[Advaita-l] Iswara and avidyA

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms Sri ChandramouLi prabhuji
Hare Krishna
There  are plenty of references to Atman being  vinirmukta  like सर्वबन्धविनिर्मुक्त (sarvabandhavinirmukta), विषयविषयिसम्बन्धविनिर्मुक्त (viShayaviShayisambandhavinirmukta), ग्रहातिग्रहाभ्यामविनिर्मुक्त (grahAtigrahAbhyAmavinirmukta), सर्वदुःखविनिर्मुक्त (sarvaduHkhavinirmukta) etc. I am just guessing, in the absence of any citation,  that your reference could possibly be something like that. This would correspond to your illustration of the Dentist. Iswara must necessarily be possessed of the knowledge concerning the avidyA of the jIvAs in order to dispense the corresponding results to them.

  *   Thanks for the references prabhuji.  Yes, I all these are quite comfortably attributable to nitya, Shuddha, buddha, mukta svarUpa Ishwara.  Yes, he sees the jeeva’s duHkha, he is having the knowledge of jeeva’s duHkha but he is in himself sarva duHkha vinirmukta.  In that sense no one would say Dentist is the locus of patient’s pain even though he is having the knowledge of patients’ pain he himself is not custodian/holder/possessor of pain.  If that is not the case, Ishwara will become mahAn avidyAvanta.  I think this anishta prasanga in Advaita as Ishwara is parabraman itself.  And in the srushti prakriya, he is sarvajna, sarvashakta, sarvavyApi.
In my understanding it is in this sense that Iswara is stated to be the possessor or locus of avidyA. It is no longer an **anistha** either.

  *   I don’t know bhAshyakAra anywhere says Ashraya of avidyA is Ishwara / brahman, you know what bhAshyakAra says when there is a question who is having avidyA??
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar