[Advaita-l] Tattvabodha of Adi Sankaracharya - 17

[S Jayanarayanan]

 Raghav Kumar Dwivedula raghavkumar00 at gmail.com wrote:
 
> Namaste Kartik ji
> 
 
Namaste.
 
> What is the contemporary understanding of Prana?
> 
> The question is valid since prANa as the vital air or life force is
> accepted by most Indian darshanas like sAMkhya and yoga etc. This implies
> it was a matter for anumAna pramANa or inference. We do not need to invoke
> shruti to establish the vyAvahArika entity called prANa. If that is
> accepted, then we have the following matter to ponder.
> 
> Modern Science too uses various types of inferences and denies the
> observable existence of anything called prANa. They invoke occams razor
> (the principle of parsimony, gaurava-doSha-rAhityam) to negate the need to
> postulate prANa.
> 
> Can we advance arguments to assert the existence of prANa?
> 
 
Maybe I'm missing something here, because "prANa" is simply the air that one
takes into one's body by breathing in. It is believed that if one can control
the rhythm of this breathing, the control of one's mind becomes easy. This is
something that is "realized" by the practice of prANAyAma.
 
Hence I don't see any reason to elaborate on the *existence* of prANa.
 
> I have heard of arguments from 'negative entropy' etc. I do appreciate that
> when we explore the scientific explanations of the life pricess, we should
> not reduce prANa to another physical entity. That would be self-defeating.
> Rather we look for physiological or life processes which cannot be
> explained away merely with a materialistic paradigm of the universe. That
> would atleast make some space for postulating prANa.
> 
> For example some leads might be from photosynthesis being not entirely
> explainable using simplistic 19th century molecular chemistry based on
> billiard ball materialism. As in...
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180521131756.htm
> 
> Om
> Raghav
> 
> On Tue, 14 Jul, 2020, 12:51 AM S Jayanarayanan via Advaita-l, <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
> 
> > (Continued from previous post)
> >
> >
> > 2.5.2 The Vital Air Sheath - prANamaya koSa
> >
> > prANamayaH kaH ? What is the Vital-Air Sheath ?
> >
> > prANAdyAH pa~nchavAyavaH vAgAdIndriyapa~nchakaM
> > prANamayaH koshaH .
> >
> > prANamaya koSa or the Vital Air Sheath
> > comprises Of the five physiological functions
> > such as prANa etc. (prANa, apAna, vyAna,
> > udAna and samAna), along with the five organs
> > Of action such as speech etc.
> >
>