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

[Anand Hudli]

On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 4:05 PM, Srinath Vedagarbha via Advaita-l
< advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 11:56 AM, Anand Hudli via Advaita-l <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> 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).
>>
>>
> If room A is now said to be containing only gem (and no lamp), and the
> light is said to be coming from the gem only; then why would anyone call
> the first case is bhramA? It is quite yathArtha only -- for it is based on
> hEtu (seeing light) and finding the sAdya (the gem). samvAdi-bhrama is
> contradiction in terms. If the initial jnAna is later found to be samvAdi
> to vastusthiti, it is not a bhrama at all. In Western language, it is
> validity by correspondence.
Further clarification is required. Person P1 mistakes the light from room A
to be the gem itself. In other words, he superimposes the gem on the light
emitted by the gem. This is quite possible if the gem is at a distance and
location of the gem is not easily grasped. So here the bhrama is the
superimposition of the gem on its light. yathA maNiprabhAM dRShTvA
maNibhrameNa pravRtto jano maNiM labhate eva, ato maNiprabhAyAM
maNibuddhirUpo bhramaH saMvAdI bhavati. The bhrama viShaya is the gem and
it is not sublated after the bhrama ends.

If this is still hard to understand, the PanchadashI, chapter 9 provides
plenty of examples of saMvAdi-bhrama. Also, Shri Yogendranath Bagchi in his
bAlabodhinI Sanskrit commentary on the advaitasiddhi provides a good
example. dhUlipaTale dhUmabhramAt daivagatyA vahnimati
jAyamAna-vahni-anumitau vyabhicArAt yaj-jnAnaM bhramajanyaM
tadbAdhitArthakamiti vyApteratraiva vyabhicArAditi bhAvaH|
Upon seeing a film of dust, one may mistakenly think it is smoke and infer
the presence of fire (by the inference rule "where there is smoke there is
fire" or the vyApti relation between fire and smoke). However, due to luck,
there may actually be fire in the place where it is expected. This is an
exception to the (proposed) rule that an object of illusion is sublated.
Hence, there is no rule that the object of illusion is sublated (ie. there
is no rule that there is viShaya-bAdha due to bhramajanyatva). Note here
that the (saMvAdi) bhrama consists of superimposing smoke on dust *and*
inferring fire due to the presence of smoke. The bhrama viShaya is fire and
it is not sublated even after the bhrama ends.

Further examples are found in the PanchadashI as noted above. One may
sprinkle on oneself the water of GodAvari thinking it is Gangodaka and get
purified. In this case, the saMvAdi-bhrama is thinking Godavari water is
Ganga water *and* using Agama texts to conclude that purification will
result from sprinkling Ganga water upon oneself. However, one does achieve
the desired result of purification, since there are Agama statements that
uphold purification from Godavari water too. godAvaryudakasyApi
vishuddhikAraNamAgamaprasiddham.

This is the essence of Madhusudana's statement bhramajanyatvasya
viShayabAdha-aprayojakatvAcca.

Anand


On Sun, Mar 26, 2017 at 9:26 PM, Anand Hudli <anandhudli at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>
>
>