[Advaita-l] vAda - criteria of truth

[Siva Senani Nori]

Sri Werlings

You had written:

"I said that to be «true» any philosophic statement must be delimited by 
three boundaries: shruti, the Scriptures, yukti, reasoning and anubhUti, 
experience (it is there I think I made a gross and major mistake: I should 
have said «sArvatrika anubhava», universal experience, instead of anubhUti, 
because anubhava is experience while anubhUti is realization - and that if 
all anubhUti is anubhava, all anubhava is not anubhUti).

And I gave the following clarification: a statement acknowledged by a 
Scripture, but that cannot be established by reasoning and that cannot be 
experienced is at best a religious belief but not a philosophic truth."

This set off a few thoughts:

A. The starting point is quite orthodox (w.r.t. Advaita), but not the conclusion differntiating religious belief and philosophic truth on the basis of lack of experience. Such is the primacy of Sruti, that pending svanubhava, the seeker is labelled a sAdhaka, as opposed to a siddha (one who attained that being sought), rather than differentiating religious beliefs and philosophical truths. Similarly, while it is comforting to think that all Sruti statements can also be arrived at independently by yukti, that does not seem to hold on closer examination. A few months earlier, Sri Aditya Varun Chaddha of IIT, Madras had proposed on the list that "chunky" can be theoretically established in the place of "Brahman" by yukti and that was thought not to be so by the list members (not that it makes it any more or any less true, but that angle was discussed).

B. This differentiation seems to be based in a different system, and though I have no exposure to 'philosophy' as commonly understood by westerners, I suspect that such a system does not have as basis for Truth, Sruti or Plato's dialouges for that matter: Yukti and svanubhava would suffice.

C. What place does humility have in the search for truth? What is the possibility that a seeker does not know fully, and might do so later with more exposure or thinking through? 

Regards
Senani


 
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