[Advaita-l] Causal Body

[Nomadeva Sharma]

--- Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> I forgot to mention the following in my earlier
> response. If sAkshI-A means the sAkshI as per 
> advaita, then there is only one true meaning for 
> knowledge-A, i.e. the knowledge that is advaita. 
> It is not what we perceive about this world and 
> its business, for sAkshI-A already knows that all 
> that is avidyA, and not real knowledge.

Vidyashankar-jI, can you pls tell me the source of
above concept? The reason is that BNK Sharma quotes
Advaitasiddhi as saying that sAkshi of Advaita can err
at times. Ofcourse, the conception of sAkshi is
different: Advaitasiddhi seems to say that sAkshi is
the reflection of chaitanya in avidyAvR^itti (which is
why it becomes acceptable that sAkshi of A can err at
times).

In the idea that you have mentioned above, what
exactly is sAkshi? I cannot imagine it to be Brahman.
Ideas of 'knowing', 'real', 'unreal', do not gel with
a doctrine that takes kartR^ikarmavirodha seriously
(more than is needed?). Wouldn't that bring in the
duality of the thought and the thinker?

> It is only sAkshI-D that has a problem with no
> guarantee for sublation. 

That is because you have confused the sAkshi to be
same as buddhi.

> By the way, we advaitin-s do not accept your notion
> of sAkshI-D, because what you call sAkshI-D is just
> another name for buddhi - the function of 
> antaHkaraNa that takes care of niScaya and vyavasAya
> or adhyavasAya.

It is a bit confusing. Is it buddhi or antaHkaraNa? 

> It is buddhi that determines what is true/valid in 
> daily experience, and that is the reason it is 
> distinguished from manas, in such instances as, 
> mayyarpita manobuddhI in gItA and manomaya vs. 
> vijnAnamaya in taittirIyopanishat. If you want to 
> claim that even advaitins need sAkshI-D, we say, we
> advaitins have buddhi inasmuch as we operate in the
> daily vyavahAra, and we don't need to postulate yet
> another sAkshI.

You need sAkshi-D to tell you that there indeed is
nothing else (not even time, in your conception) in
suShupti where buddhi does not operate. Also, this
irrefutable experience of 'I' is grasped by buddhi, in
your case? It has to be the jIva, which is sAkShi
itself.

You are assuming that the buddhi will seek approval
from sAkshi for every decision it makes and sAkshi
thus takes care of all resolutions. Not so. sAkshi is
the independent witness to buddhi's decisions. Buddhi
also takes decisions; which is the reason for
reactions to snake (in rajju-sarpa analogy). Sakshi is
the witness; in fact, while you take the analogy of
rajju-sarpa to talk of adhyAsa, you talk on sAkshi's
strength. Had it been just buddhi, you should have
wondered: Is the snake real or the rope real?

Btw, all that is sAkshi-D only. sAkshi-A, as you
mention, is non-existent, according to us.

> It is totally mistaken to think that there was no
> dvaita in the time of Sankara, and therefore he did
> not address it. How is sAkshI in dvaita different 
> from purusha in sAMkhya? 

To the extent I know, sAmkhya puruSha does not have
anything like 'svarUpendriya'. Thus, the mapping
between Sankhya purusha and dvaita-jIva is lost.
Secondly, the decider in sAMkhya (I think it is
buddhi) is liable to error, as they hold both prAmANya
and aprAmANya to be 'svataH'. The dvaita-sAkshi is not
liable to error or future bAdhaka because we hold that
aprAmAnyaH parataH. That is a crucial difference, if
you can appreciate it.

Dvaita is quite different (which is why some impudent
folks complain on the lines of deviating from a
phantom of a sAmpradAya) from earlier doctrines in
many other ways. Shankara indeed has not refuted
dvaita that is known today.

Regards,
Krishna



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