[Advaita-l] akhandakara vritti, brahmakara vritti, atmakara vritti or ahamkara vritti

[Raghav Kumar Dwivedula]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2023 at 10:32 AM Jaldhar H. Vyas via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Mar 2023, Michael Chandra Cohen via Advaita-l wrote:
>
> > Blessed Forum members, Pranam.
> >
> > Can anyone provide the original text and description of this term with
> some
> > detail on how it is supposed to work? I don't believe it is found in
> > anywhere in Prasthana traya bhasya
>
> Yes I don't believe it is explicated in the prasthana trayi itself but is
> a later development due to the absorption of Yoga into Advaita Vedanta.
> (Yoga is famously defined as chitta vrtti nirodhah)
>
> Now, there is a vivarana on Patanjala Yoga ascribed to Shankaracharya.
> Even if one doesn't think it is genuine, our own Vidyashankar Sundaresan
> has ably demonstrated that Bhagavatpada was aware of the Yoga sutras and
> has quoted from them in the Prasthana trayi bhashyas.  So I do think the
> later acharyas have grounds for including it in a theory of Advaita
> Vedanta.
>
> My understanding is this:
>
> ahamakara chitta vrtti is the easy one.  It is just the normal mental
> state where one identifies with the mind and body.
>
>
> If I were to say that Harry Potter killed Darth Vader you could
> confidently say that I am wrong even though neither Harry Potter nor Darth
> Vader actually exist.  But that incorrectness is a pratibhasika asatya.
> One still has to accept the validity of the Harry Potter and Star Wars
> "universes".  To refute the very idea of those universes and our
> supposedly "real" universe requires the ability to refute vyavaharika
> asatya and the mental state in which that is possible is akhandakara
> chitta vrtti.
>
> One can treat the vyavaharika universe as satya and know that only the
> atman is real.  This is atmakara chitta vrtti. Classical Yoga goes no
> further than this.
>

namaste
Not sure how the idea "universe is satya" and " *only* the atman is real"
square with each other.
Classical yoga would acknowledge the eternal co-existence of both the self
and the world even after
kaivalya but without the atman having any skin in the game anymore so to
speak.  AFAIK the idea of atman ^alone^ being real
is not mentioned in the sutras. Is it mentioned in Shankara's purported
sub-commentary on vyAsa's commentary?


>
> However the Vedantin says even this atman is nothing else but Brahman.
> This the the Brahmakara vrtti.  For an Advaitin this is the same as
> atmakara vrtti.  After this the mind is deconstructed so there are no
> further vrttis.
>
>
> I believe it is Swami Madhusudana Saraswati who has explained this in
> detail in Advaita Siddhi.
>
> --
> Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
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