Shastra - as a pramana?

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Sun, 25 May 1997, sadananda wrote:

> Anand I appreciated your thoughtful answers.  I jot down the following in a
> hurry - but the statement you raised which Vidya endorses, is that only by
> Sastra we can prove consciousness is single and not plural.  I am not sure

The sAm.khya school postulates a plurality of purushas based simply on
their logic.

[..]

> Taking as a reality as that which cannot be negated, (trikaala abhaadhita
> vastu) everything can be negated including the concept of Brahman.  Only
> thing that remains that is the eternal is I. Why do I need to know that I
> am Brahman when I know that I am the only that remains with out any

If everything including brahman can be negated, so can the notion of I.
This is what most Buddhist schools do. They hold that even the "I" is
nothing but an aggregate of different momentary things, and is therefore
not eternal.

> duality.  I am sure you realize that Brahman is the concept to account for
> the creation and the changing world.  But when everything is negated as

Brahman is more than a concept that accounts for creation. If the goal of
vedAnta is to properly account for creation, then the very diversity of
creation calls for a diversity of causes. Why should bAdarAyaNa have
postulated a unitary brahman and then created problems for all later
interpreters?

> non-real  what remains is only I - call it self, Atman, Brahman any do not
> call anything.  What I am searching mostly through all pravRiti and
> nivRitti is only happiness and experience teaches me that happiness is not
> out there - it is ones owns self.  The realization stops the very search.
>
> Are there many Atmans or one Atman?  First the scriptures do not
> categorically state that either.  If so there would not haaave been several
> theories based on the same scripture.  In fact Sri Ramanuja rests mostly on
> scriptural statements to prove that advaitic concepts are not scripturally
> based.   Same pramana is used to extract different meaning.  If logic
> cannot provide it the scripture cannot either atleast convincingly to
> others.

Scripture says, yes there are many Atmans, and then it says, there is only
One Atman. Scripture has been purposely designed to operate through
adhyAropa-apavAda (sublation of superimposition). The problem of the one
and the many will persist for all time to come, and will continue to
exercise the best philosophical minds, with a multitude of answers.
However, the other schools of vedAnta do not recognize this feature of
Sruti, that what is superimposed is later denied.

Happiness is a psychological state, and certainly one can reach a state of
happiness while holding that the I is not eternal. Most Buddhist monks I
have met seem to have an intense amount of happiness, yet they negate both
the notion of an eternal I and a brahman.

[..]

> But from the point of sastra as the sole pramana, that pamana is not
> categorically clear as the truth.

I should think that the bRhadAraNyaka upanishad's account of yAjnavalkya's
teaching (maitreyI brAhmaNa) is pretty much categorically clear about the
status of duality and non-duality.

[..]

> Individual can perish since it is just the ego, but I cannot perish for the
> sunya vada to operate!  If I perish who will know?  If Sunya state exists,
                                                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The Buddhist will tell you that SUnyatA is not a state that exists out
there. The I that is held to be an aggregate, is seen to be non-eternal,
there is nothing else eternal, that is why everything is described as
being SUnya. To even say that a SUnya state exists, is to seriously
misrepresent the very concept of SUnyatA.

[..]

> >     In conclusion, logical thought must be *guided* by Shruti. Logical
> >     thought independent of Shruti can *point* to the *possibility* of
> >     advaitic conclusions, but cannot conclusively prove them. That is
> >     because, just as logic can make advaitic conclusions *plausible*,
> >     it  can also make other theories so.
>
>
> As I argued by looking at the current interpretations of the sruties the
> above statements seems to be more applicable to sruties than logic.

Not so. The logic of your argument has started by defining the real as
that which is trikAlAbAdhita vastu - that which is not sublated in the
past, present and future. Why operate, on a solely logical basis, with
such a restrictive definition? How does one know that something will not
be negated in the future? In fact, part of the reason why dvaita differs
so sharply from advaita in its conclusions is that this school does not
hold to such a definition for reality. So one can have different systems
of logic, and come to different conclusions. The fact that there are many
interpretations of Sruti does not mean that Sruti is ambiguous or
unnecessary. Rather, it can only be that differences in interpretation
arise due to differences in basic assumptions and that these differences
are no fault of Sruti itself.

Vidyasankar