[Advaita-l] The Human aspect of Jnanis - 5 (Concluded)

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Hari Om, Mahesh,

Apologies for gatecrashing into this discussion, but I'd like to present a
perspective. Usually, such confusion arises due to (studying) multiple paths
having multiple opinions on what the end goal is. Now if the goal is taken
to be moksha as a common ground among most paths that even you indicate,
that is a freedom from cyclical births and deaths, human nature is to ask
"what next?" So then, a dvaiti would call his end in vaikunTha while a
vaishNava would say he realizes being a part of brahman. Swami Krishnananda,
in comparing multiple paths, says that Shankaracharya questions if such
freedom of any path other than Advaita vedanta's be complete freedom. If
moksha is complete freedom, it has to be without any qualification
whatsoever, else it is against shruti declaration; however dogmatic it may
seem. I hope that you'd agree that only advaita moksha is a complete
freedom.#

Now, about conclusions of other paths being fallible, advaita vedanta agrees
with multiple paths only with where they do not contradict shruti. All the
bhashyas of Bhagavatpada are towards this end. If that is to say that only
his view is correct, it is to say that others are refuted since they go
against shruti or their ends are just means, being only a relative level of
truth but not the truth.

Finally, truth may well be expressed with silence in the end, but if thats
how all sages expressed it, including Aurobindo & Vallabhacharya, there
would be no one to ascertain the path to us, much less take us there. And
the very path of a vedanti would go nowhere because (veda) shabda is the
first pramANa! :) Also on this note, I'd like to touch on your earlier Q
about the (realized) authors of various granthas having BMI. The greatness
of advaita vedanta lies in the fact that it accepts the mithya level of BMI
of the sAdhaka or the author/ Guru to reveal the truth as it stands.

gurorarpaNamastu,
--Praveen R. Bhat
/* Through what should one know That owing to which all this is known!
[Br.Up. 4.5.15] */

PS: #I'd like to take something related to this point offline with you if
you're interested.


On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Mahesh Ursekar
<mahesh.ursekar at gmail.com>wrote:

> Dear Sri Vidyasankar :
>
> Thanks for your exposition. I am agreement with it. But to address my point
> of confusion, I would like to address your question:
>
> >> Wherein lies the problem then?
>
> The problem is that we take the import of the Vivekachoodamani or
> Sankaracharya Bhashyas for coming to grips with the ultimate reality
> (however approximate that may be). But there are other Bhasyas & works, for
> example the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo or Suddha Advaita of
> Vallabhacharya and many such. Each claims a Reality different from the
> other, so much so that that they cannot be reconciled with each other.
>
> Given this, if one believes (for legitimate reasons) that only his view is
> correct, it indirectly means the author of the others would have to be
> taken
> as fallible. If one says all views are correct, then Sankaracharya's
> exposition is just a view, one among many. And then, oddly,  all the
> different authors become, in some sense, fallible.  Truth is only expressed
> through silence.
>
> Thanks, Mahesh
>
>