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

[V Subrahmanian]

A correction in my sentence:  //  If there is no body there is no way
anyone, however intelligent, can validate the body.//   The last word is to
be read as 'world'.

regards
subbu

On Sat, Oct 16, 2021 at 11:36 AM V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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