[Advaita-l] Knowledge and the Means of Knowledge - 21

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

Lathaji - PraNAms

Thanks for your input. 

The subject is somewhat deep and I am also trying to understand what exactly Vedanta ParibhASha says. First I thought it is just epistemological analysis, but the deeper I dwell on it the more relevant I see in terms of understanding the advaitic concepts too. Hence I tend to write thinking myself as the reader to make sure it is clear to me, at least. Hence I give more details when any new concepts VP brings in, I have to make sure it is connected to my previous understanding. Hence some of the statements that were are said in VP in one or two sentences, I have to unravel for my own sake. Hence they are somewhat lengthy.

Shree Dennis Waite  in his website <www.advaita.org.uk> is editing the series and putting in a readable English form - since my fingers tend to type their own language without caring for spelling or grammar, in order to catch up my thoughts! Hence those who are interested can go to his website - where he has put many other posts including the introduction to Vedanta and Analysis of Mind. 

I do not think the two aspects of avidya that I discussed are related to aavaraNa and viskhepa shaktees. They are more related to prameya and pramaata. One can say one is related to the subjective error and the other related to the objective error – or one is related to jiiva sRiShTi and Iswara sRiShTi.

When jnaani realizes, the wrong subjective notions are eliminated with the right knowledge - like eliminating the snake when one sees a rope.  
But the objective projections - Iswara sRiShTi does not get eliminated - only the ignorance that they are separate from Him/Brahman - that misunderstanding goes away.  That is, he sees the plurality but does not take the plurality as reality.  In adhyaasa there are two types of adhyaasa that I have discussed in the earlier posts - one is like projecting snake over a rope and the other is seeing mirage waters where there are none. The first one is subjective and therefore gets eliminated. I do not see the snake any more. Where as the second one is I have understood the truth of mirage waters but I still see it but do not get carried away by it- since one is jiiva sRiShTi and the other is Iswara sRiShTi. Same way the perception of  ‘this is mind’, which is Iswara sRiShTi and the notion ‘I am the mind’ – a jiiva sRiShTi. Jnaani looses the subjective notions, but he still has the objective mind that he can use as an instrument for loka kalyaaNam. 

Some of these advaitic concepts are embedded in the notes which VP has packed in couple of few lines. 

It is these two levels of avidya that was mentioned in the last post. Projection comes from maaya Shakti - at Iswara level it is called maaya and at jiiva level it is called avidya.

I am not sure bolding gets retained in the post appears. Some of the formating codes gets mixed up - at least I see that in advaitin list where the format changes to Rich text while advaital keeps it in text mode. 

Hope I am clear.

Hari Om!
Sadananda


--- On Tue, 9/9/08, latha vidyaranya <lathavidya at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

> the two levels of nescience - one at the subject level and
> one at the object level sound very much like the two
> dimensions of the maaya - the aavarana shakthi that covers
> up the truth and the vikshepa shakthi that projects the
> untruth. is that correct?
>  
> sorry, i have entered this series at this point and i may
> be disturbing. you may have already explained this earlier.
> i congratulate your patient rendering, trying to get down to
> the level of a beginner and explaining all the concepts in
> such detail.
>  
> since each of your post is so very lengthy, i would
> appreciate if the important words are highlighted in bold so
> that they catch and hold reader's attention better.
>