[Advaita-l] Object Oriented Programming & Advaita

[Ranjan Ghosh]

Dear Atman

Our mind always looks for physical world concepts to understand Advaita. When
I started reading Advaita last year, its similarity with Object Oriented
Programming occured to me. After going through your writings I find my
thoughts were not vague. You have put the comparision in a very lucid
manner and without any gaps. It was wonderful to read.

On Wed, Jun 24, 2020, 3:16 PM Mahadevan Iyer via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> 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
> >
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