[Advaita-l] kratu without IshvarapraNidhAna

[V Subrahmanian]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 10:43 AM, Ramesh Krishnamurthy
<rkmurthy at gmail.com>wrote:

> Namaste,
>
> On 19 March 2012 22:27, Ramakrishna Upadrasta <uramakrishna at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > One aspect in the recent upAsana/bhakti threads was the effort build
> > an upAsana theory independent of IshvarapraNidhAna. The reasoning
> > adopted seemed rather strange as well: since traditions X, Y, Z which
> > have nothing in common adopt the same techniques yielding similar
> > results, all the way having dissimilar epistemologies, the method's
> > efficacy and results are independent of Ishvara!
>
> I think the issue is being misunderstood. In fact some other
> respondents also misunderstood the issue. The core point is that the
> mantra prayoga's ability to yield a result is dependent on correction
> execution of the process and not on any theoretical constructs or
> concepts one accepts.


I think this point was not disputed.  All that was said was that as per
Vedanta the phala comes from Ishwara alone.  In fact I spoke to Dr.Mani
Dravid Sastrigal just the other day on this.  He had this to say:

The pUrvamimamsakas are not mantravAdins.  They do not hold the mantra to
be the deity.  Rather their position is that the 'shabda' is the deity.
Words like 'surya' are deities/devatA-s but even 'Aditya' is not to be
considered the same as 'sUrya'; they are different devatA-s.  And for them
the karma itself gives the fruit.  He also said that this particular
position of the mImAmsaka has been taken up as a pUrvapaksha by the
Vedanta.  There is a particular sutra: धर्मं जैमिनिरत एव 3.3.40 and its
refutation in sutra 3.3.41.

I think the Brahma sutra and Shankara are not saying something trivial in
this.  Their contention is: all creation is by Ishwara who does this
depending on the karma of each jiva.  One can always argue that whether one
believes that Ishwara is the cause of creation or not, creation is there
for all to experience.  So, why does the Vedanta take efforts to establish
an Ishwara for explaining the creation?  The position of the Vedanta is:
there is no half-accepting the Veda and half-rejecting it.  When someone,
in this case the mImAmsaka, wants to believe that there will be fruit for a
work done, based on the Veda, in another loka for which the Veda is the
only pramANa, there is no way he can refuse to accept that the giver of the
fruit is Ishwara who is also vedapratipAdya.  The second of the sutra
bhashya I have quoted above clarifies the points for the interested one.  I
thank Shri Anand Hudli ji for having articulated  my thoughts on this so
well in his latest response.


subrahmanian.v