[Advaita-l] jnAni & his biographical incidents
Bhaskar YR
bhaskar.yr at in.abb.com
Mon Jul 12 03:57:12 CDT 2010
praNAms
Hare Krishna
A jnAni is the one who has transcended both the body and mind. His stand
is not merely that he is not the body, but that he was never one at any
point of time because it has been said in the shruti that he is the
absolute truth (i.e. brahman) itself. Under these circumstances, if
someone ascribes body, mind, intellect & paricchinna chaitanya to the
adviteeya jnAni & says he too has kAma, krOdha then it is nothing short of
blasphemy. The adhyAsa (atasmin tadbuddhi) is that I am body, I am mind
etc. it is just like seeing the snake in the rope. The jnAni has seen his
reality to be the Truth, just as the snake is discovered in clear sun
light to be the rope alone. Once he realized that he was/is/will be
devoid of any upAdhi saMbandhA, he is brahman only. Thus, the body of
Shri Shankara which we are seeing & acknowledging that he is the one who
has written bhAshya, he is the one who cursed brAhmins, who is the one who
for the sake of answering a gruhiNi's unnatural question on sex taken all
the trouble to do 'parakAya pravesha' just to experience that 'lacking
anubhava' in the body of another etc. etc. were only the creations of the
onlookers’ fancy or just poetic ones in the biography, and they alone who
were responsible for making these type of statements & attributing dehAtma
buddhi to shankara/jnAni. But all these stories could never affect the
jnAni like shankara, since the jnAni is nothing but truth and ONLY truth
and had no body at all even he is living!! Thus if we see any talk about
the apparent activities of the jnAni it is purely worldly or relative
angle of vision which is nothing but avidyAkruta or erroneous. So it is
better not to ask questions about how a particular jnAni taken birth,
lived and finally died. There can be somany fanciful incidents like this
in biographies but one should realize that it is a matter for history
alone, and does not hold water to prove jnAni's BMI in siddhAnta nirNaya.
An authentic biography of a jnAni is impossible. Biographers can only
record the history of only the body they assume or could see through their
avidyA drushti. But the jnAni is the changeless principle behind all
bodies, and as such the jnAni transcends all these fanciful biographies.
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!
bhaskar
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