[Advaita-l] [advaitin] A talk in Sanskrit on 'Darkness is material' (bhAvarUpa)

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste,

Absence and presence cannot be co-located. Where a thing is absent, it
cannot be present and vice versa. Therefore, it follows that one cannot see
the presence of an object in a location at the same time as seeing the
absence of the object at the very same place.

However, darkness and light can be co-located and 'co-observed', like in
the case of a partially dark / dimly lit room where the outlines of objects
can be seen, but not their specifics.

Now, human beings can see light frequencies in the visual spectrum, but not
the ones outside the visual spectrum. I am not aware of any research that
has conclusively established that that is the only visible spectrum for
every species in the known universe. It is quite conceivable that there may
be species out there that see light beyond the reach of the human eye.
Therefore, what constitutes darkness (absence of light in your view) is
different for different species. Cats and other nocturnal creatures have
ability to see in the dark, that humans lack. Even humans do not see light
and dark the same way - I may be able to see more in the dark than you can
and vice versa.

That being the case, "the impossibility of mistaking light and the absence
of light for one another" is only true for one individual of one species at
one time - it turns out that it is not the universal example that the
bhAShyakAra had in mind when he used the phrase tamahprakAshavat, if
darkness and light are the absence and presence of light, respectively.

So the example of tamahprakAshavat in the adhyAsabhAShya cannot be taken to
mean "taking the self to be the non-self and vice versa, should be an
impossibility, like the absence and presence of light", because such a
meaning (the impossibility of their co-location or knowledge of their
co-location) does not universally apply in the case of the example itself
(dark and light), let alone the exemplified (anAtma and Atma) - if Shankara
had referred to the absence of light by the use of the word 'tamas'.

Kind regards,
Venkatraghavan

On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, 18:22 Michael Chandra Cohen, <
michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Namaste Sudhanshuji, pranam
> How the text distinguishes between vishaya and vishayi is not as two
> substances but as real and unreal (*satya anṛte mithunīkṛtya*) which are
> opposed to each other epistemologically not ontologically. Who commonly
> takes darkness to be a thing?
>
> Regards
>
> On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 7:05 AM Sudhanshu Shekhar <
> sudhanshu.iitk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Michael ji.
>>
>> SSSS points out "tamah prakashavad" ' is simply intended as an example to
>>> be understood in common parlance. It is a diversion of intention to
>>> discover controversial logical nuance in a drstanta. The merits of the
>>> argument is mere scholasticism.
>>>
>>
>> SSSS ji's statement is devoid of merit and logic. The intention of
>> BhAshyakAra is to display mutual-anAtmatA of asmat-pratyaya-gochara and
>> yushmat-pratyaya-gochara and for that he chose prakAsha and tamas, which
>> indeed possess mutual anAtmatA.
>>
>> I had earlier refuted whatever SSSS ji said on this topic in my post at
>> https://tinyurl.com/m45jesps. I had received no response on this.
>>
>> Regards.
>> Sudhanshu Shekhar.
>>
>>
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