[Advaita-l] Some rebellious remarks on Sri SSS

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

On 4/24/07, Ravisankar Mayavaram <abhayambika at gmail.com> wrote:

> * I do not find section 6 offensive or unprintable and not even the
> line  "Indeed none of his works are about the philosophy of advaita,
> but are oriented almost exclusively towards contradicting previous
> commentators of Sankaracarya."  or the assertion  "that he is a
> textual analyst and not a philosopher".  It is a view of the author,
> you are welcome contradict it factually by quoting passages  from the
> works of SSS . If I am not mistaken, even though this is part of the
> paper, it was not intended by Rama to be discussed online ==> which
> means you can reply, he may or may not respond.

Absolutely. It was not intended to be discussed online because of list
rules regarding certain topics regarding sampradaaya, etc. I thought
hard about whether I should delete that section in my final version.
However, I chose to leave it in because of certain problematic trends
I see in studying bhaashyas. The Indian concept of bhaashyas,
vaartikas and TIkAs is quite different from the Western notion of
"commentaries". Just look at the definition of vaartika, and see what
leeway is given to the author of a vaartika. The problematic trend I
see is creation of advaitic Jerry Falwells, which IMO is not good. The
last section was to emphasize that a Western education combined with
lack of rigorous training in allied subjects such as nyaayaa and
miimaamsaa, can be quite dangerous to say the least, as evidenced by
serious philosophical inconsistencies.

Rama