[Advaita-l] Re: The current advaita-dvaita debate

[Kotekal, Srinivas [Non-Employee/0200]]

Dear Vidyashankar,

I would like to add my two cents about your impression about Dvaita school.

>Difficulties in dvaita caused the gauDIya vaishNava-s to design an "acintya

>bhedAbheda" school and the pushTi-mArgI vaishNavas of the vallabha 
>sampradAya to come up with a "SuddhAdvaita" school. 

It is classical misunderstanding about Dvaita School. Do you really fail to
see difference between advent of Dvaita vs. that of later schools ?  Dvaita
is not  **just another** school as you think.

Just having new school is not same as having new school and having full
spectrum of dialectical works to refute earlier schools.   Aren't  you aware
of Dvaita's extensive dialectical works against advaita ?  aren't  you
aware of these works created by founder as well as great scholars through
out it's glorious history ? Don't take my word for it, but look at what a
third party like DasGupta has to say about it. ( I know you won't trust BNK)


Similarly, do you have any case of  "acintya bhedAbheda" or "SuddhAdvaita"
refuting Dvaita's position ? any major works of those schools against Dvaita
?

Just because those schools are later to Dvaita, it is not necessary to mean
that they offer something better or opposed to Dvaita. 

>And numerous difficulties in all these schools cause people like me to
reaffirm advaita. 

Really ? why do you think so many scholars of Advaita realized the problem
and adopted Dvaita in the past ?

>If you think that the last word on vedAnta was spoken at the advent of 
>dvaita a few centuries ago, or if you expect any of us to believe so, you 
>are highly mistaken.

You believe it or not is up to you.  But facts can not be pushed under the
carpet. 

Regards,
Srinivas.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jay Nelamangala [mailto:jay at r-c-i.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 18, 2003 2:33 PM
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Re: The current advaita-dvaita debate


Dear vidyAshankar,

>Difficulties in dvaita caused the gauDIya vaishNava-s to design an "acintya
>bhedAbheda" school and the pushTi-mArgI vaishNavas of the vallabha
>sampradAya to come up with a "SuddhAdvaita" school. And numerous
>difficulties in all these schools cause people like me to reaffirm advaita.

This sounds more like arguing for the sake of arguing.

Why did you leave NimbArka?

Sri Vallabha did not start his sampradAya because he had difficulties with
dvaita.
VallabhAchArya started "shuddhAdvaita"  because he found major fault with
advaita, he says that advaita was made ashuddha (impure) by bringing in
mAyA    The following website has good info on the school of Vallabha.
 http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/hindu/devot/vallab.html
I would like the readers to take a good look at the website,
and see for themselves if what VidyAshankar claims makes sense or not.
Here is a quote from that website :

"There is one existent Being only - Shri Krishna Parabrahman, called also
Purushottam ("highest Person", in the Gita), Bhagavan ("lord", in the
Bhagavata Purana), or Brahman (in the Upanishads); that only Parabrahman
exists is uncompromisingly asserted. To Vallabha, the way in which Shankara
and Advaita brought in maya as the explanation for the origin of the
physical universe allowed in a second entity alongside Brahman, a
possibility to be rejected outright."

As far, "achintya bhEdAbhEda" of  shree Chaitanya,  again you are wrong,
because their "affinity and love" for mAyAvAdins is very well known.
In fact,  some of them claim that they are an offshoot from the school of
Sri Madhwa ( just as some neo-vEdAntins claim they teach advaita ).

In any case,  none of these schools were started because they had
difficulties with dvaita.
They started their schools, more probably,  because of the importance they
gave to
BhAgavatha over other  Agama.

>
> Before you start interpreting away, ask yourself, "is jIva part of sarvaM
or
> not?" Your analogy, "Microsoft is all indeed this BillGates" fails,
because
> unlike brahman vis-a-vis sarvaM, Mr. Bill Gates does not pervade
Microsoft.

"Microsoft is all indeed this BillGates", simply means "BillGates keeps all
control of Microsoft".
That is  all the scope of that identity statement.  It does not make
BillGates all-pervasive.

Every single thing in this world,  including this jIva is part of 'sarvam',
no doubt.
God is All because He is in All ( sarvam samApnOshi tatO asi sarvaha ).
Only God is sarvAntaryAmee,  neither jeeva nor BillGates pervade everything.

This jeeva is neither  OmkAra-vAchya,  nor this jeeva is in all,  nor this
jeeva is the Controller of all.   So the interpretation that
"ayamAtmA brahma"  means "this jeeva itself is Brahman" is totally out of
context in that upanishat.

So,  no one can quote "ayamAtmA brahma" of ManUkya in support of
jeeva-brahma-Aikya.

>
> No, it does not. Previously, you had said that in your siddhAnta, "brahman
> is jagadeka-kAraNa". Now you want to qualify that by saying it is the
> "aprAkRta jagadeka kAraNa". So in your siddhAnta, you also need prAkRta
> kAraNa-s, i.e. prakRti in one form or the other, in addition to the
aprAkRta
> brahman, to account for the causation of jagat. So there is no longer eka
> kAraNa in your siddhAnta, only aneka kAraNa-s, of which brahman is one.
And

Yes, but this aprAkrita JagadEka-kAraNa is the  kAraNa for prakrit also.

THe fact that the source of chit-prakrti is Parabrahman is not coming from
dvaita,   but it is coming from Veda itself.

"mama yOnirapsu antah samudrE"  in what is known as ambhrNee sookta.

May be you should first study that sookta,  before making all these
statements.

> variety or other of advaita. Therefore, when you said earlier, "brahman is
> jagadeka-kAraNa", you forgot to qualify it as "aprAkRta", either as a
matter
> of oversight on your part or as a deliberate attempt to mislead us about
> your siddhAnta.

In our siddhAnta,  we do not distinguish between Parabrahman and His qualiti
es.
All qualities of parabrahman are Infinite and they are  Parabrahman Himself.
For this reason, a jeeva such as myself,  can not ever hope to exhaust a
single
quality of Parabrahman and understand that single quality completely.
"na ati vEdyO na cha avEdyaha tasmAt sa paramEshwaraha"  This is our
siddhAnta.   That I have forgotten "aprAkritatva" while mentioning
"jagadEka-kAraNatva"   also means I have forgotten to mention the
millions of other qualities of parabrahman as well.

>
> This aneka-kAraNa business, where all kAraNa-s are quite real, is quite
> Sruti-virodha. Even if you don't accept the advaita interpretation, the
> upanishad-s and brahmasUtra-s allow only brahman as the one kAraNa,
period.

No doubt the kAraNas are anEka,  but each one of them have been made
into a kAraNa by the same single kAraNa,   Parabrahman.
That is sootra-siddhAnta as well as madhwa-siddhAnta.
"sAdhanAnAm  sAdhanatvam yadaa AtmaadheenamishyatE sAdhana
sampattihi aishwarya dyOtikaa bhavEt"  -  Sri Madhwa.
So all these anEka-kAraNas are  mere pointers to  the Creating Power
called 'aishwarya'  of Parabrahman.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Vidyasankar Sundaresan" <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
To: <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 17, 2003 9:31 PM
Subject: [Advaita-l] Re: The current advaita-dvaita debate


> On Tue, 10 Jun 2003, "Jay Nelamangala" <jay at r-c-i.com> wrote:
>
> Re: An adhyAsa challenge,
>
> >Certain difficulties in the position of Advaita made a reconsideration of
> >the whole of Vedaanta thought necessary and as result there appeared
> >VishishTAdvaita.  But this system also was not without difficulties, and
by
> >way of removing them there appeared Dvaita.
>
> Difficulties in dvaita caused the gauDIya vaishNava-s to design an
"acintya
> bhedAbheda" school and the pushTi-mArgI vaishNavas of the vallabha
> sampradAya to come up with a "SuddhAdvaita" school. And numerous
> difficulties in all these schools cause people like me to reaffirm
advaita.
> If you think that the last word on vedAnta was spoken at the advent of
> dvaita a few centuries ago, or if you expect any of us to believe so, you
> are highly mistaken.
>
> Re: Interpreting "abhEda"  shruti sentences,
>
> >The context there is OmkAra.  It starts with "sarvamOkAra Eva"  - "All is
> >indeed Omkara" But nowhere in prasthAna-traya it says "this jeeva is
> >OmkAra".
>
> Before you start interpreting away, ask yourself, "is jIva part of sarvaM
or
> not?" Your analogy, "Microsoft is all indeed this BillGates" fails,
because
> unlike brahman vis-a-vis sarvaM, Mr. Bill Gates does not pervade
Microsoft.
> He cannot be at the Seattle office and the Los Angeles office of Microsoft
> at the same time. He cannot be at a closed board meeting of Microsoft and
a
> public shareholder meeting of Microsoft at the same time. brahman, on the
> other hand, pervades sarvaM and is also beyond this sarvaM. None of your
> constructions of "abheda" examples comes even close to Sruti sentences
> imparting abheda.
>
> Re: brahman as jagadeka-kAraNa,
>
> >Parabrahman is aprAkrita. All other kAraNas are prAkrtic as well, and
> >therefore
> >they are all sa-vikAra just as prakrti itself is.
> >
> >Parabrahman is aprAkrita jagadEka-kAraNa, so our siddhAnta still holds.
>
> No, it does not. Previously, you had said that in your siddhAnta, "brahman
> is jagadeka-kAraNa". Now you want to qualify that by saying it is the
> "aprAkRta jagadeka kAraNa". So in your siddhAnta, you also need prAkRta
> kAraNa-s, i.e. prakRti in one form or the other, in addition to the
aprAkRta
> brahman, to account for the causation of jagat. So there is no longer eka
> kAraNa in your siddhAnta, only aneka kAraNa-s, of which brahman is one.
And
> you also have to maintain that the prAkRta kAraNa-s are also real, not
just
> brahman, because if you do not, you are in danger of stepping into some
> variety or other of advaita. Therefore, when you said earlier, "brahman is
> jagadeka-kAraNa", you forgot to qualify it as "aprAkRta", either as a
matter
> of oversight on your part or as a deliberate attempt to mislead us about
> your siddhAnta. As Bhaskar mentioned earlier in another context, please
set
> out your siddhAnta in a consistent fashion, and not in bits and pieces.
>
> This aneka-kAraNa business, where all kAraNa-s are quite real, is quite
> Sruti-virodha. Even if you don't accept the advaita interpretation, the
> upanishad-s and brahmasUtra-s allow only brahman as the one kAraNa,
period.
> That, by the way, is the proper meaning of "ekam eva advitIyam". For the
> Srinivas Kotekal-s out there, who want to explain away the word
"advitIyam",
> please learn your own lesson properly and take the entire text into
account.
> It says, "sad eva saumya idam agra AsId ekam eva advitIyam". "sat" -
> existence eva - only, i.e. brahman alone, "ekam" - one, "eva" - only (note
> the emphasis given to "eva", by virtue of repetition) and "advitIyam" -
> without a second, "AsIt" - was here, "agra" - before the universe was
born.
> No matter how you interpret advitIyam, this text leaves no room for
anything
> other than brahman.
>
> Now, how this One brahman gives rise to the manifold jagat is the mystery
> explained in different ways in vedAnta. advaita talks of mAyA and
> viSishTAdvaita talks of apRthak-siddhi. dvaita, on the other hand, is so
> keen on refuting each and every point of advaita, that it misses the
forest
> for the trees, and has to take brahman as only the efficient cause,
thereby
> admitting prakRti in by the back door as another kAraNa. No wonder you
have
> to interpret akshara-avyakta in gItA chapter 12 as prakRti. You may like
to
> explain away advitIya in terms of superior-inferior, svatantra-paratantra
> relation, but you fall afoul of the term "ekam eva" in the process.
>
> Vidyasankar
>
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