching a meditation on the praNava, very much in line with mANDUkya upanishat.
 
Best regards,
Vidyasankar
 
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