[Advaita-l] Holenarsipur Swamiji's remarks and why even Avidya is not necessary for Advaita

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 3:04 AM, Venkatesh Murthy <vmurthy36 at gmail.com>wrote:

> Namaste Sri Subrahmanian Sri Bhaskar and others
>
> You are saying the person saying Maya is not necessary for
> understanding Advaita is a Asampradayavit. He is not following Sankara
> Sampradaya.
>
> Who is Sampradayavit? Who is Asampradayavit? If you say Padmapada is
> Sampradayavit I can say no. If you say Vachaspati Mishra is
> Sampradayavit I can say no. Why? Because Padmapada is bringing new
> concepts into Adi Sankara's teachings. Holenarsipur Swami has written
> Padmapada brought in Positive Objective Avidya called as Bhava Rupa
> Avidya but Adi Sankara never said that. He never said there is a
> Avidya Cause for Adhyasa. He never said there is Anirvachaniya thing
> like Sadasadvilakshana.
>
> Vachaspati Mishra brought in things from Mandana Mishra's teachings
> into Adi Sankara's teachings. Mandana Mishra is not from Adi Sankara
> Sampradaya but different.


Rajaram: It is Friday evening but I am sober. I dont drink. So please take
this seriously :) By definition, a Sankara sampradayavit should know what
acharyas in the line of Sankara taught. Sankara knew what Gaudapada taught.
But he did not know what the later day acharyas such as Vidyaranya taught.
So, I am inclined to say that he is not a Sankara sampradayavit and will
score lower than Padmapada and Vachaspati Misra. Agree? Also, we often
think that Sankara knows his philosophy best and people like Sri
Subrahmanian tend to quote the acharya to prove what Sankara said expecting
others to take it seriously. But I argue that we know Sankara better than
he could have because we can learn all of his writings but at any any point
in time, he only knew what he wrote until then but not after. So, his
opinions are based on an incomplete knowledge of his own writings.

Please trust me that this is a serious post :) I have not concluded that
you can write anything on Advaita List about the tradition and its glorious
acharyas who dedicated their lives to uplift the masses.