Kashmiri Shaivism

[Ashish Chandra]

On Tue, 7 May 2002 15:35:42 -0400, Shrinivas Gadkari
<sgadkari2001 at YAHOO.COM> wrote:

>Shrinivas:
>
>The starting point of this discussion was the premise that I cannot assume
>that there really exists anything independent of me. Everything else is
>built on this basic fact. At no point did I mean to compromise on this
>fundamental fact.

If by the "independent of me" you mean "me" = jIvA, then you are correct.
For there to be duality, there must be a subject-object relationship.
However, what Advaita says is that when this jIvA-hood ceases, then where
is the question of objects and subjects. You have yourself said that
Ishvara, me, the universe exist in your mind. I would modify that slightly
and say that it exists in your perception. Now when this "perception"
ceases, what is called mukti, then would you still say the universe exists,
that the mind exists? If you note, mind itself cannot be known to exist at
all times even in you.

>
>Please read all the postings in this thread carefully and correlate them
>the issues that you have raised above have more or less been addressed.
>
>Again, Jiva, Ishvara, Brahman are different states of being. The being
>is the witness of these states fluctuating between these states. Suffering,
>sadhana, etc pertain only to the state of Jiva.
>

So you should think about whether there is a state where sadhana,
suffering, yoga etc are not required. Is there such a state? How do we know
it? Does anyone have an answer to this? Has this been answered by Advaita
(admittedly, you are on the Advaita-L list so I am assuming you would like
to know whether Advaita has answered this question).

>The only reason I mentioned this is to lend support to the view that
>there is no escape from Sadhana even for Brahama Vishnu and Mahesh.
>At the same time, clearly almost everyone would agree that these
>personalities are have conquered bondage.

But what does conquering bondage mean? What do you think liberation means?

>I do not see how you can ever prove that it is possible to reach
>a state from where there is no return to the world of duality.

Why does one need proof for everything? You cannot prove that fire will
burn you unless you are burnt by it. However, to protect yourself against a
mishap, you listen to others who have experienced the burning and stay away
from fire. Since all of us here are not liberated, we have recourse to the
teachings of Advaita as expounded by Shri Adi Shankara and his sampradaya,
all of whom were liberated. Simply sitting in one corner and accepting
nothing without logic will not get one anywhere. There is no proof why B
should come after A but an entire language, including a language pertaining
to logic, has developed from the alphabet, starting with A and then B.

>Shrinivas:
>
>It is like this: you dwell in your inherent nature of bliss, due to
>your own impulse you desire to witness duality, by your maya shakti
>you project some images and experience them, in the process generate
>karma, and modify the images as per the karma, always resting in
>bliss intermittently.
>
>Now depending on what state you are in you use a different label
>describe yourself: Brahman, Ishvara, Jiva etc
>

I am not sure why you think like this. Then in this case, there can be no
such thing as the truth. What is intermittent is not continuous. What is
not continuous is not homogenous. What is not homogenous cannot be true,
can it? So we are all running after nothing then. Why bother?

ashish