[Advaita-l] Advaita and Madhyamika Buddhism

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Raghav ji,

"just that there are many who stick to such Tamil works. Can such an
approach not lead to jnAna at all"

This topic is briefly dealt with in a work called Vichara Sagara - you may
be familiar with it. There the author, Nishchala dasa considers the
question whether vedAnta shAstra needs to necessarily be in the Sanskrit
language or not and concludes that 1) provided that the teaching is in line
with shruti 2) is taught by a shrotriya guru, is sufficient for jnAna. The
important thing is that the message is shruti sammata and is delivered by a
competent authority.

Therefore the answer to the first part of your question, "can the teaching
be in a language other than in Sanskrit", at least in my view, is yes. The
answer to the second part of your question, "can the learning be through a
book, without a live guru", is sadly no. Of course there can be exceptions
to the rule, but we need to observe the rule, not the exceptions.

In relation to the topic of this thread - I just want to clarify that I am
NOT trying to make the point that "mAdhyamika Buddhism is in essence
vedAnta", just speculating on the nature of advaita's response to
mAdhyamika, as gleaned from extant works.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 9:45 AM, Raghav Kumar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> On 19-Sep-2016 1:10 pm, "Raghav Kumar" <raghavkumar00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Namaste Ravi Kiran ji and Chandramouli ji
> >
> > I understand your perspective on prakriyA-bheda vis-a-vis
> asAdhu-prakriyA.
> > As for precluding the possibility of avidyA-nivRtti without using
> sanskrit,
> > i am not too sure.  I was having in mind the very real situation I see
> > around me as I reside in thiruvannamalai, Here many sincere people who
> > AFAIK have a reasonable degree of the prerequisites and are commited to
> > self-knowledge have no explicit recognition or acknowledgment that
> 'shruti
> > is shadba-pramANa' or that the words of the upaniShat-pramANam are to be
> > unfolded  or heard (i.e.,shravaNam of bhAshyam etc., is to done). They
> > might study exclusively Tamil non-sanskritic works of Sri Ramana Maharshi
> > (notso much the overtly Vedantic Tamil works of the Kovilur Math like
> > Sorupa sAram etc.)  like the Tamil work Ulladu NArpadu.And find it quite
> > sufficient for their jnana-sAdhana (in their perception.). (even without
> > any help from an accomplished shrotriya like Swami Paramarthanandaji who
> > has taught its Sanskrit translation sat-darshanam.) I do know the caveat
> > about not doing svAtantreNa anveShaNam etc.; just that there are many who
> > stick to such Tamil works. Can such an approach not lead to jnAna at all.
> > We could accommodate such an approach by saying that any given
> independent
> > text is anuvAda of vedAnta if there is nothing in the text which
> blatantly
> > contradicts shruti even if there is no obvious adhyAropa-apavAda and thus
> > we view the said text as a prakaraNa-grantha. Again I do realize that
> > Ulladu Narpadu is relatively easy to accommodate as a prakaraNa-grantha
> > given the couple of reference to 'veda' in it. In other cases, for e.g.,
> > sometime back there was a discussion of the possibility of a
> > vyAkaraNa-prasthAna by Sri Siva Senani ji which pre-dates bhAShyakAra. I
> > would suggest that if appropriate care is taken, we need not dismiss such
> > approaches outright as being invalid approaches. I suppose it ultimately
> > boils down to who is unfolding/teaching the given non-sanskrit text.
> >
> > I thank you for the responses - probably I am digressing a bit from the
> > main topic of the thread.
> >
> > Regarding the topic of the thread - it may be too much to contemplate the
> > possibility of accommodating the mAdhyamika-s per se. Unless they are
> > rigorous enough in their logic, in which case they will be led to being
> > 'logically trapped' by a panchadashikAra who will end by saying 'AyuShmAn
> > bhava' !
> >
> > Om
> > Raghav
> >
> >
> >
> >
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