[Advaita-l] Advaita Vedanta, religion, and science‏

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

>For the high level subjects he was discussing Adi Sankara had to necessarily>reject many lower level subjects and the arguments contained in them, but he>never meant to reject any thing in the absolute sense, because local rules would>always apply for people living wihtin some given constraints.
 
That was a cryptic reply to following
 
>It is said that Adi Shankara's statements often seem severe, reductive,>inapplicable, even 'untrue': because he was living at a time when faith>itself -- any faith -- was in such a mess that 'laying down the law' in the>most stringent terms was necessary.
It is not clear what these statemens are. Shri Michael may throw some light on them preferably with sources. 
It is possible you may have received some third hand information. 
  
If it was meant to be Adi Sankara rejecting Buddhism, it is no different from Einstein rejecting Newtonian mechanics. 
Buddhism is a close approximation to advaita. Likewise Newtonian mechanics is a close approximation to relativity.
If you ignore anything after the 3rd or 4th decimal place and limit yourself to experiments using ordinary equipment
which is not so sensitive, Newtonian mechanics gets you same results as relativity. Similarly if you are not keen 
on finer points Buddhism gets you same results as advaita. For example Buddhism talks of grief and sorrow,
whereas it is observed that before individual atma merges into universal atma it would experience immense
grief and sorrow which proves Buddhism. When the finer differences are seen through the magnifying glass
of Adi Sankara you will see the fatal errors in Buddhism. Sankara has advocated his three-fold method of 
determining truth to even reject parts of Hindu-vedic shruti itself if logic or experience contradict it. 
I do not see any proof for the argument that Adi Sankara used any outrageous or abrupt means
to socially engineer any change in faith. 
 
Hindu vratams like Satya narayana vratam or Kedara vratam offer similar features as world's leading religions. 
If you sincerely worship Satya narayana swami or Lord Shiva in these vratams you will be among the chosen
few who will get riches and happiness; otherwise you will be doomed, your ships will sink, you lose kingdoms.
Except for a brief period in South India there were no clashes between these followers.  
 
So far no other leading religion of the world (one that ties a practitioner) has authorized its followers 
to reject any parts of itself. On the other hand  religions authorize their followers to accuse other faiths 
as false religions and their followers as worshippers of false gods without offering any proofs. 
Unless religions start accepting logical discourses (on a different message board) it is difficult to 
participate in further discussion.  
 
Regards
Bhadraiah
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