Fw: [Advaita-l] More on Paurusha

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

Namaste,

On 02/12/06, Siva Senani Nori (SSN) wrote:

SSN:
>>Wherever I did not intend to mean something very precise or
definite, I used qualifiers such as "Vasishtha seems to", "it largely
means to Sri Sankara" etc

RK:
** No problems sir :) This a discussion forum and all of us are here
only to improve our understanding

SSN:
>>Off hand, I remember the TaittirIya bhAshya, where the reverred
achArya treats karma at length and almost in every sentence, you could
put yaj~na in stead of karma there.

RK:
**I think Jaldhar has explained this very well. yaj~na is the
archetypal karma and is hence used as the stock example. But karma per
se includes any action. This is well established in advaita-vedAnta

SSN:
>> And how can something like "karma does not lead to mukti" (which I
am certain the Acharya says in so many words, again in TaittirIya
bhAshya) be read as "doing karma is the only obstacle to mukti"? ....

RK:
**I am not implying that karma is the only obstacle to mukti. Rather,
what I am saying is that if karma means only yaj~na, then sannyAsa
(which in advaita is the renunciation of karma) should only mean the
cessation of yaj~na, instead of renunciation of family ties, etc. This
is obviously not the case.

SSN:
>> Illusion is a widely used translation of MithyA, and I am not even
sure it is a lazy translation.

RK:
**IMO, it is a lazy translation. In fact, I would say that it is a
translation that has promoted serious misunderstandings of the system
of advaita-vedAnta. The world does not disappear for the mukta. He
still eats, sleeps and talks. But he sees everything as being
non-different from brahman.

SSN:
>>Still, the difference from the seeming nature of world in
Vasishtha's viewpoint to the Advaita position remains.

RK:
**The upaniShads say 1. praj~nAnam brahma; 2. sarvam khalvidam brahma
The YV says: cinmAtram cetanam viSvam

Aren't they saying the same thing?

Also, pl see this post in the archives, in particular the second part
starting with "the seed of existence". In my understanding, this fits
in with advaita-vedAnta so well that if someone were to ask me what is
advaita-vedAnta, I could simply forward this article to him!
http://lists.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/1998-March/008720.html

Apart from the bR^ihat YV and the laghu YV, there is a also a 230
verse text called the YV-sAra, which has been translated into English
by one Swami Sureshananda and published by Ramanashramam. This text is
available online, and it is easy to see that it teaches nothing but
advaita.

dhanyosmi
Ramesh