[Advaita-l] BrahmaGYAna and jIvanmukti - 4 (Scriptural References)

[savithri devaraj]

  This context makes sense in the thread than saying that a brahma jnani, by effort and giving up desires, becomes a yogi as the original posting did. This doesn't seem intuitive at all - vairaagya is a pre-requisite for jnana, one of the sadhana catushtaya sampattih, the others being shama adi shadka sampattih, viveka and mumukshutva. 


    

One should also view these statements about "Self-knowledge alone" in the 
context that every human being already always knows his self, in some way. 
Every cognition, even the most mundane, begins with cognizing oneself. 
Nevertheless, there is also ignorance which stands in the way of one's truly 
knowing the real self. Therefore, merely becoming a sannyAsin is not enough, 
without developing the means towards stabilizing and becoming firmly 
entrenched in brahmavidyA.

Regards,
Vidyasankar


  S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at yahoo.com> wrote:     
"Therefore, to this day, the BrahmaNa, the knower of Brahman,
having known all about scholarship or knowledge of the Self,
from the teacher and the shrutis, having fully mastered it,
should renounce desires..."

Again note that Sankara takes the word "BrahmaNa" (in the first
occurrence of the word itself) to be a Brahmavit, and says quite
explicitly that a Brahmavit should renounce desires.


Sankara continues in his commentary on the above:

BAlyaM cha pANDityaM cha nirvidya niHsheshhaM kR^itvAtha 
mananAnmuniryogI bhavati; etAvaddhi BrAhmaNena kartavyam.h,
yaduta sarvAnAtmapratyayatiraskaraNam.h; etat.h kR^itvA 
kR^ita-kR^ityo yogI bhavati .

"Having known all about this strength and scholarship, he 
becomes meditative, in other words, A YOGI.
What a BrAhmaNa (knower of Brahman) should do is to eliminate
all ideas of the non-Self; doing this, he accomplishes his
task and BECOMES A YOGI."


Sankara is saying that:

Brahmavit --> Renunciation of Desires --> yogI


The BU verse is therefore recommending a BrahmaGYAnI to *become* a
yogI! This is exactly the same as the JMV's teachings, because
steadiness in BrahmaGYAna is attained by Yoga, as we shall see in a
subsequent posting.




 
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