[Advaita-l] Patanjali Yoga Sutra. I.3

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:33 PM, Sunil Bhattacharjya
<sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Mr. Ramakrishnan,
>
> Sankhya as given in the Sankhyakarika does not talk about Brahman and naturally one may not be able to relate Sankhya of Sankhyakarika directly to Advaita. I remember to have quoted that the Sankhyasutra says that the existence of God cannot be proved. That is why Sankhya at its level of discussion does not bring in the concept of Brahman. It does not talk of Ishvara simply because it is not in the scope of Sankhya at the level of its discussion. Tell me where did Sankhya say that there is no Brahman? Sankhya never denied Ishvara. At that level of discussion it just does not tell you about Ishvara. At a higher level of discussion Lord Krishna does tell us that Sankhya and Yoga are one. Lord Krishna later on takes us to Vedanta. Svetasvatara Upanishad is basically an advanced Sankhya text and it clearly says that the concept of Brahman is given only to the most advanced students of Sankhya. The past stalwarts  and great Advaitins like Gaudapadacharya
>  and Adi Sankaracharya did know this.

Please read the brahma-sUtra-bhAshya where it is clear that Sankara
refutes Sankhya and yoga. It does not matter what your perception of
these are, but as per Sankara there are problems with both.

> You said as follows:
>
> Quote
>
> The problem is that we see some random stuff coming from people, and
> certain other people jumping on it and attributing it to the
> "traditional" advaita - all the while blissfully unaware of the source
> texts from Vidyaranya or Citsukha which already have made these
> crystal clear. "Imagine a dead horse and flog it to death" is the way
> I would put it.
>
> Unquote
>
> Do you mean to say that if Gaudapadacharya and Adi Sankaracharya had told the last word on Sankhya versus Advaita and explained everything that was necessary then all the subsequent explanations including those of Vidyaranya, Chitsukha, Vacaspati Misra, Sri Subbramayya, Mahaasannidhanam and several others are uncalled for and can  be called random staff?

?!!! The tradition of commentaries and sub-commentaries, and
commentaries on those are quite common. The bottomline ios the subject
matter can be quite deep and can call for more commentaries. I am not
sure what you are trying to say.

> Do you also mean to say that Gaudapada, who wrote a bhashya on the Sankhyakarika was  a proponent of a different type of Advaita philosophy? And do you  place the scholarship of Gaudapadacharya below that of Vacaspati Misra?

?!! All that meant was he could write a bhAshya on something without
necessarily agreeing with it.

Rma