[Advaita-l] Re: Locus of avidyA

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

On 11/1/06, Ravisankar Mayavaram <abhayambika at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian rama.balasubramanian at gmail.com  wrote:
>
> > If I am not mistaken  (based on the previous discussion on this list),
> > none has satisfactorily answered these objections.
>
>
>     I am surprised to see such an assertion on the advaita list of all
>     places. Ramanujas so called "objections" have already been considered
>     and answered multiple times by Sureshvara and Sankara. Most notably by
>     Sureshvara brilliantly in NaiSi (3.55-3.70). I am quoting from memory
>     here.
>
> I apologize for posting it without careful consideration. I will read
> the reference you suggested.

Just to clarify: It wasn't my intention to be rude or anything. It's
just that the statement surprised me so much, that I wrote something
off the top of my head.

There is this theory floated around by some vishiShTAdvaitins on the
internet that some brilliant objections from Ramanuja and Deshika have
been unanswered by advaitins, even now. I tried to find what these
were and guess what? All these have already been stated as puurvapaxa
arguments and discussed ad nauseam, by Sureshvara in particular. He
even sounds contrite and justifies repeating these things multiple
times in the same book and points out that the repetition is to make
these things clear. If there were any serious discussions, these
answers by Sureshvara should have been deconstructed. On the other
hand compiling all these puurvapaxa statements into one section of a
book doesn't require much hard work, does it?

The vocal vishiShTAdvaitins on the internet also did not seem very
interested in actual advaita. They were more interested in proving
that shankara was a vaiShNava and spent more effort counting how many
times he has used viShNu or nArAyaNa. Their understanding of advaita
was extremely poor, to say the least. This is particularly true in the
now defunct bhakti list. So take claims about how no one has answered
Ramanuja or Deshika with at least a cart-load of salt. There is
nothing left to answer because they were already answered.

Rama