[Advaita-l] Object Oriented Programming & Advaita

[Mahadevan Iyer]

Pranams Atman,

Programming is the implementation of logic to facilitate specific computing
operations and functionality.

Just like a civil engineer, who develops a building with physical materials
( like bricks and cement ), a software programmer develops a software
application. The difference is that, for a civil engineer, a world with all
the physical objects are readily available to manipulate. A software
developer needs to first create these objects from scratch, and then
manipulate it to get the desired effects.

In Object Oriented Programing, we emulate the real world.

There are two fundamental concepts. Class & Objects.

Class : It is the blueprint. Here we define a set of aspects and functions.
eg: potness.

Object: An object is an instance of the class.  An object has a name (
objective identity ) and form ( attributes ). eg: a pot.

>From one potness blueprint, many numbers of pots could be created. Also
pots could be modified into different kinds of pots, as long as the
fundamental potness aspect of it is retained.

Hence, we create many different classes,  ( and one class could also
inherit functions from other classes ), and many different objects, which
interact with each other to create a universe of possibilities.

The article says :

<em>

"Nataraja Guru (1895-1973) was an Indian philosopher who was a proponent of
the Advaita Vedanta Philosophy, an Indian philosophical school based on the
non-dualism of a supreme force that governs all of us. According to this
philosophical school, whatever we see around, be it humans, animals, or
plants, are manifestations of the Absolute (called Brahman in Sanskrit) and
it's only positive affirmation is SAT-CHIT-ANAND (Vedanta philosophy uses
negation and proof by contradiction to depict Brahman). This can be
translated into the English language as existence, essence, and bliss (the
implied meaning of bliss is "good" here).

In a book titled The Unitive Philosophy published by DK Print World, New
Delhi, he gives a mapping of SAT-CHIT-ANAND to Ontology, Epistemology, and
Axiology (the three primary branches of philosophy). The Ontology,
Epistemology, and Axiology are the theories of existence, knowledge, and
values respectively.

The following table gives possible mappings of SAT-CHIT-ANAND to other
entities that mean more or less the same:
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| SAT                                 | CHIT
   | ANAND                    |
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Existence                        | Essence                             |
Bliss                          |
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Ontology                         | Epistemology                      |
Axiology                    |
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Who am I ?                     | What can I know ?              | What
should I do ?    |
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+
| Structure                         | Behavior
 | Function                     |
+-------------------------------------+---------------------------------------+------------------------------------+

In Vedanta (the Advaita school) philosophy, the whole World is viewed as
existence, essence, and bliss. From the table, we will map the problems in
the software design world into the problem of structure, behavior, and
function. Every system in the world can be viewed from the structural,
behavioral, and functional perspectives. The canonical structure for a OOP
programs is hierarchies. We will model the world we are interested in as
hierarchies and process them in a canonical manner. "
</em>


Here, I think what the author implies is that;

The description of Brahman with respect to jiva is that of SAT, CHIT and
AANANDA.
A Jiva realises his true nature to be that of SATCHITAANANDA, which is the
result of his questions "WHO AM I ?", "WHAT CAN I KNOW", & "WHAT DO I WANT
?".

Similar to that, an Object in the programming universe should answer these
3 questions. Which results in defining its Structure, Behaviour & Function.

Pardon me, if I was not able to explain it well.

*Hari OM,*

Mahadevan Iyer




On Wed, 24 Jun 2020 at 07:49, Kuntimaddi Sadananda <kuntimaddisada at yahoo.com>
wrote:

> Mahadevan - PraNAms
>
> Can you summarize what it says in the language that we all can understand-
> otherwise one cannot make a head and tail out of this.
>
> Hari Om!
> Sadananda
>