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

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

If the position is Brahman, although homogeneous, includes everything, then the term nirIshwara would be incorrect. But as everything including Ishwara is unreal, your Brahman excludes everything.

When you worship, you have to know at the back of your mind that this is unreal. Not that the Lord, my Innermost Self, has made Himself accessible through this salagrama, has manifested as bhakti in my heart through mano vrtti and the unlimited has accepted an apparent limitation. The only thing you accept as real is  the limitation you impose on the Lord. 
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-----Original Message-----
From: "Jaldhar H. Vyas" <jaldhar at braincells.com>
Sender: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2012 00:21:14 
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Reply-To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
	<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] About the term in 'Ishwara' in Advaita - a brief
 note

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>
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