[Advaita-l] Jnana and ajnana (Bhakti vs. Jnana)

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 2:29 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> Let me offer another piece of unsolicited advice. If the only intent of a
> post is
> to shoot off a barbed comment, please hit the cancel button after typing it
> out
> and getting the response out of your system. Three lines of text from you,
> after quoting fifteen-twenty (or more) lines of a previous post, does not
> add
> to the quality of the list. A few days ago, you quoted an entire posting of
> three
> paragraphs and added one comment, "Yup - agree." Before doing the "Send"
> action on your email, please ask yourself what value addition your email
> provides to the list. Also, remember that writing an email is an extension
> of
> your speech and it would be good to heed gItA 17.15 with regard to tapas
> pertaining to vAk - anudvegakaraM vAkyaM satyam priyahitaM ...
>
> RV: You, as a moderator, have the right to regulate this forum through
advice, removal of posts or discordant members. However, it would be a good
idea to hear point of view as well though. First of all, the topic of my
post is bhakti vs. jnana. I am asking the question to progress my research
in to "bhakti in advaita". There is no room for posts that question my
methodology, knowledge or sincerity. I have repeatedly pleaded in this
thread to focus on my topic but in vain. Secondly, when a member pointed out
that I should start with "basics" such as avidya, I wanted to show that
avidya is not a basic topic that many people understand. Having spent time
with scholars and the works of acharyas such as Madhusudana, I understand
the significance of this topic especially for "bhakti in advaita". Thirdly,
I pointed out mistakes in other's posts (confusing knowledge of the set with
the knowledge of the elements, answering question about knowledge /
ignorance of a particular object without invoking sakshi and loosely using
terms such as nyaya and tarka interchangeably*) but others also pointed out
mistakes in my question (lack of clarity and context). So, there is nothing
that I did wrong on that count except that I might not have respected the
established order of this forum. Fourthly, I said "Yup -  agree" because I
agreed with the entire position of the other member in his entire post. I
dont know what is wrong with that. If you wanted me to truncate the message,
I cannot do it in my blackberry.

*explained further below

Coming to the immediate topic on hand, please note that when someone says
tarka-SAstra or tarka-vidyA, the referent is only the nyAya-SAstra. By
definition,
adding the term SAstra to tarka rules out ku-tarka. On the other hand, note
that
there is no such term as vitaNDA SAstra.

RV: My original criticism was with respect to interchangeably using nyaya
(whole) and tarka (part) not nyaya sastra and tarka sastra as you wrongly
quote above. Even by your own terms of reference, by not having the term
sastra after tarka it has room for negative connotation. It is not only the
fault with the usage of terms (which by itself is important) that I wanted
to point out. It is the fact that the other member grossly reduced the
importance of nyaya in interpretation of sastras. It is impossible for one
to have a technically sound understanding of philosophy without a knowledge
of nirukta, vyakarana and nyaya. Both Sankara and Madhusudana use these
extensively. In fact, no acharya can come out with his siddhanta without the
use of nyaya, nirukta and vyakharana. We may not have enough knowledge of
these topics but that is no reason to say that they have minimal importance
or that they are important only in the context of polemics. I do not know
Sri Mani Dravid Sastrigal as much as you people will do but even if he were
a judge of my position vs. the other member's, being brahmana scholar, I
hope he will stand by my position on the importance of nyaya in
interpretation and use of terms nyaya vs. tarka not the other member's.


Regards,
Vidyasankar



> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 12:57:38 +0100
> From: rajaramvenk at gmail.com
> To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org

> > Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Jnana and ajnana (Bhakti vs. Jnana)
> >
> > As you propose that it is okay to call nyaya (whole) as tarka (a part), I
> > suggest you call your style of nyaya as vitanda (another part). I will
> call
> > style of nyaya as vada (another part). ha ha ha.
> >
> > On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 10:13 AM, V Subrahmanian <
> v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 12:25 PM, Rajaram Venkataramani <
> > > rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
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