[Advaita-l] Comments of an ISCKON follower

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

The issue that gaudiya vaishnavas have with Advaitam is that the latter
considers Ishwara, His names, forms and divine qualties to be mithya
whereas in their view the Upanishads do not. They also do not accept that
the names and forms of Ishwara are unreal and stand on the support of texts
such as "nama chintamani krishna, chaitanya rasa vigraha, purna suddha,
nitya, mukta, abhijnatva, nama, namine". Also, as a result, bhakti
(or unconditional love of god) becomes a mere means for citta suddhi for
attainment of atma-jnanam or moksha. They consider bhakti to be an
incarnation of Srimati Radharani, who is non-different from Sri Krishna
Himself as His internal potency or hladini shakti. So, the
position accorded to bhakti is unacceptable to them. It is like the muslims
breaking the Pagan, Hindu and Buddhist idols on the ground that limiting
the unlimited God is a sacrilege!
(It is a different matter that to this day some Advaitins do not consider
Ishwara to be mithya).

If Sankara can call scholars in other traditions, even if they have dehatma
buddhi like Carvakas, mUdha, why cant other traditions call Advaitins so?
IMO, there is nothing wrong in personal attacks as it is an effective way
to demolish the opposition that cannot engage in a discussion and there is
historic evidence that it has been used effectively in Hindu traditions. If
someone is a fool in our view, we should call them so. And if we are wrong,
let our foolishness will be exposed.

On Sun, Mar 18, 2012 at 2:14 PM, kuntimaddi sadananda <
kuntimaddisada at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Rajaramji - PraNAms
>
> muDha is used by Shankara even for all those who delude themselves by
> considering the inert bodies as I am. I am afraid lot of people come under
> that category.
>
> The problem with some traditions is the criticism is done at personal
> level - The very implication is they do not have substance in the criticism
> of the contents.
>
> Traditionally the objections and counter objection to philosophical
> positions are agreed methods of miimamsa to arrive at the truth - at that
> time the persons are not given importance, only the issues. When the
> criticism gets down to the personal level, it is clear that they do not
> have much to say at the issue level.
>
> Surprisingly, I find this often in the on-line discussions - people come
> down to personal level than at issue level.
>
> Hari Om!
> Sadananda
>
>
> --- On Sun, 3/18/12, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  I even remember seeing the term mudha with respect to other traditions in
> hisworks.
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