[Advaita-l] BrahmaGYAna and jIvanmukti - 2 (TheCaseof YAGYavalkya)

[S Jayanarayanan]

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

> 
> >yes, that means the context of these episodes are not to prove
> whether
> >yAjnavalkya is a perfect/imperfect brahmajnAni but something
> else...Hence,
> >undue stretching of yAjnavalkya's behaviour to prove his status of
> Atma
> >jnAna is totally unwarranted here I believe...
> 
> Not completely. All svAmI vidyAraNya is doing is to use this
> "episode" from 
> Sruti to teach a very traditional message, namely that sannyAsa as
> a stage 
> remains to be formally adopted even by a brahmavit. He goes on to 
> characterize this as vidvat sannyAsa. We cannot get a full
> biography of 
> yajnavalkya from the upanishat, but this does not stand in the way
> of 
> interpreting the few incidents that are related in the Sruti.
> 

Thanks for pointing that out. I had specifically mentioned in my
posting that:

"In my personal opinion, SV is not so keen on *proving* that
YAGYavalkya was a GYAnimAtra, as in clarifying that SV is not merely
talking about SAstra-GYAna, but about aparoksha BrahmaGYAna itself
being insufficient for jIvanmukti."

> >
> >Sri VS prabhuji :
> >
> > >question remains for the readers that whether yAGYAvalkya
> finally 
> >realized
> > >his true nature & became jIvan mukta or not??  and also we have
> to accept
> >
> >As a brahmavit, yAjnavalkya had already realized his true nature.
> >
> >bhaskar :
> >
> >prabhuji, being a brahmavit yAjnavalkya has become brahman itself
> is it
> >not??...coz. shruti itself assures brahmavit brahmaiva
> bhavati...shruti
> >never categorizes two types of brahmavits like perfect/firm and
> 
> A full-fledged gradation may not be explicit, but is implicit in
> Sruti. If I 
> remember right, muNDaka upanishat has a verse that refers to a 
> brahmavid-varishTha. I'll check and post later.
> 

There are some statements in Sankara's BSB that speak of  mithyA
GYAna remaining for "sometime" even for a Brahmavit. For example, BSB
4.1.15:

akartR^i AtmabodhaH api hi mithyAGYAnabAdhanena karmANi ucchinatti .
bAdhitamapi tu mithyAGYAnaM dvicandraGYAnavat.h saMskAravashhAt.h
ka~NcitkAlam.h anuvartata eva .

"The knowledge of the Self (Atmabodha) destroys Karmas by sublating
mithyAGYAna. EVEN AFTER BEING SUBLATED, MITHYAGYANA CONTINUES FOR A
SHORT WHILE OWING TO PAST SAMSKARAS."

Note that Sankara is explicitly saying that the "transition" from
mithyAGYAna to AtmaGYAna is not a 0-1 "step" (i.e. Atma is known and
mithyAGYAna is NOT YET completely destroyed). Rather, even after
Atmabodha, mithyAGYAna still hovers around for "some time"!

This is almost the same explanation Swami Vidyaranya himself gives
for the removal of avidyA. Besides, the above quote is in exact
agreement with Vidyaranya because he teaches that:

  vAsanA ~ saMskAra

Regards,
Kartik


 
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