[Advaita-l] Traditional Scholarship vs Modern Pseudo-Intellectualism

[Raghav Kumar]

>Vidyasankar ji wrote: We either have the blanket "right-wing" dismissal of all such >scholarship
> that we have seen on this list recently, or we have the "left-wing" dismissal of
> all such scholarship, which controls the fate of academia in India today.
>

I am surprised to see people dismissing even sympathetic and scholarly
expositions coming in from western scholarship, by advancing ad
hominem arguments. There is palpable angst caused by other factors.

> The freedom to
> incorporate aspects of other systems of thought into one's own should be
> allowed to all serious thinkers, by default.
>

Certainly yes, that goes without saying.

>> Finally, advaita vedAnta as a system of thought has no monopoly on the
> dictum, "paramatam apratishiddham anumataM bhavati".

But as far as I am able to see, only an advaitin  is permitted and
encouraged to do the kind of questioning and analysis of everything
under the sun, including his own underlying assumptions and cultural
conditioning, which alone makes the dictum quoted above, truly
meaningful. Conversely, anyone who is able to empathetically
understand other traditions without distortion and misrepresentation,
*including especially advaita vedanta*, is willy nilly an advaitin,
whether or not he choses to describe himself in that manner.  My
facile position is that once the vedanta-pramANa works through
receptive study of Advaita, we cannot unlearn advaita vedanta since it
is not another set of concepts and beliefs to be believed in and
subscribed to or set aside by choice; the effect of the study of
advaita vedanta being very similar to "growing up" ; an adult cannot
regress back to childhood.

Om
Raghav




On Tue, Nov 15, 2011 at 1:30 AM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan
<svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> > Vidyasankar ji wrote: Not necessarily so. With the right attitude and the right inputs, B can > come to a state of personal conclusion, but still possess the ability to teach others what
>> > they need to know and to let others come to their own conclusions at their own
>> > pace. He or she can see perfectly well what the determination is according to
>> > one school. In Indian intellectual history, we have had many master scholars
>> > who were capable of doing just that. For example, vAcaspati miSra, who wrote
>> > with as much authority on nyAya and yoga as on mImAMsA and vedAnta.
>> >
>>
>> I am not too sure what exactly you meant Vidyasankar ji.
>> vAcaspati miSra never said "it's
>> >> > impossible to say that one school got it right everywhere, and others
>> >> > didn't." His (vAcaspati miSra's) position is surely the traditional position that the conclusions of Vedanta on Advaita etc are true and the rest of the schools are only provisionally true (for some adhikArI-s) to the extent that they fill in the details of various sAdhana-s (yoga) and upAsanA (mImAmsa) and nyAya (yukti-s employed in various contexts).
>>
>> It does not seem maintainable to say that "there are places or
>> contexts where Vedanta gets it wrong and some other school gets it
>> right. " which would be the implication of the first position of "B".
>>
>
> The following are the works of vAcaspati miSra - nyAya-sUcI-nibandha and
> nyAya-vArttikA-tAtparya-TIkA on the nyAya darSana, tattvabindu and nyAya-
> kaNikA on pUrva mImAMsA, tattvakaumudI on sAmkhyA, tattva-vaiSAradI on
> pAtanjala yoga, bhAmatI and tattva samIkshA on the vedAnta. The last title
> is a commentary on maNDana miSra's brahmasiddhi, presumed lost for a
> long time, but recently discovered in fragmentary form as a manuscript from
> Nepal and critically edited by Divakar Acharya, published from Stuttgart,
> Germany (note the geography from which such results come out today, for
> the most part!).
>
> Now, in each one of the works above, vAcaspati miSra was capable of
> being true to that system on which he wrote. He did not compromise his
> commentary on nyAya thought because of his yoga/sAMkhya/mImAMsA/
> vedAnta credentials, nor did he compromise his vedAnta expositions by his
> nyAya/yoga/sAMkhya/mImAMsA credentials. Of course, there are some
> who argue that he does show unnecessary influence of yoga in his vedAnta
> commentary, but let us leave that line of argument aside for now. If none
> of his works except the tAtparya TIkA had survived, vAcaspati miSra would
> have been called only a naiyyAyika, not a vedAntin. It is possible to learn
> nyAya from vAcaspati's works without ever getting an indication that the
> same scholar was the author of bhAmatI. On the other hand, it is impossible
> to dismiss vAcaspati as not having had a determination for his own on what
> truth is nor a having had no determination on the diverse systems of thought
> that he handled.
>
> That is the kind of scholarship that I am talking about. I hold that not only is
> such kind of scholarship possible, but also that it is possible here and now,
> not just in the ancient past. Moreover, it is highly desirable today. However,
> the prime requirements for such scholarship to flourish is a readiness to
> learn and the openness to shed one's preconceptions when approaching a
> new subject. This attitude is nowadays possible only within academia, but
> unfortunately, it seems to happen largely in Europe, USA and Japan, not in
> India. We either have the blanket "right-wing" dismissal of all such scholarship
> that we have seen on this list recently, or we have the "left-wing" dismissal of
> all such scholarship, which controls the fate of academia in India today.
>
> Finally, advaita vedAnta as a system of thought has no monopoly on the
> dictum, "paramatam apratishiddham anumataM bhavati". The freedom to
> incorporate aspects of other systems of thought into one's own should be
> allowed to all serious thinkers, by default.
>
> Regards,
> Vidyasankar
>
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