[Advaita-l] Ego, Mind and Body of a Jnani

[S Jayanarayanan]

--- On Sat, 7/10/10, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com> wrote:

> Shri Shankaracharya has set at rest
> all doubts and disputations that might
> arise / have arisen among seekers regarding this issue:
> 

Sankara undoubtedly holds that the sthitapraGYa/GYAnI does NOT have an ego! I'm actually amazed that you think otherwise!

Vide Sankara's giitaa Bhashhya 3.27-28 (courtesy of Gita Supersite http://www.gitasupersite.iitk.ac.in/ ):

---
..3.27..
prakRRiteH prakRRitiH pradhaanaM sattvarajastamasaaM guNaanaaM
saamyaavasthaa tasyaaH prakRRiteH guNaiH vikaaraiH kaaryakaraNaruupaiH
kriyamaaNaani karmaaNi
laukikaani shaastriiyaaNi cha sarvashaH sarvaprakaaraiH ahaMkaaravimuuDhaatmaa
kaaryakaraNasaMghaataatmapratyayaH ahaMkaaraH tena vividhaM
naanaavidhaM muuDhaH aatmaa antaHkaraNaM yasya saH ayaM
kaaryakaraNadharmaa kaaryakaraNaabhimaanii avidyayaa karmaaNi aatmani
manyamaanaH tattatkarmaNaam ahaM kartaa iti manyate..
yaH punarvidvaan -

..3.28..
tattvavit tu mahaabaaho. kasya tattvavit? guNakarmavibhaagayoH
guNavibhaagasya karmavibhaagasya cha tattvavit ityarthaH. guNaaH
karaNaatmakaaH guNeshhu vishhayaatmakeshhu vartante na aatmaa iti matvaa na
sajjate saktiM na karoti..
---

Translation by Swami Ganbhirananda:

---
3.27
Karmani kriyamanani, while actions, secular and scriptural, are
being done; sarvasah, in ever way; gunaih, by the gunas, (i.e.) by the
modifications in the form of body and organs; (born) prakrteh, of Nature-
Nature, (otherwise known as) Pradhana [Pradhana, Maya, the Power of
God.], being the state of equilibrium of the three qualities of sattva, rajas
and tamas; ahankara-vimudha-atma, one who is deluded by egoism;
manyate, thinks; iti, thus; 'Aham karta, I am the doer.' Ahankara is selfidentification
with the aggregate of body and organs. He whose atma,
mind, is vimudham, diluded in diverse ways, by that (ahankara) is
ahankara-vimudha-atma. He who imagines the characteristics of the
body and organs to be his own, who has self-identification with the body
and the organs, and who, through ignorance, believes the activities to be
his own-, he thinks, 'I am the doer of those diverse activities.'

3.28
Tu, but, on the other hand; he who is a knower, tattva-vit, a
knower of the facts;-knower of what kinds of facts?-guna-karmavibhagayoh,
about the varieties of the gunas and actions, i.e. a knower
of the diversity of the gunas and the diversity of acitons; [Guna-vibhaga
means the products of Prakrti which consists of the three gunas. They
are the five subtle elements, mind, intellect, ego, five sensory organs, five
motor organs and five objects (sound etc.) of the senses. Karma-vibhaga
means the varieties of inter-actions among these.-Tr.] na sajjate, does
not become attached; iti matva, thinking thus; 'Gunah, the gunas in the
form of organs;-not the Self-vartante, rest (act); gunesu, on the gunus in
the form of objects of the organs.'
---

The above commentary is clear that the Self-realized man (referred to as "tattva-vit") does not suffer from the identification of the ahaMkAra of the kind "I am This" or "This is Mine" (the definition of Ego or ahaMkAra)!

Regards,
Kartik

> Whether or not the ego, mind and body which includes, by
> default, sense /
> motor organs, exist for a Jnani. While there is
> incontrovertible evidence
> for this, even for the cursory reader, for example in the
> Bhagavadgita Fifth
> chapter, yet, while deliberating on the topic of the
> post-enlightenment
> state of a person (now Jnani), in the Brahmasutras, the
> Bhashyakara has this
> to say while commenting on the Sutra 4.1.15:
> 
> // Moreover, it is not a matter for dispute at all whether
> the body of the
> Knower of Brahman continues to exist for sometime or not.
> For how can one
> contest the fact of another possessing the knowledge of
> Brahman " vouched
> for by his heart's conviction " and at the same time
> continuing with the
> body? This very fact is elaborated in the Upanishads and
> the SmRtis in the
> course of determining the characteristics of 'the man of
> steady wisdom'. //
> 
> From the above statement we see the Acharya is confirming
> the presence of
> the Ego, Mind and Body in ONE GO. The sentence that does
> this is:
> 
> // For how can one contest the fact of another possessing
> the knowledge of
> Brahman â€" vouched for by his heart’s conviction
> â€" and at the same time
> continuing with the body? //
> 
> 1. For the presence of ego the word the bhashyam gives is:
> 'his'. In the
> original the word is: 'sva'. SSS has translated this in
> Kannada as 'tanna'.
> This is the word one uses to refer to him'self', her'self',
> one'self'. Here,
> in these usages, the 'self' is undoubtedly the ego,
> translated in sanskrit
> as amahkaara.
> 
> 2. For the presence of 'mind' the word the bhashyam gives
> is: 'heart's'. In
> the original the word is: 'hRdaya'. SSS has translated this
> in Kannada as
> 'hRdayakke'. In order to add emphasis to the fact that it
> is a realization
> that is available ONLY to that Jnani concerned, SSS adds
> the word 'maatra'
> in Kannada which restricts the realization to that
> particular Jnani
> (paricchinna antahkaraNa). The original expression is
> 'sva-hRdaya' which
> means : one's heart or one's mind. The word HRdayam is
> given the meaning of
> antaHkaraNa, manas, buddhi, etc. to denote the one faculty:
> mind across the
> bhashyam literature. (IshwaraH sarvabhUtAnAm hRddeshe
> Arjuna tiShThati of
> Gita 18th chapter).
> 
> 3.For the presence of body the word the bhashyam gives is:
> 'continuing with
> the body'. SSS uses the same word of the bhashya
> 'dehadhAraNa'm in the
> Kannada translation.
> 
> 4. There is an additional component to the presence of the
> mind in a Jnani,
> that is crucial in the above bhashya statement: the word
> 'pratyaya'.
> Pratyaya is 'conviction', a thought, etc. In this context
> the appropriate
> word is 'conviction'. It is common knowledge that a
> conviction can and does
> exist only in the mind. Atman cannot have any properties of
> the mind. So,
> the bhashyam word 'heart's conviction' or
> 'sva-hRdaya-pratyaya' gives
> absolutely no room for any doubt that there is the mind for
> the Jnani. SSS
> confirms this by the kannada word: 'tiLiyabaruva'. This
> means: the knowledge
> that one 'gets to know, comes to appreciate', etc.
> Certainly no such vyApAra
> can be admitted in the Atman.
> 
> The original words of the bhashya to confirm the prsence of
> ALL THE THREE -
> EGO, MIND AND THE BODY to the Jnani in ONE GO:
> sva-hRdaya-pratyayam
> dehadhAraNam cha.
> 
> Those who belong to the tradition of ShAnkara VedAnta have
> cherished the
> above sentence of the Acharya as the one where the revered
> Acharya gives
> expression to HIS OWN REALIZATION, svaanubhava.
> 
> Those outside the tradition of ShAnkara VedAnta who deny
> the concept of
> Jivanmukti and therefore the possibility of Shankara being
> a Jnani, however,
> do not accept that the above sentence is the Acharya's
> expression of His own
> anubhava. In any case, a traditionalfollower of Shankara
> Vedanta, would not
> be able to contradict the fact conveyed by that statement :
> That none can
> challenge the experience had by the Jnani that he has the
> Brahman-experience
> simultaneously with the knowledge that there is the body
> continuing.
> 
> In fact Shankara, if one grants is a Jnani, was able to say
> this statement,
> or rather write this bhashya, only because He had the ego,
> mind and the
> body. In the absence of these, we would not have had the
> blessing of having
> His Bhashya. There are evidences from His own words in the
> Gita and
> Taittiriya Bhashya and even the Sutra bhashya where the
> presence of 'ego' in
> Him is expressed by Himself. We shall present those
> sentences in a different
> thread, if occasion arises.
> 
> In no place has the Sarvajna Shankara made the statement in
> the prasthAna
> traya bhashya that it is ajnanis who posit a body, mind,
> etc. on a Jnani.
> The above bhashya statement itself is a testimony to that.
> 
> We do not value any Mahatma's statement that contradicts
> what Shankara has
> said on these matters. All statements of all Mahatmas will
> be acceptable to
> the follower of Shankara-advaita only if they do not
> contradict Shankara's
> statements, expressed or implied. If they are found to
> contradict what the
> Acharya has said, they will have to be rejected, as
> Shankara Himself has
> taught in the Gita Bhashya, as 'asampradAyavit's
> statements'.
> 
> Om Tat Sat
> subbu
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