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

[V Subrahmanian]

On Wed, Oct 27, 2021 at 5:44 PM Vinodh <vinodh.iitm at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sri Srinath ji,
>
> Thank you for your excellent points on body-self adhyasa and on pramana
> from the Dvaita perspective! I really enjoyed reading them :)
>
> I will summarize my understanding of your main points and attempt to
> address each of them from an Advaita perspective. I also look forward to
> reading the responses to these points from other scholars.
>

It is to be noted that in Dvaita the Atma is a body mind complex.  They
have accepted a 'svarupa deha' for the Atma which is inalienable from the
Atma.  This jiva (for them the Atma is forever a jiva, both in samsara and
in moksha as they admit Vishnu to be the Controller and the jiva to be ever
the controlled.) with its default body mind complex (which is distinct from
the various bodies a jiva would take during its bound state) is the one
which will enjoy bhoga (of women, drinking, merrymaking etc) in mukti. (For
this they cite the authority of the Chandogya Upanishad 8.12.3 passage 'sa
paryeti jakshan ramamaanaH kreedan streebhirva yaanairvaa..' स तत्र
पर्येति जक्षत्क्रीडन्
रममाणः स्त्रीभिर्वा यानैर्वा ज्ञातिभिर्वा...)  And this body is not
necessarily a human-like body but could be of any species.  This body will
have a mind, sense organs and a gender and caste too.  And it is also not
free of sattva, etc. gunas.  So, for such an Atman it is no problem to have
pramatrutva, knowership, since it already has what all is required to be a
knower, the body, etc.  It is this Atman that has a-prakrita body mind
complex  that has the adhyasa of a prakrita body mind complex resulting in
samsara.

Also, they have assigned a 'dependent reality' (paratantra) to everything
other than Brahman (Vishnu) who alone has 'Independent, Svatantra,
Reality', just like Advaitins hold Brahman to be Paramarthika satya and
everything else only vyavaharika satya.

regards
subbu

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