[Advaita-l] On the forms of Guru

[Anbu sivam2]

Dear Sri Vidyasankarji,

You have said: "You seem to be claiming that no human
being can validly say that another person has a mind."

I am saying that one can talk of one's own mind being privy to it but not of
the minds of others yet the mind of all is claimed to be known on the basis
of the knowledge of one's own mind and acted on.  The reason imputed in this
is that as long as an assumption regarding all minds is not countered then
that assumption is right.  The point made is that the logic of existence of
the mind is made on the basis of assumption.

Also the mind which is a subject entity is being made into an object entity
which 'object' is an assumption rather than real.  If it was really an
object then I have laid down by my logic as to how amenable it is to be
controlled by another.

You jump in to say that a gnyaani could control his own mind!  Sir, do you
forget that we have fundamental difference here viz. whether or not a
gnyaani has a mind or not?  And do you forget that is all the discussion is
all about? I have said that a gnyaani is a person having done manonaasam and
has become an asangan and adhvitheeyan and that being so is no impediment
for him to communicate with anyone for he is free and unfettered.  Such
assumption of karmas on the part of the gnyaani is with the agnyaani and not
gnyaani.

I did give the example of Bhagavan Ramana who advocated manOnaasam and you
have admitted such technic of manOnaasam to attain gnyaana is not unique to
Ramana.  That puts you in company with those who claim that Bhagavan Ramana
attained gnyaana by manOnaasam.  If he communicates to us that manOnaasam is
the way to attain gnyaana why would you have to impute a mind for him in
order to say that?

I have already said that I cannot prove to you that a gnyaani is without a
mind (or even be with a mind which idea you seem to arbitrarily assert in
spite of the fact it is only an assumption.)
One can find out for himself which is true by becoming a gnyaani himself.
This would involve his realization that he suffers from thaapathrayam and
the realization 'na karmaNa, na prajaya, na dhana thyaagEnaikE
amrithathvamaanasu:'  Sukritham viz. nishkaamakarmam enables one to get to
this point.


I dealt with this subject on how it all arose before in
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2009-September/044094.html
Bhagavan Ramana and Aadhi Sankara have said that the world comes alive as
you wake up projected by the mind and dissolves into nothing in deep sleep
when the mind becomes unmanifest.  This unmanifest mind is the avidya or
sleep or darkness.  When this sleep is broken by manOnaasam there is the
realization of 'swaathmaanam evaadhvayam'.  To the Gnyaani there is no
world, no body, no mind, na bandham, na mOksham.

Regards,
Anbu


On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 5:37 PM, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <
svidyasankar at hotmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> > Dear Sri Vidyasankarji,
> >
> > You have said:
> > "We cannot claim that the jnAnI has NO mind
> > whatsoever, because we do admit that the jnAnI's physical body
> > appears before us."
> >
> > It seems by implication that the mind of the Gnyaani is thus established!
>
>
> I made the analogy only because the mind, just like the physical body,
> is also ultimately material.
>
>
> > Mind is not an object yet we generalize them. (All that are generalized
> > have to be more than one. All that are in multiples are objects. Anything
> > that is an object can be controlled.)
>
>
> I'm not sure where you are going with this line of argument, so I will
> say very little about it for now. You seem to be claiming that no human
> being can validly say that another person has a mind. Is that what you
> are aiming at? If so, why even claim a special non-mind status for a
> jnAnI? As far as I can know, I can say nothing about the mind of any
> person other than me, be it a jnAnI or an ajnAnI. Under this line of
> thinking, there is nothing special about the jnAnI, when it comes to
> the mind!
>
>
>
> >
> > So the mind of a gnyaani, by this logic, can be controlled!
>
>
> By the jnAnI, yes indeed. The difference between a jnAnI and an ajnAnI
> is that the jnAnI never identifies the self with the operation of the mind,
> whereas the ajnAnI habitually mutually superimposes himself and his mind.
> This is brought out very pithily in the adhyAsa bhAshya that is quoted so
> often by so many!
>
>
> > Sir, when I say 'my mind' it is certainly an object for me, however it is
> no
> > object for everyone. You would know of my mind if I speak about it,
> > otherwise you would not know. You cannot even question the truth of what
> I
> > speak of my mind. Would you agree?
>
>
> Not really. I am newly a father and I see how my wife and I are molding
> the mind of my daughter on a daily basis. At this stage, my daughter's
> mind is certainly an object for her parents to influence and control. The
> child is still too young for her to speak to us about her mind!
>
>
>
> Even as full-fledged adults, when two people engage in a discussion,
> what each person is really doing is trying to influence, if not control,
> the mind of the other. As such, the object-nature of another person's
> mind is a given, although the other person's mind is not perceived
> through any of the senses. Without this acceptance on my part that
> others also have minds, I cannot engage in any loka vyavahAra at all.
>
>
> > What differentiates Bhagavan Ramana from all others in respect of the
> mind
> > is that He advocated 'manOnaasam'. He, in my conviction, spoke of it
> after
> > having achieved it Himself.
>
>
> Even the gauDapAda kArikA, written well before Sankara's times, has
> a verse that talks of the amanI-bhAva of the manas.  There have been
> innumerable teachers of advaita through the ages, who have described
> mano-nASa. By the same token, there have also been innumerable
> teachers of advaita through the ages, who have talked of the mind,
> its operation and control even for the jnAnI. Each position has to be
> understood as per context.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Vidyasankar
>
>
>
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