[Advaita-l] Body is the disease

[Srinath Vedagarbha]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 6:12 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 23 Jan 2014 21:51:41 -0500, svedagarbha at gmail.com 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.
>
> 1. Why should there be any other explanation, when we have explicitly said
> that
> *any* and *all* explanations can only be provisional?
>
>
So, are you saying explanation "jagan mithyA" too provisional? If so,
advitIyattva of Brahman cannot be said to be so sure, for the reason that
unless its counter weight jagat is mithya for sure. But you are not sure
about it when you declare *any* and *all* explanations can only be
provisional.


> 2. Why should non-duality of brahman need any explanation? What is Sruti
> for?
>
>
But shruti is considered mithyA and it cannot possibly generate yathArtha
jnyAna about non-duality of brahman at all. Read my reply to Sri.Anand for
the explanation on this topic.



> 3. Finally, are you arguing that the non-duality of brahman is not a
> matter of
> svAnubhUti and can never be so, for anyone? If yes, please say so
> explicitly, so
> the other members of the list know where you stand.
>
>
anuyOgi in your assertion "non-duality of brahman is svAnubhUti" is
non-dual Brahman, which is not siddhA yet but only known from shruti. But
in your model, since suruti is also mithyA, under that circumstance there
is no hope to have definitive "idamittaM" type niScchaya jnyAna about
existence of non-dual Brahman let alone whether such anuyOgi is going to be
svAnubhUti for sure.

You tell me, do you want hear my niScchayAtmaka take on this topic? or do
you want to hear my belief that it is so?



> > First, your conclusion "provisional facts can be used to arrive at
> tattva"
> > is not correct. In both of your examples, what has happened is a kArya
> > (sweating, trembling etc), and not any "tattva" such as "tattvamasi"
> etc. I
> > hope, you know the difference tattva and a kArya.
> >
>
> I will wait for Sri Anand Hudli to respond if he so wishes. Yet, I'm sure
> he knows
> very well what you are reaching towards. Meanwhile,
>
> Why not? Objects and events seen in dream have only provisional
> factuality. They
> lose it after waking up. The transition to waking up is the kArya. The
> understanding
> of the dream state and the waking state are tAttvika. Yet, the tattva
> cannot be arrived
> at without analyzing the provisional fact of the dream object. "I always
> existed, even
> through the dream and deep sleep" - this is a tattva arrived at after
> examining a set
> of provisional facts.
>

That exactly is my point too -- you arrive at tattva *after* examining two
facts. But in case of current vEdAnta context, two aspects "vyavahAra" and
"pAramArtha" were made *before* we know for sure they are so. If you argue
they are accepted so based on dristAntha-s of our dream experience, mind
you, we have more dristAntha-s in life which are based on reality of two
facts and what prevent us extending reality to world based on such real
facts? Both the cases are in our experience, both are sama-bala. So, my
take is that one cannot do nirNaya based on dristAntha-s, instead they
should be based on pramANa-s.



>
> > 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.
>
> Your emphasis on the distinction between tattva and kArya does not address
> the real
> questions that you need to ask.
>
> On what basis do you distinguish between the illusory tiger/snake and the
> jnAna of the
> illusory tiger/snake?


jnAna about existence/nonexistence of vastu is different from
existence/nonexistence of vastu itself. One belongs to epistemology and
other belongs to ontology.



> In the dream tiger example, the locus of your dream object is but
> you. In the rajju-sarpa example as well, the locus of the sarpa is
> actually also only you,
> because it is you who project the bhrama of sarpa on to an external rope.
> There is no
> sarpa there, real or unreal; tattvataH, there is only rajju. The effect of
> trembling/fear is
> also produced in the same locus, namely you. Clearly, "you" are real and
> dream tiger
> and the bhrama-sarpa are illusory, yet the kArya of real (same order of
> reality as you)
> trembling/fear happens to you. The realization of tattva, "the tiger was
> dream,"
> "the snake was illusion" also happens to you, in you, by you.
>

so, what is the point?


>
> The real issue is this. bhrama is revealed as bhrama only after the rise
> of pramA jnAna.
> So long as you are under bhrama, it is the bhrama itself that appears to
> you as if it were
> pramA.
>
>
That exactly is my point too. Dividing the reality into  "vyavahAra" and
"pAramArtha" should be made *after* raise of pramA jnAna but not before.
The real issue is, unless one denies reality to this perceived jagat and
brings it under vyavahAra one cannot establish existence of pAramArtha. One
cannot establish existence of pAramArtha one cannot deny this vyavahAra.
This anynOnAShraya issue is covered in advaita-siddhi.



> When the dream tiger causes you to wake up, the tiger is pramA for you so
> long  as you
> are dreaming. Yet, after waking up, you have the luxury of saying that it
> is not pramA.
> Pray, why not?
>
>
Not really. Tiger is not pramANa because in the dream it is not telling you
that there is highr tattva called "waking-state" and you should wake up to
that. It is accidental that there was higher state and woke up to it.

Let me ask you this -- when do you call a vastu or sAdhana a "pramANa"?  Do
you call it when it explicitly generate yathArtha jnyAna? or do you call it
so when it accidentally somehow triggers a jnyAna?  If you say it is later
case, then my contention is that you cannot say such sadhana is pramANa
until you verified resulting jnyAna is yathArtha and not a brAnti. In case
of shruti, you cannot call them as your pramAna-s until you verify your
jnAna about fact that you are indeed nirguNa brahman and then we can
certify shruti's assertion ahambrmAsmi and tatvamasi are indeed pramANa.
But they are so before the fact is a speculation.




> The illusory snake, always not a real object, yet real enough for the
> person under illusion,
> caused trembling, a real effect for the person under illusion. The person
> and his trembling
> are at one level of reality, the snake is not. Yet, a real effect on a
> person at the same level
> of reality was caused by an object that was only an illusion, not at the
> same level of reality.
> Why? Because the person under illusion did not know that the snake was
> only an illusion.
> By virtue of him mistakenly imputing his own level of reality to the
> illusory snake, he became
> capable of experiencing an effect in his own level of reality.
>

This does not prove that mithyA pramANa-s have sAdakatvaM.



>
> The dream tiger is not a real, external object, yet it appears to be
> external to the dreamer
> and appears real enough for the dreamer, so long as the dream lasts. The
> fear caused by
> the dream tiger happens to the dreamer, in the dream state. And it results
> in him casting
> off the dream state, to enter into the waking state, one to which he
> naturally ascribes
> greater reality than his dream state. Within the waking state, he analyzes
> the dream and
> concludes that a dream object caused a real effect. Unless there is
> something that is real
> in the waking state, which persists into the dream state and which could
> be acted upon by
> the dream object, even that waking up, a kArya, is not possible. Yet, what
> is the reality of
> the dream object itself? Only so much as that imparted to it by the
> dreamer. The one who
> dreams creates the dream object, within the dream, and casts them aside,
> after waking up.
> This kind of analysis leads to tattva jnAna,


Such tattva jnAna is after the fact, not before. In siddhAnta, it is made
to believe it is so before the fact. There is no correlation between
dristAnta and sAdhya.



> eventually, at least about the dream state and
> the waking state, if not about anything else. That very same dream object,
> partaking of
> only so much reality as imparted to it by the dreamer, along with the
> dreamer's reaction
> to that object, within the dream state, is key in transitioning out of the
> dream state into
> the waking state. It appears to be real in one state. It is known to be
> not real in another
> state. Welcome to mithyAtva, satyAnRte maithuna, tattva-anyatvAbhyAm
> anirvacanIyatva,
> avidyA, sad-asad-vilakshaNatva ...
>

> bandha-moksha vyavahAra is like that. We can very well say that mithyA
> vastu has
> sAdhakatvam for prameya/tattva siddhi.
>
>
>
Above sAdhya applies to only those facts we know for sure they are the
result of perceiving illusory vastu. Extending this to this jagat wholesale
and declaring it is too mithyA, is indeed a leap of faith.

/SV