[Advaita-l] Iswara swaruupam - 3

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 5:38 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
> If your peeve is that in the paramArtha perspective we deny ALL
> multiplicity and
> we say that in that state, ISvara cannot even be truly called ISvara, as
> there is no
> jagat for ISvara to be an ISvara over, then take your peeve to
> yAjnavalkya, and
> to gauDapAda and to Sankara! Where there is a kingdom, there can be a
> king, but
> where there is no kingdom, who is king? yatra vA asya sarvam AtmaivAbhUt,
> tat
> kena kaM jighret, tat kena kaM paSyet?
>
There is nothing else for Isvara/Brahman to see. That does not mean before
creation and after dissolution, Isvara, transcendent to names and
forms, ceases to exist. Sankara specifically uses, with respect to your
king without kingdom, the term Isvaranila (rf. chapter 15) but that is
beside the point. I made a specific objection to Shri Sadananda's use of
Ishwara = Brahman + Apara Prakrti because it is equal to saying Ishwara =
Brahman + Evil. As evil has to be destroyed, Nirishwara Advaitins have to
kill Isvara. I suggested an easy way out - atheism.


>  He who is ISvara, nitya-Suddha-buddha-mukta, even from the perspective
> of the
> jagat, is brahman alone. And he who is jIva, baddha and subject to saMsAra,
> from the perspective of the jagat, is also truly nitya-Suddha-buddha-mukta
> and
> is brahman alone. To say this and to write out the logical explication of
> this basic
> principle of advaita vedAnta does not make anyone a nir-ISvara-vAdin.
>
When the pot is broken, the space within the pot does not exist anymore,
but the space is not destroyed. The illusion with respect to the great
space that it was within the pot and outside as two distinct entities is
what is destroyed. Isvara is never destroyed. The illusion that He is
distinct from Jiva is.