[Advaita-l] Two Advaitic verses with a profound combined purport

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

Venkatraghavanji - PraNAms
Beautiful analysis. Hats of to you.
Hari Om!Sadananda----------------------
 

   On Tuesday, March 26, 2019, 4:24:09 PM GMT+5:30, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote: 
 
 Namaste Bhaskar ji,

You had asked:

"When both these (jeeva and jagat) have both lakshya and lakshaNa aspects
and satyatvaM is already attributed to brahman in the very first statement
(brahma satya) why this partiality in jeeva-jagat analyzation and
concluding  that only jeeva is satyaM ( brahma = satya, jeeva = brahman
hence jeeva is satya) and jagat is mithyA??  Why we should not consider
upalakshya in both jeeva and jagat and declare satya or why we should not
consider upalakshaNa aspect in both jeeva and jagat and say mithyA??"

There are two reasons. The first is grammatical, and the second is related
to the process of moksha.

As you know, to arrive at any sentence meaning, we need to understand the
word meaning first. And in understanding any word, the first word-meaning
considered is the word's primary meaning, mukhyArtha.

However, when the primary meaning of the words constituting the sentence
leads to an illogical connotation (anvaya anupapatti),  impeding the rise
of sentence meaning, or if the intended meaning of the sentence is lost
(tAtparya anupapatti), one resorts to lakshaNA and takes the lakshyArtha -
the secondary or implied meaning of the words. The lakshyArtha may only be
taken if taking the mukhyArtha is problematic.

In the sentence jIvo brahmaiva nApara:, if we take primary meaning of the
word jIva, the sentence meaning conveying oneness of the jIva with Brahman
would be rendered logically impossible. Further the tAtparya of the
sentence to convey abheda of jIva with shuddha chaitanya - which is the
parama tAtparya of all shruti and the knowledge
of which is the cause of moksha - would be lost.

Hence by necessity, we discard the primary meaning of the word jIva and
take the lakshyArtha - which is shuddha chaitanya.

In the case of the sentence jaganmithyA, the jagat, whose mithyAtva is
intended to be conveyed in the sentence, is the primary meaning of the word
'jagat'. There is no anvaya anupapatti and tAtparya anupapatti by taking
the primary meaning. Thus, there is no need to discard the primary meaning
of the word jagat and take up the secondary meaning.

Thus we have grammatically valid reasons for taking the jIva to be the same
as chaitanya, whereas the world is taken in its primary sense - to be the
world that we interact with daily.

Coming to the second reason. As you know, moksha in advaita is through
jnAna. Such a jnAna should be capable of removing the cause of samsAra for
it to be capable of leading to moksha. The cause of samsAra is ignorance of
the self - not knowing who one is really. That ignorance leads to the
imagined division of the self into an "I" and "it/they". The "I" is the
jIva, in the primary sense, and the "it" is the jagat, in the primary
sense.

For ignorance, the cause of samsAra, to be removed by knowledge, knowledge
and ignorance must have the same object. The ignorance we are talking about
has only Brahman as its object - and nothing else. There is nothing else
other than Brahman to objectify. So, knowledge too must only have Brahman
as its object. It cannot have any other thing apart from Brahman as its
object, for it to be capable of removing ignorance. Thus, the knowledge of
"I" the jIva, where "I"/ the jIva contains any aspect of avidyA within it,
will be incapable of removing ignorance and conferring moksha. Hence, it is
said that in the jIva brahma analysis, jIva is stripped of every aspect of
ignorance. But how to do that?

Merely wishing something away does not mean that it ceases to exist.
If ignorance
is real, how can one strip away ignorance from the jIva? The jIva is
everyday faced with the world which constantly reminds him of his ignorance
and limitation. So as long as the world is real, it limits the jIva, and
this limitation is real, and oneness with Brahman is impossible.

Here is where jaganmithyAtva comes in. If the world is unreal, the
limitation of the jIva is unreal. Hence it is taught that ignorance, and
its projection, the world, do not exist. There is no multiplicity here
whatsoever, says the shruti. Like the appearance of the non-existent silver
in the shell and the dream world within the dream, it is proven that the
entire world is a mere appearance in Brahman.

Until this unreality of the world is understood, the removal of limitation
and ignorance from the jIva is impossible.

Therefore, the establishment of the mithyAtva of the world is a necessary
pre-condition for the establishment in oneness, which is the cause of
moksha. It is no surprise therefore that AchAryas in the advaita tradition
have taken great pains in establishing the mithyAtva of the world, prior to
arriving at jIva brahma aikya.

It is for this reason that the very first sentence of the advaita siddhi is
this - तत्र अद्वैतसिद्धेर्द्वैतमिथ्यात्वसिद्धिपूर्वकत्वात् द्वैतमिथ्यात्मेव
प्रथममुपपादनीयम् ।

Kind regards,
Venkatraghavan
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