[Advaita-l] FW: Avidya, Jnanis and SSS' views

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- On Mon, 5/3/10, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

[..]

> 
> > 
> > May I reiterate (at least for the third time on this
> list) that the term
> > "brahmavidAM varishTha" is from the muNDakopanishat? 
> > 
> > > who said this is not from muNDakOpanishat
> prabhuji?? Problem here is 
> > (atleast for me), since saguNa brahmOpAsana or upAsya
> brahma and 
> > resultant krama-mukti also are there in advaita and
> those who get this 
> > jnAna also called brama vetta-s and shankara accepts
> the gradations in 
> > this type of mukti, shankara in the above bhAshya
> 'compares' these type 
> > of brahmavidas (saguNOpAsaka-s) with that of absolute
> (paramOtkrushta) 
> > brahma jnAni and says this jnAni (when compared to
> saguNa brahma jnAni-s) 
> > among brahmavidAM is 'varishThaH'..Point to be noted
> here is he never 
> > accepted any gradation in absolute brahma jnAna which
> can be undoubtedly 
> > called real muktyAvastha, because shankara clarifies
> it is always eka 
> > rUpa: muktyAvasthA hi sarva vedAnteshu ekarUpaiva
> avadhAryate, brahmaiva 
> > cha muktyavasthA...reference vide sUtra bhAshya.
> Moreover, IMO, it is 
> > appropriate to think there exists The best brahma
> jnAni if, ONLY if there 
> > is different levels in brahma jnAna..but I donot think
> shruti or shankara 
> > telling us here that there are gradations in absolute
> brahma jnAna. 
> 
> 
> I would ask you to re-read a couple of my previous posts,
> where I
> have reiterated that there are no different levels of true
> brahma-
> jnAna and that I have never said that Sankara bhagavatpAda
> admits
> of gradations in AtmaikatvajnAna, but that there can be
> different
> levels of nishThA in that jnAna.

Perhaps an analogy may help here. Suppose we say, purely for the sake of understanding, that attaining to GYAna is akin to driving a car (as a rough analogy).

aGYAnI -> Person who is walking
GYAnI -> Person who is driving a car

GYAnimAtra -> Person who is driving a car without steady control
sthipraGYa - > Person who is driving a car with steady control

A driving instructor may tell a student who has just begun to drive, "You are driving all right, but it is going to take more effort to develop steadiness in your driving".

Among those that are driving a car, there is definitely a difference between driving a car steadily and driving a car unsteadily.

**** THIS "UNSTEADY" DRIVING IS NOT THE SAME AS SOMEONE WHO IS "PARTIALLY" DRIVING!! ****

To be noted carefully: Both the GYAnimAtra and the sthitapraGYa have full saMyagGYAna. The difference between the two is that the latter's saMyagGYAna is sthitam (steady), whereas the former's is asthitam (unsteady).

Note again (worth reiterating): Going back to the analogy, it is NOT that the difference between the two is that one is "partially" driving, whereas the other is "fully driving" or that there are gradations in the "percentage of how much their driving". Rather, it is a **fundamentally different parameter of steadiness** that is being considered here.

Regards,
Kartik