[Advaita-l] Sphota and Shabda Brahman

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Namaste,

Sabda Brahman is not the Nirguna Brahman but is a link to the latter. In the practice of Yoga, (yoga means joining or linking),one has to concentrate on the Sabda-Brahman "Om", which is the vachaka of Brahman, as Patanjali says. As Lord Krishna says that sankhya and Yoga are one, let us look at it from the Sankhya angle.  Sabda is a Sukshma-bhoota and the Shukshma-bhootas are the first to appear in the scheme of creation.
When one delves into Sabda one reaches Brahman. So Sabda and Brahman can be called inseparable, even if it may not satisfy the scholars looking for rigorous treatment. Any comments?


Regards,
Sunil KB




________________________________
 From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at hotmail.com>
To: Advaita List <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 8:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Sphota and Shabda Brahman
 

Dear Ajit,

I am a little hard pressed for time and a full discussion of sphoTavAda and why
Sankara rejects it in the sUtrabhAshya would get to be very involved and deep.
Here are a few links that should help you, at least initially.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/bhartrihari/ - In-depth and very nicely written.
http://ssubbanna.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/01/who-was-upavarsa-2.htm - A
broader overview of the pre-Sankaran theories of language and meaning, again
very nicely written and informative.

Perhaps later in the year, if I get some more time to delve deeper into this, I will
take it up. In the meantime, I would encourage any other list members who may
have an interest in this, to get a discussion going. There is a lot of philosophical
acuity involved in understanding how language encodes and conveys meaning.

Grammarians, pUrva mImAMsaka-s and vedAntin-s all have different things to
say about this, with some areas of overlap, some areas of nuanced distinction
and others of outright disagreement with one another. Ultimately, the goal of
all these thinkers is to explicate how the veda conveys special truths to us -
truths that are not otherwise amenable to perception, inference and other
more regular ways of knowing that human beings depend upon.

In my opinion, the relative chronology of bhartRhari and bAdarAyaNa is not very
important for this. What is more important is the content of the vAkyapadIya and
the brahmasUtra bhAshya.

Regards,
Vidyasankar


> From: ajit.gargeshwari at gmail.com
> Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 23:08:47 +0530
> To: advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
> Subject: [Advaita-l] Sphota and Shabda Brahman
> 
> MayI Please repeat my query
> Can anyone please explain to me the difference between Shabda Brahman as
> >per Vakyapadeeya and The concept of Brahman as per Shankara Advaita
> >and What is the Background for refutation the Sphota Doctrine??
> >Regards
> >Ajit Gargeshwari
> 
> Thanks
> 
                          
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