[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Re: Adhyasa as per Sri SSS

[H S Chandramouli]

Namaste Michael Ji,

*You*

//  *SSS drops smṛtirūpaḥ and pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ from the essential
definition only for the beginningless ātma–anātma adhyāsa, because those
terms fit laukika/sādya adhyāsa such as rope-snake, shell-silver //*

*And *

*//  As per Sugama,  “The two adjectives, such
as smṛtirūpaḥ and pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ are used here… to include the
superimposition of the worldly instances, such as silver upon the
sea-shell…” //,*

*//  As per Sugama,  “‘smṛtirūpaḥ pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ’ is only for
clarifying the definition of adhyāsa having a beginning; it should not be
forgotten that it does not enter into the body of the definition of the
present adhyāsa.” //,*

*Me*

I entirely agree. That is how Sri SSS characterizes  in Sugama. But it is
*his* *declaration*. Where does such a declaration leave Sri Bhagavatpada
who does not make such a distinction *while defining adhyAsa in the context
of his opening statement* . The definition is preceded by ** आह —
कोऽयमध्यासो नामेति । (Aha — ko.ayamadhyAso nAmeti | ) **. What is *this*
adhyAsa?. Sri SSS shifts the emphasis in this to read as ** What is this
*adhyAsa*? ** and considers this as the general definition adhyAsa , and
not as specifically addressing *this* adhyAsa. Sri SSS himself violates
what he himself states above, namely  ** *definition of the present adhyāsa
**. * That not only defeats the intent of the definition, but also leaves
Sri Bhagavatpada open to be shown up as being casual and irresponsible
while defining such important terms. This is quite unacceptable. This is
just my point. Every term used for the definition must be given full
weightage considering the context in which it is defined. Curtailment as
done in sugama is unacceptable.

*You*

//  So there are two different senses of tādātmya:

   1. *Real tādātmya-sambandha* between ātman and anātman — SSS rejects
   this entirely.
   2. *Falsely cognized tādātmya*, as in “I am this body/mind” — SSS makes
   this central

*Me*

Why restrict it to only two. Why not three. Third one being

3.       False (mithyA or AdhyAsika) tAdAtmya sambanda between Atman and
anAtman.

This is exactly my point. I am not suggesting ** real tAdAtmya sambanda **.
AdhyAsika only. The definition of adhyAsa given by Sri Bhagavatpada admits
of such an interpretation. Just to pointout one reference from the bhAshya
for such understanding, BSB 2-2-38 ** ब्रह्मवादिनः कथमिति चेत् , न; तस्य
तादात्म्यलक्षणसम्बन्धोपपत्तेः । ** (brahmavAdinaH kathamiti chet , na;
tasya tAdAtmyalakShaNasambandhopapatteH |).

*You*

//  *satyānṛte mithunīkṛtya*, *anyonyātmatā*, and *anyonya-dharma-adhyāsa*—with
the important proviso that this tādātmya is *false appearance*, not real
relation //.

*Me*

Agreed. That holds good with three alternatives as well.

Regards

On Mon, Jun 15, 2026 at 5:06 PM mc1 at aol.com <mc1 at aol.com> wrote:

> Namaste Chandramouli ji,
>
> I prompted ChatGPT to survey Sugama for SSS's discussion on smrti-rupa.
> This is what it came up with.
>
> Sugama does *not* support the criticism that SSS ignores *tādātmya*. It
> shows almost the opposite: SSS *explicitly foregrounds mutual identity*—but
> he treats it as *mithyā-tādātmya*, not a real relation required between
> ātman and anātman.
>
> The key distinction is this:
>
> *SSS drops smṛtirūpaḥ and pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ from the essential definition
> only for the beginningless ātma–anātma adhyāsa*, because those terms fit
> laukika/sādya adhyāsa such as rope-snake, shell-silver. But he does *not*
> drop the idea that adhyāsa involves *anyonyātmatā*—mutual identification.
>
> Sugama says very clearly that in Śaṅkara’s definition, the essence is:
>
> “The essence of this definition is only this much – ‘appearance of a fact
> differently from what it is’ – is superimposition.”
> “The two adjectives, such as *smṛtirūpaḥ* and *pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ* are
> used here… to include the superimposition of the worldly instances, such as
> silver upon the sea-shell…”
>
> And then Sugama states the more explicit conclusion:
>
> “‘*smṛtirūpaḥ pūrvadṛṣṭāvabhāsaḥ*’ is only for clarifying the definition
> of adhyāsa having a beginning; it should not be forgotten that it does not
> enter into the body of the definition of the present adhyāsa.”
>
> So the objection is right on one point: *SSS deliberately restricts the
> role of smṛtirūpaḥ and pūrvadṛṣṭa.* But it is not right that he thereby
> ignores tādātmya.
>
> Sugama’s opening explanation of the Adhyāsa Bhāṣya says mankind proceeds
> by:
>
> “super-imposing mutual identity and mutual transference of their
> properties”
> *anyonyasminn anyonyātmatām, anyonya-dharmāṃś ca adhyasya*
>
> And again, it explains the natural empirical procedure as:
>
> “to mix up the real and the unreal owing to wrong knowledge… to
> super-impose the mutual identity and mutual transference of their
> properties, and to think ‘I am this’ and ‘This is mine.’”
>
> That is precisely *tādātmya-adhyāsa*. Sugama is not reducing adhyāsa to
> bare “one thing appears elsewhere.” It retains *anyonyātmatā* and
> *anyonya-dharma-adhyāsa* as the structure of bondage.
>
> Where SSS is careful is here: he denies that *real tādātmya* is needed.
> Sugama says:
>
> “In mixing up the real and the unreal, neither the actual mixing of their
> mutual identity nor the actual transference of their properties is
> required.”
> “Just as the superimposition of a snake on a rope… is possible merely due
> to non-discrimination… so also… the superimposition of the mutual identity
> of the self and the non-self is possible merely due to a want of
> discrimination.”
>
> So there are two different senses of tādātmya:
>
>    1.
>
>    *Real tādātmya-sambandha* between ātman and anātman — SSS rejects this
>    entirely.
>    2.
>
>    *Falsely cognized tādātmya*, as in “I am this body/mind” — SSS makes
>    this central.
>
> This is why Sugama can accept the pūrvapakṣa’s point that ātman and
> anātman are utterly opposed, like light and darkness, and therefore cannot
> really exchange identities or properties; but SSS replies that adhyāsa is
> precisely a *mithyājñāna*, not something governed by logical possibility.
> Sugama says the impossibility objection is merely “logic removed from the
> fact” and “against experience,” because “nobody can deny the experience of
> super-imposition.”
>
> So my correction to the earlier phrasing would be:
>
> For SSS, avidyā is adhyāsa: the beginningless, natural, false
> identification of ātman and anātman, involving the apparent mutual identity
> and mutual transfer of properties between them. It is not a positive cosmic
> entity, nor a mere absence of knowledge; it is *mithyājñāna* rooted in
> *itaretara-aviveka*.
>
> That is more precise than simply saying “taking one thing for another.”
> The phrase “taking one thing for another” is acceptable shorthand, but for
> SSS/Sugama it must be unpacked as *satyānṛte mithunīkṛtya*, *anyonyātmatā*,
> and *anyonya-dharma-adhyāsa*—with the important proviso that this
> tādātmya is *false appearance*, not real relation.
>
>
> On Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 02:03:37 PM EDT, Michael Chandra Cohen <
> michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Namaste Chandramoule, my gratitude to you and your AI - I've learned newt
> things. Here is my AI, Claude, in response ... let it be only in the
> interest of manana and svadhyaya
>
> Regards, Michael 🙏🙏🙏
>
> SSS would not quarrel with most of what the document says. He would grant
> that the Laghucandrikā is coherent, that the
> *traikālika-niṣedha-pratiyogitva* definition is precise, that the
> fortress is well built. His whole objection lands on the one claim the
> document never actually argues — that the fortress is *Śaṅkara's*.
> Everything in it establishes the system's consistency *with itself*; the
> consistency *with Śaṅkara* is asserted, never demonstrated. So his
> reflections would run roughly:
>
>    1.
>
>    *"Implicit in Śaṅkara, made explicit later" is the unproven premise
>    doing all the work.* The document says Śaṅkara "implicitly establishes
>    avidyā as a third category." Where? SSS's standing demand is for the
>    bhāṣya-locus, and it isn't supplied — because, as the philology confirms,
>    Śaṅkara applies *anirvacanīya* to *nāmarūpa* (indeterminable as
>    same-or-different from Brahman), not to avidyā, and never in the
>    *sat/asat* sense the document needs. "Implicitly" is the word that
>    lets the later apparatus be read backward into Śaṅkara's silence.
>    2.
>
>    *The load-bearing pillar — avidyā as material cause — is precisely the
>    mūlāvidyā he refuted.* Every "consistency" argument in the document
>    rests on it: avidyā can't be *abhāva* because "you cannot weave cloth
>    out of the absence of threads," it has *vikṣepa-śakti*, it is the
>    *upādāna* of the world. SSS's whole *Mūlāvidyā-nirāsa* is the denial
>    of that premise. Śaṅkara's avidyā is *adhyāsa* — a false cognition —
>    which weaves nothing and projects nothing; it is the confusion knowledge
>    removes, not the thread the world is woven from. The "can't make a pot from
>    absence of clay" argument is unanswerable *only once you have already
>    made avidyā the clay* — which is the installation, smuggled in as a
>    premise.
>    3.
>
>    *"Functionally active without being ultimately real" is the graded
>    being Gauḍapāda denies.* The document grants avidyā *vyāvahārika-satya*,
>    "functional reality," a third tier between *sat* and *asat*. For SSS —
>    reading Śaṅkara through Gauḍapāda's *ajātivāda* — there is no such
>    tier. There is the real (Brahman) and the false (the superimposed), and the
>    false is not a lower floor of being; it is error, sublated without
>    remainder. *mithyā* names sublatable appearance, not a positive
>    intermediate substance with causal power. The document's quiet move from
>    *mithyā*-as-falsity to avidyā-as-a-real-third-thing is exactly the
>    reification he resisted.
>    4.
>
>    *The equation that manufactures the whole "identity" — Sat ≡ Bhava,
>    Asat ≡ Abhava — is the axis-collapse.* This is your interlocutor's
>    error in print. The document needs *sadasadvilakṣaṇa* and
>    *bhāvābhāvavilakṣaṇa* to be synonyms, and gets there only by declaring
>    *sat* = *bhāva* and *asat* = *abhāva*. Keep the axes apart and it
>    falls open: Madhusūdana's avidyā is *bhāva* (positive) *and*
>    *sadasadvilakṣaṇa* (neither real nor unreal) — which is why he says
>    *bhāvarūpa*, not *bhāvābhāva-vilakṣaṇa*. The document itself wobbles
>    here, calling avidyā "bhāvarūpa (positive)" in one breath and "different
>    from Bhava" in the next, and patching it only by re-reading "Bhava" as
>    "permanent/real entity," i.e. as *sat*. The slippage is the argument.
>    (And worth flagging: that "Laghucandrikā defines avidyā as
>    *bhāvābhāvavilakṣaṇa*" is itself doubtful — you noted Madhusūdana does
>    not use the term; the AI may be supplying it.)
>    5.
>
>    *That avidyā needs a "logical fortress" at all is the tell.* The
>    document celebrates Brahmānanda for building "an impenetrable logical
>    fortress" with Navya-Nyāya machinery to survive cross-examination. SSS
>    would read that as the symptom, not the triumph. *Adhyāsa* is
>    *sarva-loka-pratyakṣa*, *anubhava-siddha* — evident to everyone,
>    needing no *pramāṇa* and no formal defense of its ontological grade. A
>    thing that must be defended by *traikālika-niṣedha-pratiyogitva*
>    against the law of the excluded middle has already become a disputed
>    ontological posit. The fortress exists because avidyā was made into
>    something that requires one. Śaṅkara's adhyāsa never entered that arena.
>    6.
>
>    *And underneath all of it, the method.* On SSS's reading these
>    formulations are *adhyāropa* — provisional attributions made to cancel
>    a specific error, meant to be retracted by *apavāda*. The document
>    treats them instead as doctrines to be fortified. That is the Hegde point
>    exactly: the function has shifted from cancelling a wrong notion to *explaining
>    and defending* the empirical order. The PSA fortified the scaffolding
>    and called the result Śaṅkara.
>
> His closing posture would be the one he held lifelong: he is not claiming
> the Advaitasiddhi tradition is incoherent or unintelligent — it is neither.
> He is claiming that coherence-and-defense is not the same as fidelity, and
> that the burden the document never discharges is to show the apparatus
> *in* Śaṅkara rather than read it *back into* him.
>
> One honest note on the document itself, since you'll weigh it: it reaches
> "identical, perfectly consistent with Śaṅkara" by serial agreement —
> "Precisely! You've hit upon exactly…" — affirming each leading question
> rather than testing it against the bhāṣya. That is the genre of
> continuity-narrative SSS distrusted most: it feels like demonstration and
> is actually assent. The real question it skips is the only one he cared
> about — not "is the system valid?" but "is it Śaṅkara's?"
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 9:25 AM H S Chandramouli <hschandramouli at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Namaste Michael Ji,
>
> I am continuing on a separate thread what you stated in another,
>  deliberately in order not to disturb the thoughtflow in the other. You
> wrote
>
> //  For SSS avidyā is adhyāsa — a false cognition, the taking of one
> thing for another — neither a positive cosmic entity nor a mere absence of
> knowledge //.
>
> I am responding since you are repeatedly mentioning about mananam. Not for
> raising any controversy.
>
> In my understanding of Sri SSS, an important point has been missed out
> when he states ** avidyā is adhyāsa — a false cognition, the taking of one
> thing for another **. And that is ** the relationship of tAdAtmya between
> the two - * one thing for another **. This requirement has been completely
> ignored. In my understanding of Sri SSS, that is the consequence of
> dropping the definition by Sri Bhagavatpada of adhyAsa as ** स्मृतिरूपः
> परत्र पूर्वदृष्टावभासः । (smRRitirUpaH paratra pUrvadRRiShTAvabhAsaH | )
> ** and preferring to use the other definition mentioned by Sri Bhagavatpada
> ** अध्यासो नाम अतस्मिंस्तद्बुद्धि (adhyAso nAma atasmiMstadbuddhi ) **
> which retains only the ** परत्र (paratra) ** part from the first
> definition. Sri SSS himself has  explained why he has dropped the other
> three terms from the first definition. In my understanding, this is the
> most fundamental  deviation from the Bhashya leading to consequential
> differences. Since you mentioned mananam, I thought it may be useful to
> ponder over this issue.
>
> I am not suggesting you should respond. You may just like to do some
> mananam on this. And if you feel there is any substance in it, please do
> advise.
> Regards
>
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