[Advaita-l] Scholarly Article on Why Vedas are Valid

[V Subrahmanian]

On Thu, Oct 13, 2011 at 10:01 AM, Ramesh Krishnamurthy
<rkmurthy at gmail.com>wrote:

> Namaste Raghav-ji,
>
> The aim of advaita-vedAnta is complete duHkha nivRtti. Most statements that
> are made as part of the teaching process (involving adhyAropa-apavAda) are
> made in a pragmatic fashion, with the final goal of cessation of duHkha in
> mind. In general, there is no insistence that only a particular prakriyA
> should be followed. ..............to have any particular
> causation theory for the purpose of duHkha nivRtti.
>

Very well presented.  I have heard Swami Paramarthananda putting it in a
most convincing and intelligible way:

The purpose of talking about sRShTi, causation, by the scripture is to turn
the attention of the aspirant/jiva away from the created world which is
where he is engrossed, on to the Creator.  We can easily see how greatly
this is true from the fact that scripture lays enormous importance on bhakti
for the Bhagavan, the saguNa Brahman, the Creator.  Once this happens, it
becomes easy for the scripture to teach that the Conscious Creator is none
other than the conscious aspirant himself.  Just the negation of the
scripture-created upadhis from this scripture-created conscious Creator and
the avidya-born upadhis from this conscious jiva results in striking this
aikyam resulting in unconditional freedom.  So it is a journey from
world-ward engrossment to in-ward attention and realization.  The 'trick' is
the creation-creator model.

Regards,
subrahmanian.v

>
> Alternatively, one could straight away dismiss all of causation as a verbal
> trick !! The chAndogya does just that.
>