[Advaita-l] Alaya vijnana and Adwaita.

[Srikanta Narayanaswami]

To: 
"A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>



Dear friends,

The scholars have the knack of making simple things difficult and that has been from the time of Vasubandhu down to Dharmakiriti and so on. They discard the old terminologies as being inadequate and that is probably to impress on the layman, by making difficult for the latter to comprehend.. Nagarjuna shouted from the rooftop that Shunyata is not not-existence. This is in line with the illustration of Lord Buddha that when water evaporates it disappears from a vessel and that does not mean that water becomes non-existent, though the empty vessel is left behind.  The Yogachara wanted to become more emphatic saying that there is no loss of information when one dies. The mass of information gathered during the lifetime (through the jnanendriyas) is the "alayavijnana" which goes to the next birth. It will not be wrong to say that in Buddhism what dies is the anatma and what goes to the next birth is the "alayavijnana", which is nothing but the soul or
"atma" as the Hindus call it.


My two cents please.

Regards,
Sunil KB
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With reference to the above posting,it is not possible to obtain proof to support the above theory.Both Hinduism and Buddhism have strived to get at the Truth.It is not correct to say that the scholars have the knack to make simple things difficult.Iam sure that all will agree that  to get at the base of Truth one has to discuss and analyse what we have before us.Though Nagarjuna shouted from the roof tops that Shunyata is not nothing ness the Buddhistic logic has further gone to define what is Shunyata.Many Buddhist scholars have written books on this and continue to write down to the present HHDalai Lama.We cannot po-poo any discussion if we are interested to get at the Truth.Even with Advaita,there is no conclusive proof about what is Atma?Where is it located?Some say the body is the Atma,Atma itself has taken the form of the body,some say dwaita is real as it is seen before us,some say only Advaita is real from the books.With this how can we say
 what I say is the Truth and waht others are saying is a lie?
N.Srikanta.