[Advaita-l] Shankara and DrishTi-SrishTi vAda

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Namaste Venkatraghavan ji, all,

Thanks for sharing your article. I particularly appreciate your take that
Bhashyakara's refutation uses prathamamallanyAya (PMN). Although I'd have
liked to read BSB 2.2.29 वैधर्माच्च न स्वप्नादिवत् handled as well, but
that too can be answered by PMN. :) I move on to a general response on how
I see DSV in the rest of my mail.

The difficulty with people understanding DSV and/ or ekajIvavAda is that
people mix prakriyAs as seen in some responses. Mixing up of prakriyAs,
akin to mixing up sattAs, not only adds to confusion in understanding, but
almost certainly leads to wrong conclusions. Moreover, those who find DSV
absurd do not realize that the jIva who perceives the "statement of
absurdity" from "another" has created the other jIva, let alone his
statement. All questions that pop up in DSV can be resolved with a simple
स्वप्नवत्... and to me, that is sheer brilliance.

The most important point amiss among people that question any prakriyA is
its purpose. None of the creation prakriyAs or upamAs taken literally serve
any constructive purpose for the final goal of a sAdhaka, which is mokSha.
All prakriyAs only try to *explain away* the questions faced by a jIva who
finds himself facing the overwhelming saMsAra with its creatures and
things, except the question that will serve the final purpose. The tAtparya
of the Shruti doesn't lie in the creation story, nor in satyatva or
mithyatva of something as I have voiced earlier too, but in proving the
ekameva advitIya vastu that always exists as I. In that light, the purpose
of DSV is just that, mokSha of the jIva, which is the knowing the truth
about himself as brahman and not the perceived BMSC. IMHO, this is
misunderstood as same as vij~nAnavAda (VV), which it is not. DSV doesn't
say that consciousness itself is perceived by itself which is
कर्तृकर्मविरोध one of the many flaws of VV, the others being
क्षणिकभङ्गुरत्वम् momentariness, or even मोक्षासम्भव none of which are in
DSV. The consciousness is the only existing whole for DSV, everything else
seemingly existent borrows its sattA from oneself. In that they are मिथ्या,
and not अत्यन्तासत् as you rightly pointed out about VV.

I remember now that some years back I had brought this question to this
list about my dream, wherein the dreamer I was thinking that I was
dreaming! :) I always thought that to understand DSV better, one could
assume that the dreamer/ taijasa has the capability to know that he is
dreaming while he is dreaming. The question of jIva being incapable of
creating the world like Ishvara is an untenable question since taijasa
finds himself in a dream world, dreamt by himself as vishva who went to an
ignorant sleep, wherein there is no need to create one more world, and when
he "wakes up" to knowledge, he doesn't need to create another world either.
The question itself doesn't exist then. The other objection one faces in
DSV, albeit by mixing up another prakriyA or more, is the following: "I am
not a सर्वज्ञ, I don't know what goes on with any of my creation subjects,
sentient and insentient?" Again, स्वप्नवत् is the answer. During the dream,
for which my knowledge as vishva is the अभिन्ननिमित्तोपादानकारण, I as
taijasa don't know what goes on with the created subjects and the dream
world that I perceive. Yet another objection is that "in the dream, one
faces what one has perceived in waking". This is also a mix up of prakriyA
where that statement is made. In DSV, the woken up waker is not vishva, but
नित्यशुद्धबुद्धमुक्त brahman and the sAdhaka is the dreamer taijasa who
gets to knows that he is dreaming. Finally, there is the objection of how a
dream knowledge can give real freedom to the waker, but the dream-lion is
discussed in other prakriyAs too.

gurupAdukAbhyAm,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
[Br.Up. 4.5.15] */

On Wed, May 4, 2016 at 11:25 PM, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I was asked about the apparent refutation of DrishTi-SrishTi vAda in
> ShankarAchArya's prasthAna traya bhAshya. Please find below a link to a
> paper that discusses this.
>
>
> http://www.mediafire.com/download/4q9e6s9a99k9rye/Shankaracharya_and_Drishti_Srishti_Vada_4-May-2016.pdf
>