[Advaita-l] Advaiti Response to this report?

[V Subrahmanian]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2012 at 7:38 AM, Venkatesh Murthy <vmurthy36 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Namaste
>
> This explanation of Satkaryavada you have given is conflicting with
> Vacarambhana Sruti. If the Effect Pot is Mithya before creation and
> after destruction why is this Sruti teaching us Knowing Clay we can
> know Pot. What is there to know if Pot is Mithya? The Sruti becomes
> useless. It becomes wrong also because it is teaching Knowing a real
> Thing like Brahman is same as Knowing a Mithya thing. This is
> impossible.  The way to explain things is there is no Absolute Non
> Existence of any thing any time.  Everything is existing in some
> condition always. There is no Nasha of any thing.
>

I think Sri Vidyasankar has already said that those who are unable to come
out of the 'real' world are not yet ready for Vedanta.  It is only because
owing to one's ignorance one holds things to be really existing the Shruti
comes to teach that by knowing the substratum of everything one will be
knowing the true nature of the superimposed phenomena.  So, there is
perfect meaning in the Shruti seeking to teach that the knowledge of the
substratum is the liberating knowledge which falsifies the superimposed
duality/variety.  To reiterate it is not the knowledge of pot that the
shruti is aiming at; it is rather the truth pertaining to the pot that is
the goal of this discourse.  If the substratum of a pot is known it brings
about the knowledge of the truth about the pot.

>
> The Sruti is teaching us there is no destruction of any thing because
> Brahman is the Material Cause of Everything and Brahman cannot be
> destroyed. The Pot cannot be destroyed because it will become Clay and
> even that Clay is Brahman only. The Vacarambhana Sruti is teaching us
> Any thing is a transformation Vikara of Brahman with a Name and the
> Name is got from Words. Vacarambhanam Vikaro Namadheyam.
>

'अपागादग्नेरग्नित्वं त्रीणि रूपाणीत्येव सत्यम्’  in this Upanishad  teaches
that everything in creation has to be mentally broken down into its
constituent parts/cause.  When this process is taken to its ultimate it
will be known that the basic matter in the form of agni, ApaH and prThvi
are only evolutes of Brahman and are non-different from Brahman the cause.
When through such an enquiry clay-ness itself is questioned and known to be
non-existent, there is no room to say 'clay is Brahman only' in any sense
other than 'clay is only an appearance of Brahman'.   That a name is
derived from words is not required to be taught by the shruti; it is
already well known.  To say that all vikaara-s are only word-based and
therefore mere names will be most sensible.

subrahmanian.v