[Advaita-l] : Sankhya and Yoga can give Moksha?

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Namaste,

It seems some scholars have some doubt over the reason, for which  Sankara resorted to "parakaayaprvesha". Sankara himself clarified this point to  his shishya that he did that only for the शिष्तसरण्यवनार्थम्. He would not have incurred any दोष even if he had used his own body. I quote the relevant sentences as follows:


तदनंगशास्त्रपरिशीलनमप्यमुनैव सौम्य ! करणेन कृतम्  न हि दोषकृत्तदपि शिष्तसरण्यवनार्थमन्यवपुरेत्य पुरेत्य यते ll

Regards,
Sunil KB



________________________________
 From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org 
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 6:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] : Sankhya and Yoga can give Moksha?
 

> Because it is very interesting people are attracted to this. Other
> Mata Gurus like Ramanujacharya and Madhvacharya could not do this
> supernatural trick.

There are other stories of the supernatural and the miraculous recounted
about these other gurus as well, so that is not the reason for the interest
in this tale.

> 
> But we have to do very Sukshma Vichara to analyse this story and not
> avoid discussion. Sri Sunil is saying Vajroli will pull in lost seed
> and protect Brahmacharya. But we have to see seed loss was happening
> in the King's body but not Adi Sankara's body. If Adi Sankara's
> Sukshma Sarira is in King's body will the effect of seed loss be on it
> after it comes back to Adi Sankara's body? 

No avoiding of discussion, but as Sri Sunil mentioned, you can read the
details in the Sankaravijaya text itself. There is an important lesson that
is conveyed by this episode in the Sankara vijaya.

Firstly, brahmacaryA as celibacy is a tapas for the physical body, a vow
undertaken by saMnyAsin-s. In the physical body of another, there is no
breaking of this vow. Secondly, two kinds of saMnyAsa are recognized
in the SAstra - the vividishA kind (where one renounces the world so as
to pursue brahmavidyA) and the vidvat kind (where renunciation of the
world is a natural outcome of being established in brahmavidyA). Adi
Sankara, of course, was of the latter kind. The point of this legend is 
that as such, even the rule of celibacy was superfluous for him, but in
order to prevent confusion in the minds of others, he went through all
this business of experiencing worldly life by enlivening the body of a
recently dead king. 

All the details you are looking for are dealt with in the Sankaravijaya
texts. Rest assured that there was no problem with mixed-up memories
from one physical body to another. There is a good English translation
of the mAdhavIya by Swami Tapasyananda of Ramakrishna Math and
another by one K. Padmanabhan. Also note that the same legend is in
a number of other Sankaravijaya texts too, it is not unique to the
mAdhavIya.

Regards,
Vidyasankar
                                             
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