[Advaita-l] About the term in 'Ishwara' in Advaita - a brief note

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

This line of argumentation is quite ridiculous.

On Tue, 3 Apr 2012, Rajaram Venkataramani wrote:

> you conclude that Ishwara is unreal,

Everything other than Brahman is unreal _in_comparison_with_Brahman_ and
in a standalone context everything is real including Ishwara.  So why is this
a big deal?


> I am saying that you
> belong to Nirishwara Advaitam.

The prefix nis means without.  Brahman contains all including Ishwara so 
the term is an oxymoron. Advaita Vedanta is not niranything.

> (Atheism is not wrong and many good people
> are atheists. Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris are good people. They are
> better than many religious people who commercialise religion).

Commercialization has nothing to do with it.  Dawkins critique is not 
based on morality but on metaphysics.  He believes the theists are 
delusional.  Advaitins wouldn't disagree on that subject.  However Dawkins 
believes they are delusion because there are no non-material entities. 
Advaita Vedanta believes they are delusional because there is a higher 
spiritual entity that contains all Gods.  So the comparison is bogus. 
It's a cheap rhetorical trick to obfuscate the issue at hand with emotion 
and you can do better than that.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>