[Advaita-l] On avidyA being anirvachanIya etc

[Raghav Kumar]

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 12:57 PM, Ramesh Krishnamurthy
<rkmurthy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Namaste,
>
> The tradition consistently maintains that avidyA is sat-asat-vilakShaNa,
> anirvachanIya, etc. The term "bhAvarUpa" is only used to emphasize that
> aj~nAna/avidyA is not the same as j~nAna-abhAva.

SrI lalitAlAlitaH ji also similarly said .
"See this from haritattvamuktAvalI : tasyAsmAbhirbhAvatvAna~NgIkArAt |
abhAvavilakShaNatvamAtreNa bhAvatvavyapadeshAchcha |
- We don't accept aGYAna (as) a positive entity=possessed of
sattA=bhAva. It is said to be bhAva (only) to differentiate from
abhAva"


Namaste Ramesh ji

Some points to consider -
1.What is meant by "pure absence of knowledge" which you mentioned? Is
there any example for the same?

2. vidyA too can be shown to be bhAva-abhAva-vilaxaNA along the same
lines that avidya is shown to be bhAvAbhAva-vilaxaNA in your post. For
example, when we say, "I know a rose" , this statement is also
sAmAnya-j~nAna alone. Since the entity called rose enfolds within
itself infinite layers of knoweldge; I don't know why a rose is red or
yellow etc, and much else about it. So the statement "I know
(something about ) a rose" is vidyA which implicitly includes the
avidyA that "I don't know (much else about) a rose".
sAmAnya-j~nAna and vishesha-aj~nAna always go hand-in-hand. If we say
avidyA is anirvacanIyA, then so also is vidyA. Both have to be
assigned the same label, be it bhAva-rUpA or anirvacanIyA.All
knowledge about entities is sAmAnya-j~nAna alone and accordingly has
an unknown particularized dimension to it as well.

What is not acceptable, as I understand, is that, we cannot say "vidyA
is bhAvarupA" but "avidyA is abhAva-rUpA" ? Both are in fact
categorized upon enquiry to be anirvacanIyA.
In the particular conext of Vedanta, both vidyA and avidyA are
provisionally bhAva-rUpa. Upon enquiry they are seen as anirvacanIyA..

Om
Raghav