[Advaita-l] Whether darkness is bhava - Vivarana Prameya Samgraha of Shri Vidyaranya

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Namaste Sudanshuji,

On Sat, May 4, 2019 at 6:47 PM Sudhanshu Shekhar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> This is his argument which appears bizzare.
>
> Let darkness be A1-abhava AND  A2-abhava AND A3-abhava .........AND
> An-abhava where n is last type of aloka. Like surya-aloka-abhava AND
> deepak-aloka -abhava AND lamp-aloka-abhava upto nth type of aloka-abhava.
>
> If this is the premise then to remove darkness, we don't have to have the
> sannindhana of A1 to An as claimed by V. There is a basic logic. ~(~A1 and
> ~A2 and ~An) = A1 or A2 or An... That is to say, the negation changes the
> "and" to "or".
>
> To me, it appears that you have erred in interpreting sarvAlokAbhAva which
should mean sarvAlokAnAm abhAvaH and not AlokAbhAvAnAm samUhaH. Thereby,
what it should lead to is that:
darkness is !(A1 &&A2 &&A3.... &&An) which is clearly present when any
Aloka is absent and to take away darkness, all AlokAs necessarily need to
be there. The truth-table is of a simple NAND.

A1 A2 Darkness
0   0   1
0   1   1
1   0   1
1   1   0 (absence of darkness)



> Thus, his statement that removal of sarva-aloka-abhava can only be achieved
> by the sannidhana of sarva-aloka is incorrect. The removal of
> sarva-aloka-abhava is by kinchit-aloka and not by sarva-aloka.
>
> So sannidhAna of sarvAloka is correct for darkness to go.

Kind rgds,
--Praveen R. Bhat
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