[Advaita-l] Why brahma jnAna is capable of sarva nivritti

[Anand Hudli]

On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 7:31 AM, Srinath Vedagarbha via Advaita-l
< advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> A small typo is regretted;
>
> Please read para;
>
> "This is samvAdi-bhrama, for the vishaya of bhrama i.e gem, is not the
> adhisTAna of bhrama, but the lamp is. Although gem do exist in the room
> nevertheless it is not the adhistAna of the bhramA. Presense of gem is
just
> kaakatALia."
>
> as
>
> This is **not** samvAdi-bhrama, for the vishaya of bhrama i.e gem, is not
> the adhisTAna of bhrama, but the lamp is. Although gem do exist in the
room
> nevertheless it is not the adhistAna of the bhramA. Presense of gem is
just
> kaakatALia.
>

Well, you have succeeded in creating a bhrama where the adhyasta
(superimposed) is an objection and the adhisThAna is a misunderstanding!!
It looks like an objection (snake), but upon examination it turns out to be
a misunderstanding (rope). And this is a case of visaMvAdi-bhrama!

Let me clarify the example of the gem and the lamp. There are two rooms, A
and B. Room A contains a gem alone, and room B contains a lamp alone. Light
emanates from both the rooms, ie. light from the gem in A and light from
the lamp in B. Two persons, P1 and P2 are standing outside the two rooms,
which are themselves some distance apart so that P1 is somewhere near A and
P2 is near B.  Person P1 sees the light from room A only (not from B) and
runs after it thinking it is coming from a gem. Person P2 see the light
from room B only (not from A) and runs after it, also thinking it is coming
from a gem. However, P1 does succeed in finding the gem in room A,
whereas P2 finds no gem but a lamp in room B. We say person P1 experienced
a saMvAdi-bhrama (P1 found the desired object), while person P2 experienced
a visaMvAdibhrama (P2 did not find the desired object).

Anand








On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 12:56 PM, Anand Hudli <anandhudli at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Nice presentation by Shri Venkatraghavan. I would like to add a couple of
> points here.
>
> As rightly pointed out, the concept of sAkShI is different in dvaita
> vis-à-vis advaita. While advaitins hold sAkShI to be
> avidyAvRtti-pratibimbita-caitanyam, i.e. Consciousness reflected in
> avidyAvRtti, for dvaitins, sAkShI is, as per the nyAyAkosha-kAra's
> definition based on the pramANa-candrikA, Atma-svarUpa-jnAnAdi-vyanjakatvam,
> i.e that which reveals the nature of Atman, its properties, cognition, etc.
>
> The thrust of Madhusudana's argument towards the later part of the article
> is to establish that brahma-jnAna is not sublated, although he argued for
> sarva-nivRtti earlier. This is necessary because the dvaitin can and
> does argue that brahma-jnAna arising from shruti is also sublated. This
> objection can be met with using two approaches. First, taking the
> vyavahArika view, shruti is infallible and without any defect (doSha). It
> augments other pramANas such as perception and inference, and makes known
> what is not known through them, without contradicting them. That is why he
> says, "advaita-tAtparya-grahasya ca pratyakShAdyavirodhena pramArUpatayA
> doShatva-abhAvAt na tajjanyamadvaitajnAnaM bAdhyam. However, the dvaitin
> can still argue that shruti itself is bhramAtmaka according to the
> advaitin. Here, Madhusudana only implicitly refers to what is called
> samvAdi-bhrama, for example in the PanchadashI 9.1 and 9.2. A person
> perceiving the light emanating from a room containing a gem, think it is
> the gem itself and runs after it and does, in fact, find the gem. Another
> person perceiving light emanating from another room containing a lamp also
> thinks it is a gem and runs after it, only to discover there is no gem. The
> first is a case of samvAdi-bhrama, whereas the second is a case of
> visaMvAdi-bhrama. In the first case, there is doSha-janyatva, arising from
> a defect, but there is no viShaya-bAdha, negation of the object (gem).
> Hence, it is not correct to say that doSha-janyatva or
> bhrama-janyatva determines viShaya-bAdha. bhrama-janyatvasya
> viShayabAdha-aprayojakatvAcca, says Madhusudana.
>
> Anand
>