[Advaita-l] Real vs. Unreal

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

> > You cannot have your cake and eat it too. If you are not satisfied with
> > merely better or more knowledge and have to suppose omniscience, then you
> > have to repose the requisite level of faith in the omniscience of
> > teacher/SAstra-s.
> >
> RV: My faith or otherwise is merely my mental state. It cannot take away
> omniscience or otherwise of the teacher or the sastras. Can it? We are only
> concerned with what is the truth.


Once again, with patience. If you are concerned only with the truth and if you
are convinced that omniscience of the teacher or infallibility of the SAstra is a
necessary prerequisite, then you need to repose the necessary faith in that
omniscience and/or that infallibility, to approach the teacher and the SAstra
with humility, as means to the truth. 


> The question of not blindly accepting SAstra does not arise. If a SAstra
> vAkya conflicts with pratyaksha, such as fire being cold, then we don't
> blindly reject it either. We say that it has to have a hidden meaning
> behind the surface meaning that causes such a conflict. We set aside the
> literal meaning in favor of a secondary meaning. We take up that secondary
> meaning as a way to resolve the apparent conflict, but we don't sacrifice
> the authority of SAstra and we certainly don't accept it piecemeal.
> 
> 
> RV: If I evaluate sabda pramana vis a vis pratyakshAdi pramanas, it does
> not mean I am blinding rejecting the authority of one or the other. These
> pramanas give us knowledge and we are resolving the contradictions to
.... ... ...

> RV: The seen world is in the realm of pratyaksha, anumana and also sabda.
> There is a convergence in their views and also contradiction. Both coverge
> in that pot is made of elements and energy. Both contradict in that sabda
> holds pot to be unreal. I say that the statements of the sastras with
> regard to dharma, devas and ishwara are verifiable through pratyakshAdi
> pramanas but the unreality of the world (non-existence) is not experienced
> even on the rise of jnAnA.


Please clarify your thought about the applicability of the SAstra to AtmavidyA,
dharma, deva-s and ISvara. And pray, do try to understand that any apparent
contradition between the testimony of two different pramANa-s cannot be
resolved without accepting a hierarchy of authority of those pramANa-s for
the subject matters to which they pertain. 

 
Which pratyakshAdi pramANa-s verify for you the truth of the Sabda vAkya-s
about dharma and ISvara? If these issues are amenable to pratyakshAdi
pramANa-s that everybody has independent access to, why do you even
need Sabda or a teacher to mediate knowledge of these things? In any
case, why do you think that SAbda truths need to be verified through non-
Sabda pramANa-s?


I don't know how many times and how many people need to explain to you
that mithyAtva is not absolute non-existence. Hopefully, if you are able to
move away from this false equation of mithyA with non-existence, you will
see that your question will disappear. In any case, given that you currently
make this false conflation, on what basis do you argue anything about any
perception after the rise of jnAna? Either you have already attained that
jnAna and are speaking from your own personal experience or you infer that
jagan-mithyAtva is not a matter of experience even though you have not had
the personal attainment of removal of avidyA. In either case, you are saying
that all those who have talked about this in the advaita tradition are liars.
What are your pramANa-s and how have you applied these pramANa-s to
come to such a conclusion?


Vidyasankar