[Advaita-l] chid-aabhaasa

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Bhadraiahji,
 
You said:
 
Quote

Oh well, if something is under control we are still under cause & effect..
food for another day. 
 
Unquote
 
All the deliberations of the Sashtras aim to sort out the "Cause and Effect". The Sthitaprajna (or can we also say the Sthiraprajna) alone succeeds in that. Arjuna asked the Lord to define or characterise the one, who is  Sthitaprajna (or steady in wisdom) and is absorbed in that blissfull or ecstatic state (Samadhi) and how that one talks, sit and walk. The Lord said that the Sthitaprajna is one, who discards all desires coming to the mind and one, who is contented in self alone and that means the one, who achieves the bliss or ecstasy (Zaehner calls it enstasy) of that state ie. the one, who attains Samadhi. After giving this highest definition the Lord  tells Arjuna in the next three verses about the other definitions of Sthitaprajna as the one, who is engaged in the stages of Dhyana, Dharana and Pratyahara, roughly in that order. However Patanjali reverses the order in his treatment of Yoga. It thus appears to me that we cannot be
 very rigid about deciding whether the higher entity desrves the first attention or the the lower entity is to be given the first attention as long as both the entities are involved or required in the discussion.
 
Regards,
 
Sunil K. Bhattacharjya


--- On Wed, 2/25/09, Bhadraiah Mallampalli <vaidix at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Bhadraiah Mallampalli <vaidix at hotmail.com>
Subject: [Advaita-l] chid-aabhaasa
To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 1:11 PM

 
>The realization is shifting my identity with anaatma to >my true nature
- that is done by with the intellect only >- hence scripture says mind alone
is responsible for both >ignornace and knowledge.

Could please give a quote, just the wording.

 

We all eat food, and we think the hands are feeding our mouths. We eat with our
hands. (Snakes don't have hands and directly with mouth, which is besides
the point.) As long as we think we use our intellect to direct our hand for
eating, yes hands are a means. But if we are very hungry we don't realize
that distinction between means and end because the eater's consciousness
supercedes all thoughts. Likewise when we realize that mind is controlled by
supreme deity we see it working similar to a CPU juggling its bits. 

 

Ultimately we have to identify with a higher entity to see a lower entity as an
"inert" entity (going by your term). Until then we can not do this. 

 

But the same story can very well be written about other entities too, and mind
is not anything special, though it is special in its own way for its function of
being able to think and differentiate between two amalaka fruits (ignorance and
knowledge in your statement above). 

 

Dhyana, the next higher stage is typically what is explained all over Upanishat
commentaries as Model-based classification. Dhyana is a process of categorizing
all objects according to a model of n-elements. After classifying all objects we
need to eliminate the model itself, otherwise the presence of model itself will
be the final piece of ignorance left out. That will reveal advaita. This process
of dhyana always exists in us, like a software preloaded, just like mind
(manas). Whatever arguments you made about mind are now recursively applicable
to dhyana (dhyana alone can classify all objects in this universe into a model,
but dhyana is inert, once we get brahmajnana dhyana will fall off like intellect
did etc.) Then I will likewise counter that dhyana can not be called inert by
any lower level observer unless you can identify yourself with something above
dhyana etc. 

 

So I guess who ever said intellect is inert was at the point of time talking
from a higher level than intellect. Even in that case intellect will not stay
inert because the person can very well get into those lower states like
intellect at will and observe life of smaller beings like us, so the implication
may be that it is not unknown or out of control, it is something that is under
control. 

 

Oh well, if something is under control we are still under cause & effect..
food for another day. 

 

Regards

Bhadraiah

 

        

 

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