[Advaita-l] Body is the disease

[Srinath Vedagarbha]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 12:50 AM, Anand Hudli <anandhudli at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
>
> I will respond to your other e-mail later, but a quick response to the
> above is necessary, especially if you claim to be an advaitin, playing
> the "devil's advocate" on behalf of the dvaitin. Please remember that
> one of the concepts that other schools find hard to grasp is the
> three-valued truth-system of the advaitin. There is not just True and
> False, but something called anirvacanIya or sadasad-vilaxaNa, which is
> not classified either under True or False.


I think you are confusing between satta-trividya and true-false.

satts-trividya is about existence of a given vastu. Either it is sat, or it
is asat or it is mithya. This "mithyA" is also known as sad-asad-vilaxaNaM.

Where as "True" "False" are about tAtvIka predicates. There is no third
value in this category.

Snake in snake-over-rope adhyAsa is mithya, no doubt, but the logical
predicate of the assertion "sanke is mithyA" has to be "True" in order to
make sense of what one is talking about. So also, the logical predicate of
the assertion "horns-of-hare is asat" must be "True" (tAtvIka) in order to
convey the idea that horns-of-hare is indeed asat.

It is easy to blame other schools for not understanding concepts of
advaita, but before one do, one must understand concepts well themselves
first. This is the issue I see with Madhusudhana, K.Narain and others.

I heard charges from Dvaitins that the whole concept of avidya is loosely
defined in advaita siddhAnta so that it can be stretched anyway one wants
and defy the enemies. Whatever the truth in that allegation, but one thing
is sure, instead of defying enemies it created internal cracks and all
these sub-schools/sub-thoughts have emerged. That's the sorry state of
affair.

I can very well understand the pun one of my friend was making -- even
though Dvaita siddhAnta is about duality, but there is non-duality in terms
of mata aikya (indicating there is no sub-school or abhiprAya-bhEda in the
mata). He continues -- on the other hand, in advaita mata even though it is
all about non-duality, but there is duality within their mata (meaning
various mata bhEdA about their siddhAnta). Isn't it interesting? - he asked
me.



> When anAditva is used as a
> hetu, it is not True, not False, but anirvacanIya in the advaitin's
> system. Remember also that MadhusUdana is using this anirvacanIya hetu
> to prove an anirvacanIya result, the lack of anyonyAshraya between
> avidyA and jIva. So he is justified in doing so. Nowhere has
> MadhusUdana or any other advaitin claimed that the anyonyAdhInatA
> between avidyA and jIva is tAttvika. Also, avidyA itself is not False,
> but anirvacanIya.
>
>
anyonyAdhInatA between avidyA and jIva may not have been called "tAttvika"
explicitly, but arguing for such relationship indicates that Madusudhana is
on that paxa (meaning he do consider such relationship is the case), is the
indication that Madusudhana do consider it as tAtvIka. Otherwise, why
justify vAcaspati on this topic?

 /SV