[Advaita-l] vedAnta mahAvAkya - A query

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Praveen ji,

On Fri, 29 Jul 2022, 05:33 Praveen R. Bhat, <bhatpraveen at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> ...The sentence
>> does not set out to prove that such a sambandha is traikAlika abAdhya, for
>> anyone to argue that because the advaitin does not confer it with
>> pAramArthikatva, the vAkya loses its prAmANya.
>>
> In the end, anyway, we will say that even mahAvAkyas, just like
> avAntaravAkyas, entire karmopAsanakANDa, nAmarUpAtmakaprapancha, are mithyA!
>
Yes indeed. The dvaitin will not accept their mithyAtva. However, my point
was that whether shabda and its artha are mithyA or satya, the sentence
itself is valid.

The vidhi does not seek to say that the yAga or yAgaphala is a pAramArthika
satya vastu - it literally says that the one desirous of X must do Y.
Whether X and Y are vyAvahArika or pAramArthika, Y will be the kAraNa for X
- in either case the sentence has prAmANya.

So the charge that the advaitin dismisses all sentences except the
mahAvAkya does not arise because nothing is dismissed. They are all valid,
but applicable to different adhikAri-s - because we are chatting in a forum
on advaita, we focus on certain sentences that serve our purpose. However
that does not mean that other vedic sentences are invalid.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan