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

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Namaste Sudhanshuji,

On Sun, May 5, 2019 at 3:22 PM Sudhanshu Shekhar via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

>
> If A1 is 0 and A2 is 1, then as per your truth table - the darkness is 1
> i.e. Darkness is there-----. that is -- say torchlight (A1) is not there
> but sunlight (A2) is there, then will there be darkness? It won't be.
>
Yes there will be darkness as it is defined as absence of "all light."
Here, there is no absence of all light, but absence of one light. Imagine a
scenario that you have n zero-bulbs in your room. Unless you light up all
bulbs, it remains dark enough to read your book. Now, what is darkness?
Even if you switch off one bulb, it is dark. You may be thinking of
something of pitch-dark which you already know of, but that is not the
definition of darkness here, is it?!


> However, as per the interpreted definition of sarva-Aloka-abhAva, there
> will be darkness.

Please interpret the definition with a vigraha-vAkya is you think the
interpretation is wrong. I’m curious to see how you arrived at the formula
in the first place as to whether it was by shabda-mimAMsA or meaning
presumed regardless of the word.


> Hence this cannot be the intention of V.
>
> This definition of sarva-Aloka-abhAva as !(A1 & A2 .. & An) is against
> pratyaksha.. it does not make sense.. does it?
>

In any case, I suggest you to go with the definition and refutation as
given by SV. If you have a definition for which kind of abhAva is darkness
and it makes sense to you, please mention those and explain how those are
not covered by SV in any of the three, if that.

gurupAdukAbhyAm,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* येनेदं सर्वं विजानाति, तं केन विजानीयात्। Through what should one know
That owing to which all this is known! [Br.Up. 4.5.15] */