[Advaita-l] Nyayasudha Objections 1

[Srinath Vedagarbha]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 1:09 AM, Anand Hudli via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> >Very basis of "lakShya" is that it is pratipAdya by lakshaNA-vRtti. Now,
> >what is lakShNa?  it is shakya-saMbandha - meaning for saMandha jnAna,
> >saMandhi jnAna is the cause. In the current context, Brahman is saMandi,
> >and how is this saMandi jnAna possible without having any words denoting
> in
> >its primary meaning? Without this being addressed, how can one accept
> >lakshyArtha be called pramA?
>
> We seem to be going round in circles here. As I pointed out earlier, even
> if lakShyArtha is not possible in the case of Brahman, that is acceptable
> to us, since Brahman is not expressible by words directly or indirectly, in
> reality. Keeping this mind, we find statements in the shruti, such as "neti
> neti". Whatever concept, thing, place, person, god, etc. that you can think
> of or imagine, the shruti says "neti" - that is not Brahman.


"nEti" can be understood to be referring to both niruguNa vastu or
guNa-pUrNa vastu. In these two extreme edge cases only "nEti" can thought
of referring to other than known vatus. Given this, unless one accepts B as
guNa-pUrNa, other niravakASha vAkyas such as "brihintO asmin hi guNaH' etc
cannot be addressed .  If "nEti" is thought to be Brahman without any
guNa-s, then that position leads to shrutahAna or ashruta kalpana flaw.



> The analogy of
> Meru is not appropriate, because even if there is a huge mountain one can
> imagine a part or some property of the mountain. For instance, you can
> imagine a mountain of gold or with snow-capped peaks, etc. In the case of
> Brahman, there is no property at all!


property or no property, that has to come only after resolving
vAchyatva/avAchyatva issue. This resolution must be based on considering
both type of vAkhyas -- which says on both sides. As said earlier, both
types can be harmonized only in vastu which is very rich in its attributes
(guNa-pUrNa) such as Meru. Of course, if one starts with stand that B has
no property, only one type of vAkhyas (which says B is ajnEya etc) can be
accommodated.



> That is exactly why shruti says the
> mind and words cannot reach it, which means you cannot even imagine
> Brahman.
>

Then other set of vAkyas has to forego and thereby step into shrutahAna
territory!


>
> To the above, you can repeat the familiar objection - then does Brahman
> equate to shUnya or Brahman is not known through any pramANa? I will have
> to repeat that Shankara BhagavtpAda denies this when he says
> "asmatpratyayaviShayatvAt"- it *appears* to the object of the concept "I".
>

That's fine, but the issue comes when one out to do aikya of this "I" (tvam
pada ) to tat-pada, for how can anyone know about referent of "tat" pada
given that it is not vAchya nor lakshya ?


> Since Brahman is never presented as an object, the best the shruti can do
> is to use lakShyArtha to indicate Brahman, using many words such as
> nirguNaM niShkriyaM nirmalaM, niravadyaM, nirAkAraM AdinArAyaNaM dhyAyet
> (tripAdvibhUtimahAnArayaNa upanishad) etc.
>
>
That's fine, buy again, what happens to other set of vAkya-s?

/sv