[Advaita-l] An instance of Advaita wrongly comprehended

[kuntimaddi sadananda]

Sunilji - PraNAms

What I wrote and what Subbuji also wrote about mithyaa are not academics but facts about the nature of the world.

Shankara says any object is mithyaa - because it is perceived - dRisyatvaat while for the other daarshanikaas it is satyam, because of the same reason, dRisyatvaat. 

Discussion about mithyaa has been going on since ages - many daarshanikas accept only sat and asat, and not sat asat vilakshnam  mithyaa. Bhagavan Ramanuja criticized it. Vedanta Deshika criticized it in his Shatadhuushanii. Madhva and vyaasa Teertha in NyaayamRitam criticized it.  

Madhusudana in the Advaita Sidddhi provided  five definitions for falsity or mithyaa based on previous advaita achaaryas works, to counter the criticism of dvaitins. There are not new definitions but that what other advaita aacharyas have already given but misunderstood by the dvaitins. 

It is same objections that are being raised again and again. The objectors have no patience to study the responses already been given to those objections. Many dvaitins that I know read Shree B.N. Sharma's works that criticizes the Advaita. The criticisms indicate that either he did not understand Advaita properly or he refused to understand Advaita properly (I guess it is more of the later than former); and  people go on quoting the same arguments again and again. If you go to vaadaavali (or should be called jalpaavali) you can find all these arguments. There was one JN who did that in this and in advaitin list and was essentially kicked out of both lists. 

It is useless to argue with them since none of them are really interested in learning what advaita says. 

Hence Dattatreya in Avadhuta Gita says - Iswaraanugrahaat eve pumsaam advaita vaasanaa - It is only by god's grace only one is exposed to or even ready to accept this teaching - manushyaanaam sahasreshu ... Krishna gives statistics. 

Shankara advises us not to get involved in kutarka or suShka vaada. 

No, I do not think that it is our duty to keep going around setting things right when people are not ready - as you can see some in this list serve itself. If they do present new arguments that have not been addressed by our aachaaryas in the past then there is a merit to address them. If a person is seriously interested to know the facts then it is out duty to provide the required clarification. Many who criticize think that that they are right and we are wrong. Arguments with them only give lot of noise or lot of meaningless posts as you can see.  

Hari Om!
Sadananda



--- On Tue, 4/17/12, Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:


> I agree with you academically but the problem remains as to
> how to impress on the uninformed people not to ridicule the
> Advaitins because the Advaitins are sane people and they
> accept the existence of the world fully knowing the true
> nature of the world. It is only the uninformed  ones who
> are confused and do not know the true nature of the world.
> Don't you think that we have a responsibility to take such
> people (excluding of course the prejudiced ones) with us. 
> It seems in Adi Sankara's time people understood the term
> Mithya properly and easily. Today most people are simply put
> off by word "Mithya". 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Sunil KB