[Advaita-l] Jnana and ajnana (Bhakti vs. Jnana)

[Ramesh Krishnamurthy]

The way the question was posed, the response from Subbu-ji (and the rest of
us) was natural. As a certain scholar told me, some of the medieval
pUrvapakSha polemicists did succeed in tying themselves in knots by using
complicated constructs to explain simple things, much like a person trying
to touch his own nose by bringing his hand from around his head. Whether
such an action is absurd or not, it is certainly not the simplest way of
doing things.

And ultimately, all these polemicists needed to know was something as simple
as the sAkShI witnessing the pramAtA's ignorance or, to put it differently,
the pramAtA's viSheSha jn~Ana/aj~nAna being predicated on the AtmA/sakShI's
jn~Ana.


On 5 July 2011 16:07, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

> You are quoting Sankara out of context. Madhusudana refutes the objector
> (Vyasatirtha) correctly using differentiation between Sakshi and Vrtti
> jnana. He does not say that the objector's position is absurd because he
> understands the nyaya.
>
>
>  On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:10 AM, V Subrahmanian
> <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>wrote:
>
> > To experience that 'I am ignorant of an object' it is enough if i have a
> > cursory knowledge of it.  I do not think this is so difficult to
> > understand.  And the position that you are suggesting is also not
> difficult
> > to understand because it is so absurd. If I have the *knowledge of the
> > object *as you say, I cannot be ignorant of it at the same time.   And
> let
> > me also make it clear that no one has proposed the absurd position that a
> > person is totally knowledgeable about an object and yet has ignorance
> about
> > it.  Only such a position, if at all stated by anyone, will warrant an
> > objection that you have proposed.  I would like to see based on which
> > Advaita Acharya's above supposed absurd position has that objection been
> > raised by whichever school.
> >
> > Having said this, I acknowledge what Ramesh Krishnamurthi has just said
> > about the topic in summing up and rest the case here.
> >
>