[Advaita-l] Understanding Reality in the Vision of Advaita Vedanta

Venkatesh Murthy vmurthy36 at gmail.com
Fri Jul 22 09:58:52 CDT 2016


Namaste
On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 12:13 PM, V Subrahmanian
<v.subrahmanian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I had stated earlier, such a situation is best explained by the
> rope-snake analogy.  The illusory/superimposed snake has no existence,
> sattA, of itself.  As long as one sees a snake there, its 'existence' is no
> different from the existence of the underlying rope there.  The rope's
> existence itself is transferred, as it were, to the snake and the vyavahara
> goes on: there exists a snake.  While in truth there is the rope alone and
> no snake at all, the sattA being One Only and not two, it is concluded that
> the rope alone appears as the snake.  When the rope-knowledge is had, what
> gets sublated is the 'snake' alone and NOT the 'existence', sattA.  In fact,
> sattA, which is truly Brahman, Sat, Itself, can never go out of existence: न
> अभावो विद्यते सतः. Now he will start saying 'there IS a rope' or 'a rope
> exists'.  But this will be too much for the Dvaitins to admit although they
> mean this alone without saying it in so many words.
>
> A thing or person may depend on another for survival but not for the
> fundamental existence.
Dvaitis will argue against this. A person when seeing a snake will not
say snake is depending on rope for existence. He will not be seeing
rope. This is the illusion. After the illusion the Dvaiti will say the
snake was Atyanta Asat only but not Mithya. Therefore even after
Illusion Dvaiti can never say snake is dependent on rope for
existence.

But a thing in the world like a Jada Vastu or a Jeeva is dependent on
God. The Dvaiti is seeing the Jada Vastu and saying this. He is saying
the Vastu and God are both real. He will never say snake and rope are
both real.



>
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 10:50 PM, Venkatesh Murthy via Advaita-l
> <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>>
>> Namaste
>>
>> It is a good article. I did not understand why you say Mithya means
>> dependent reality. Take a dog. The dog's tail is depending on the dog.
>> Without dog there is no dog's tail. But there can be a dog with tail
>> cut off. I heard some Tantric practitioners cut a dog's tail and use
>> it for strange practices. Near my home there is a street dog. Someone
>> has recently cut its tail and took it.  It is independently used. But
>> can we say dog's tail is Mithya compared to dog when it is attached to
>> dog? No. It is not less real than dog.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 21, 2016 at 7:13 PM, Wolfgang P via Advaita-l
>> <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>> > Dear friends,
>> >
>> > the following article explains the vedAntic categories satyam, asat and
>> > mithyA. The article is titled "Understanding Reality in the Vision of
>> > Advaita Vedanta".
>> >
>> > I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
>> >
>> >
>> > https://ia801507.us.archive.org/10/items/UnderstandingReality_201607/01_Understanding_Reality_en.pdf
>> >
>> > Comments are welcome!
>> >
>> > kind regards
>> >
>> > Wolfgang P
>> > _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>> --
>> Regards
>>
>> -Venkatesh
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>



-- 
Regards

-Venkatesh


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