[Advaita-l] Body is the disease

[Anand Hudli]

Srinath Vedagarbha wrote:

>By all means you may consider both provisional paxa-s as provisional, I
>have no objection. However, when you accept there is no avidya at all in
>the end, this perceived bhEdAtmaka jagat remains unexplained by you along
>with non-duality of Brahman.

This bhedAtmaka jagat is mithyA or anirvacanIya, not false, not true.
It is a product of avidyA which is itself anirvacanIyA. Yes, Brahman
is the only reality. These are standard advaita tenets, which you may
look up in standard texts.

>Secondly, sweating/trebling etc, are not due to illusory tiger/snake
>themselves per se. They are due to your jnyAna about them. Although this
>jnyAna is a brAnti (ayathArtha jnyAna), nevertheless it is a real one (ok,
>as real as you, to be specific). So, it is not correct to say mithya vastu
>has sAdakatvaM for pramEya/tatva siddhi.

The tiger in the dream also causes you to wake up, which means you
wake up to a higher reality or tattva (relatively speaking) because of
the dream tiger. So it is not just responsible for sweat but also for
waking you up. If you say the knowledge of the tiger causes all this,
then you have to say how the knowledge arose. It cannot arise without
a corresponding object. advaita does not support purely subjective
knowledge, a.k.a. idealism, where there is no objective component. See
sUtra bhAshya 2.2.28, for example.

>*From another perspective too, your position is untenable. The notion of
*>"mithyA pramAna could have sAdakatvaM" is in itself a pramEya from your
>part, which is not (yet) acceptable to opponent. Now, as a proponent of
>that pramEya, onus is on you to prove it. Using what kind of pramANa do you
>prove it? Do you prove it using sat-pramANa or mithyA-pramANa? advaitahAni
>if former, for you end up with dual entities -- Brahamn and this pramANa.
>On the other hand, if you say you would use mithyA-pramANa, we are back to
>our original question and you need another pramANa to prove the fact that
>your first level mithyA-pramANa has a sAdakatvaM. You are on your way to
>anavastA.

Note: In the following, mithyA means anirvacanIya.

As I said before, there is no need to establish that a mithyA pramANa
can be used to prove something that is also mithyA, because of
everyday experience. The "everyday life" is itself mithyA along with
the world. If I establish by anumAna that there is fire on the
mountain because I see smoke (parvato vahnimAn dhUmAt), I am using
anumAna, a pramANa that is admitted to be mithyA by advaitins, to
establish a mithyA sAdhya, fire, in a mithyA pakSha, mountain, due to
a mithyA hetu, smoke. Hence, there is nothing wrong in claiming that a
mithyA pramANa can be used to establish a mithyA vastu.

Second, that a mithyA pramANa can lead to a higher reality (tattva) is
also established in experience. The examples of the dream tiger and
other illusions can be cited here. Here the mithyA pramANa at work is
perception (pratyakSha). But you may ask: the dream tiger woke you up
alright, but are you not still in the waking state where the world is
mithyA? Here, the only noteworthy point is that the dream tiger by
means of mithyA pramANa woke you up to a *higher* reality. But what is
the guarantee that there exists something that will wake you up to the
pAramArthika reality Brahman? Here is where the shruti pramANa comes
in. advaitins accept the shruti as a pramANa that will take you to the
pAramAthika satya, Brahman. Now, the dvaitin cannot deny shruti as a
pramANa because that would violate his own tenets. Nor can he say that
advaitins have caused advaita-hAni by admitting two things -  Brahman
and shruti. Although, it is accepted as a pramANa for Brahman, shruti
itself is said to be mithyA, in the final stage.

Anand