[Advaita-l] Shankara on non-Advaitic mokSha/Brahman

V Subrahmanian v.subrahmanian at gmail.com
Sun Feb 24 11:54:33 CST 2013


On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Rajaram Venkataramani <
rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> RV: In gaudiya vaishnavam, it is not mandatory for a jiva to go to some
> other loka to attain liberation. Bhagavad jnana produces atma jnana
> instantaneously just as opening the window of a dark room reveals not only
> the sun but also oneself.


The question is: what will be the state of this jiva with self-knowledge
after death? Will he continue as an individual or not?


> One may still go to a world to relish a particular type of relationship.


How long?  For the body-mind apparatus is perishable, no matter of what
they have been made.  Certainly they cannot be made of Pure Consciousness;
only prakRti can take shapes and sizes and attributes.


>  A chair is different from the table but a leg of a chair is different
> from the chair but at the same time the chair.
>

I do not understand how a leg of a chair can be different from a chair, for
a chair is a chair only with all its constituent parts.

In the same way, jiva is considered one with ishwara while being different.
>

Further, there can be no amsha-amshi bhAva between brahman and jiva.  In
the BG verse 15.7 shankara comments:

//'Objection: How can the partless supreme Self have any limb, fragment or
part? If it has limbs, then there arises the contingency of Its becoming
destroyed through the dismemberment of the limbs !
Reply: This fault does not arise, since Its fragment, which is delimited by
an adjunct arising out of ignorance, is imagined to be a part, as it were.
And this idea has been fully explained in the chapter (13) dealing with the
'field'.How that individual soul, imagined as a part of Mine, enters into
the world and leaves the body are being stated:..//

 There is no delimitation just as shakti does not limit a shaktiman.


If the shakti of the shaktimAn Brahman has produced the jiva-s that are
different from Him/It, then it goes without saying that the products of
Brahman are non-different from It even as clay products are non- different
from clay in truth.

I would be curious to know if bhedAbheda has been dealt with by Adi Sankara
> or other Sankaracharyas.
>

I am aware of at least one instance, the Brahma sutra bhashya 2.1.14.  It
is pretty long and hence I am not quoting it.  One can read it and get
great benefit.  This concerns in part the bhedAbheda thinking and brings
out the untenability of such a proposition.

regards
subrahmanian.v

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