saguNa and nirguNa are the same

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

I notice that people have been quoting works other than the
prasthAnatrayI.  Ashish Chandra also dug up some old post of mine. My
views have changed quite a bit regarding this topic from 3-4 years
back. I wish I had followed my own advice (which I implicitly gave in
that post) and consulted some proper teachers regarding the importance
of various works and their interpretation. The problem is that I read
stuff written by "scholars" who were not advaitins and misunderstood
many things.

Giri once wrote to me that he had consulted some sannyAsis in
Rishikesh and that they were quite assertive that sha.nkara says the
same thing in all bhAshhyas to the prasthAnatrayI. Even after that I
did not learn my lesson. I still thought that sha.nkara said different
things in different bhAshhyas and invented my own explanation for it.
3-4 years later, with more experience and better understanding (I
hope), I have changed my position *completely* on this topic. I wish I
had listened to the wisdom of those Swamis and done some proper
research right at that time. There is no higher or lower aspirant,
sha.nkara says *exactly* the same things, be it the sUtra bhAshhya or
mANDUkya bhAshhya. The book which helped me understand this fact is
Sri Subbaramaiya's, "Sri Dakshinamurti Stotram (A study based on the
Manasollasa and Tattvasudha)," published by the Sringeri Sharada
Matham. Sri Satchidanandendra Saraswati of Holenarsipur has also shown
how all the bhAshhyas on the prasthAnatrayI say the same things very
conclusively.

So, to sum up: Let's stick to the bhAshhyas on the prasthAnatrayI and
the upadeshasAhasrI and compare the prabodhasudhAkara with these.
Other texts are useful, but not as useful as these. In fact the other
texts can only be interpreted in the light of these fundamental texts.

Rama

--
bhava shankara deshikame sharaNam

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