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

[Bhaskar YR]

sAshtAnga praNAms Sri Vidya prabhuji
Hare Krishna

If you could permit me, I'd like to share my thoughts/doubts on your 
explanation. 

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.

>  As your goodself know, there are three popular biographies (mAdhaveeya, 
chidvilAseeya, vyAsAchaleeya) and all the three biographies not uniform in 
narrating this story.  And it is also not clear whether these authors 
writing the factual incident with some reliable/credible source or simply 
expressing their poetic imagination.  Since there are different story 
narration of the same incident, it would be better to think that authors 
are just exercising their 'kAvya pratibha' while narrating these stories. 
 
Firstly, brahmacaryA as celibacy is a tapas for the physical body, a vow
undertaken by saMnyAsin-s. 

>  IMHO, along with physical body, speech & mind shuddhi & tapas to 
maintain 'akhanda' brahmacharya also a must for the brahmachAry / 
saMnyAsins. 

In the physical body of another, there is no breaking of this vow. 


>  But what happened to his vow with regard to vAk & mana??  Though 
shankara did not enjoy the ratileela in his 'yati deha' the enjoyment 
which has been experienced with the 'antaHpura stree' is definitely 
shankara's antaHkaraNa only.  This means shankara maintained brahmachArya 
ONLY in physical body but not in his antaHkaraNa, is it not??  Moreover, 
this explanation of shankara ( as per mAdhaveeya) leads to another 
question, can a yati like shankara, an epitome of saNyAsadharma, was ready 
to do 'anuchita' / sva-varNAshrama dharma viruddha kriya in shareerAntara, 
king's body by mis/using his yOgic power??  Is this karma becomes akarma 
just because it has been done in 'another's body?? 

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. 

>  yes, this is what one of the clarifications given by Acharya in 
mAdhaveeya to the objections raised by his disciple padmapAda.  But as I 
said above, though this 'anuchita pravrutti' is carried out in saMsAri 
body, the enjoying 'karaNa-s' were that of a saNyAsi is it not?? As you 
know, all these biographers clearly said that shankara, in the king's 
body, enjoyed like anything with the women and lost himself in lustful 
enjoyment and was succumbed to the 'kAma vAsana' (yes, chidvilAsa says 
shiva rUpi shAnkara developed 'rati lOlatva'!!). 

>  My humble question is, can we take all these as factual incidents in 
shankara's biography??  can we accept, parama vairAgya chakravarthy, yati 
shreshTa, paramArtha jnAni, vidvat saNyAsi like bhagavatpAda, lost himself 
in immoral, shameless & lustful activity?? how far can we take these 
exaggerations by biographers to be true?? 

>  Kindly pardon me for asking you too many questions.  But this is not 
intended to belittle the eminence of our AchArya. I am just doubting the 
over enthusiastic elaborations of these authors. 

Your humble servant
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar