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

[Srinath Vedagarbha]

On Thu, Oct 28, 2021 at 4:12 AM V Subrahmanian via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

>
> It is to be noted that in Dvaita the Atma is a body mind complex.


No it is correct.

In Dvaita 'Atma' shabda primarily denotes ParaBrahman only.

In fact Br.U  asks this question quite explicitly `katama aatmEti'?

The same Upanishad answers in the same breath that ;

 yOayAm vijnAna maya prANEshu hridyAnta jyOtirtiH | purushaH sa samAnaH san
ubhoU lOkoU anusaMcharati | dhyAtIva |
lElAyativa | sa hi swapnO bhUtvEmaM lOkamati kramati mrutyO rUpANi ||

Whomever is pUrNa-jnAna-svarUpa and residing in heart and instigating from
within etc. etc, is "Atma"

Other schools say this laxaNa is tatastha laxaNa and sweeps away
Upanishadic assertion. But that is not correct. Upanishad is defining the
term "Atma" for its own question about Who is Atama, and laxaNa-s given in
the answer must necessarily be svarUpa laxaNa-s. Otherwise Upanishadic
definition becomes unprecise.

Madhva quotes another pramANa to support this idea:

 AtatatvAchha mAtrutvAdAtmEti paramO hariH |
AtmA bhAsAstadanyE tu na heYtEShAM tatA guNAH ||
-iti paramOshanishadi

Hari is called 'Atma' because He is vyApta and nirmAta of this jagat. Since
all other beings do not have such qualities, they are called amukhya Atma.
This is said in param upanishad.

Therefore, in Dvaita 'Atma' means paramAtma only. They distinguish jiva by
the term 'jivAtma' or simply 'jIva"




> 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.
>

Dvita does not say Atma has 'svarupa deha'. The idea of Svarupa-deha is a
contradiction in terms. "dEha" generally means which has origin,
destruction etc., whereas "svarUpa" means self same nature. Therefore,
Dvaita holds jIva has self-same nature (svarUpa) of unique aprkrita guNa-s.

I can understand for Advains it is difficult to understand how could a
chaitanya tatva can have pramatrutva. iccha, jnAna, kriya etc etc guNa-s
without having some sort of dEha. This difficulty is due to the fact that
in their siddhAnta they have not accepted any guNa-s to chaitanya tatva.
But in Dvaita it is not that way. Both Paramatma and Jivatma are accepted
as having svarUpa guNa-s, albeit in various qualitative and quantitative
scales.



>
> 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.
>

Not quite correct.

Independent and dependent realities are absolutely real in Dvaita.

Duality of pAramArthika and vyavahArika itself is mithya and vyavahArika.
Speaking from reality perspective there is not even such biforgation. Some
advaitins think in temporal sense that one was in vyavahArika earlier and
after reaching pAramArthika the vyavahArika gets sublated. That is not
correct. vyavahArika avastha is subject of trikAlika niSheda

/sv