[Advaita-l] Questions on jIvanmukti and the inadmissibility on doshAs, desires and distinctions

[Antharyami]

Hari OM~

Sri
Murali Karamchedu ji,

namaskAraM-s,



Thank
you for your post. I found your ‘fourth point (d)’ compelling and I will try to
gloss it from an Advaitins standpoint.

“Should there be brahmans in each SarIrA which the sam.nyAsI sees themselves to

be, then one needs to consider the possibility that there isn't  an
automatic

extension of this shruti taught 'immunity' to these per-SarIrA brahmans;
hence

the prospect of doshAs”



First of all,  in the beginning of your post you start off correctly with a
clear distinction that samnyAsI is not a mukta but in the latter part you
somehow identify a samnyAsi with a mukta. The verse you refer to is neither
about a samnyAsi nor about a mukta but it explains the state of mukti
per-se (ie., this verse is not about jIvanmukta lakSaNa but jIvan mukti
lakSaNa’. This is problematic. I will try to address this point here. In
Isa Up mantra 6 states ‘yaH sarvANi bhUtAni Atmani eva anupashyati’ – Here
Sankaracarya glosses the term ‘yaH’ = ‘parivrAD mumukSuH’. According to
Sankara, He who perceives all beings in the Self’ is a parivrAjaka who is
still a mumukSu and not a mukta. In the Advaita tradition, samnyAsi alone
is eligible for shravaNa. That samnyAsi is called ‘pramAtA’ – ‘knower’.
Now, the term ‘knower’ is considered to be devoid of the ‘asmita vrtti’
(the modification of the I-sense). Asmita-vrtti is the mental modification
of ‘I’ which is pravrtti nimittaH. Since a saMnyAsI is devoid of pravRtti
lakSaNa-s, he gets his asmita-vRtti nullified and the I-sense ceases from
all the klesha-citta-s. Hence he is called the pramAta. The term pramAta
here is pAribhASika sabda. pramAta in this context means that his mind is
eligible for the paramArtha-yoga.  Hence the difference (bheda) is limited
to pravRtti-bheda only and extending to ‘brahman’ is a huge and a
disconnected leap – out of contextual proportion.



In  B.G II.52 for instance states that. ‘yadA mohakalilaM vyatitariSyati –
tadA gantAsi nirvedaM shrutavyasya shrutasya ca’ – when your intellect
transcends desire, then you shall attain detachment from what is to be
heard and what has been heard’. Here Sankaracarya takes ‘te’ to be viveka
sampannaH or mumukSuH or saMnyAsi, who is known to be pAramArtika yogi –
who transcends all the injunctions of the Sruti regarding pravRtti-s but
awaits merely sravaNa on the tattvamasi mahAvAkya, upon which over
nidhidhyAsana he attains ‘aham brAhmAsmi’ jnAna.  NidhidhyAsana is the
pAramArtha-yoga.



With Narayana Smrti,

Devanathan