[Advaita-l] Sastra's Ability To Remove Ignorance

[rajaramvenk at gmail.com]

My question is how can sastras have a positive knowledge of Brahman so that they can teach us what is and not Brahman? 
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-----Original Message-----
From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Jun 2012 11:28:17 
To: <rajaramvenk at gmail.com>; A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta<advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Sastra's Ability To Remove Ignorance

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 8:43 PM, <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

> In the case of schools that accept reality of this and the world of gods,
> sastra's ability to remove ignorance is its ability to bring to light what
> is super-sensuous such as unseen results of dharma, qualties of god etc. In
> the case of advaitam, sastras teach about brahman through negation. But to
> negate something as not brahman, the (speaker of) sastras first need to
> have a positive knowledge of brahman. If I should say that a clay pot does
> not shine, I should first know what a clay pot looks like. How is this
> possible with respect to brahman?
>


Teaching Brahman thru negation 'neti neti' is the method of the upanishad
and not exclusive to Advaita.  All schools accept this.  Even if the
world/objects are not declared mithya as advaita does, to show Brahman as
different from the world/objects, this method of neti neti is
indispensable.  And the knowledge of Brahman is available from the
upanishads themselves: as jagatkaranam, shaashvatam, jnana svarupam, etc.
whereas the world/objects are anityam, created, duhkha mishritam, jadam,
paricchinnam, etc.  With this much knowledge one can negate the objects and
differentiate brahman from them.  It is only to acquire aparoksha jnanam of
brahman one has to do extra sadhana.  To negate the objects as not brahman
one need not have aparoksha jnanam.  Aparoksh jnanam only destroys mula
avidya.  The destruction of avidya is not a sine qua non for negating
objects as not brahman; it is a must, however, for moksha.

regards
subrahmanian.v



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