[Advaita-l] [advaitin] 'Dvaita accepts body-adhyasa'

[V Subrahmanian]

Here is the Vedantic position:

The Atma is not body and has no body.  The world can be perceived and
validated by default only through the body. If there is no body there is no
way anyone, however intelligent, can validate the body.  In other words,
the world derives existence, astitiva, only through the body.  But the
Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita 13th chapter teaches that the body is also a
part of the world: kshetram: Read verses 5 and 6 of this chapter.

The Gita separates the Consciousness principle, called kshetrajna, from the
kshetram with the sole intention of liberating the jiva by enabling him to
discriminate the an-atma in him from the Atma that he really is and thereby
get freed from samsara.

Shankara establishes in the Adhyasa bhashya that in the absence of the
body-identification, atma-sharira adhyasa, there can be no perceiver,
perception, etc. Perception, pratyaksha, as a pramana is dependent by
default on the body being there. All the other pramanas, anumana, upamana,
even shabda, operate only on the condition that the atma-body adhyasa is
present as the basis.   If Atma is not the body, there is no world for the
Atma/jiva.  This is as simple as this.  So, a world/body which is not there
cannot be held, by any stretch of imagination or intelligence/yukti, to be
real.

It is on this line of thinking that 'atma-sharira adhyasa results in the
unreality of the world'.  This position of the Vedanta is impossible to be
refuted by any school, however intelligent its proponent would be.  Hence
alone, the only moksha shaastra, the Veda, which is shabda, operates in the
field/domain of avidya, presupposing the body-atma identification.  So, in
the Brahma Sutra Bhashya 2.1.14, Shankara establishes that even the Veda
which is the only pramana to teach us liberating knowledge, is unreal.
This unreal pramana can and does liberate a person.  While the pramana
remains in the domain of unreality, the result of liberation stands
unsublatable.  This is the statement Shankara makes there.  The Veda itself
declares in the Brihadaranyaka that the Veda is not there in the state of
deep sleep and by extension, mukti.

regards
subbu


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