[Advaita-l] Shankara on non-Advaitic mokSha/Brahman

[V Subrahmanian]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 12:27 AM, Rajaram Venkataramani <
rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sun, Feb 24, 2013 at 5:54 PM, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> >
> > The question is: what will be the state of this jiva with self-knowledge
> > after death? Will he continue as an individual or not?
> >
>
> RV: In GV, individuality of the jivatman is svarupa. It will never be lost.
>

In Advaita individuality cannot exist as all visheshas are avidyAkalpita
and one individual can be different from another only thru vishesha, a
position that the Madhwa school fundamentally depends upon.  It is the
nirvishesha Brahman that is the sole reality according to Advaita.  In any
case this is not an Advaita and GV or any other school debate.

>
> >
> > How long?  For the body-mind apparatus is perishable, no matter of what
> > they have been made.  Certainly they cannot be made of Pure
> Consciousness;
> > only prakRti can take shapes and sizes and attributes.
> >
>
> RV: In GV, the body made of visuddha sattva is non-different from brahman.
> It differentiates between internal, marginal and external
> potencies and links them to brahman through visesha. In advaita, one has to
> say that the form of even Ishwara has to be acit. If it is acit, it has to
> be cause of sorrow like any other form.  But where is the support for such
> a position in sastras to say that rupa of Bhagavan is cause of sorrow?
>

All rUpa, including that Bhagavan takes, is time-bound; it has a beginning
and an end. And they are either avidyA or mAyA kalpita and therefore do not
stand the test of absolutism.

> I do not understand how a leg of a chair can be different from a chair,
for
> a chair is a chair only with all its constituent parts.
>

RV: A chair is made of head, back, seat, hands and legs arranged in a
> particular configuration. If you point to any of the parts, you cannot say
> it is chair. So, each part is different from the chair. The chairness of
> the chair is also not lost by breaking a hand or a leg. For this reason
> also, the chair is different from its individual parts. However, there is
> no part of a chair that can exist without a chair because an adjective
> cannot exist without qualifying a noun.


In fact this purely Advaitic position that only signifies anirvachanIyatva
of the creation is already summarised in this article:

http://adbhutam.wordpress.com/2009/07/25/attributes-and-substantive/


> They cannot exist outside the chair
> because they are its parts, hence one with it. And the parts of a chair do
> not limit a chair. Such is the relationship between brahman and jiva-jagat,
> according GV.
>
>
> If the shakti of the shaktimAn Brahman has produced the jiva-s that are
> different from Him/It, then it goes without saying that the products of
> Brahman are non-different from It even as clay products are non- different
> from clay in truth.
>
> RV: There is no creation or production of jiva in GV. It is a shakti of
> the lord. As His shakti, it is inseparable from Him.
>

But that shakti is there in Him only because of the world and the jiva-s.
Since Bhagavan or Brahman is nitya tripta, It has nothing to gain from
creation.  And the shakti is inferred in It only from seeing the creation.
So a shakti that is dependent on / for the sake of creation cannot be the
svarUpa lakShaNa of Brahman; it can be only a taTastha lakShana.  Then, it
boils down to adhyasta in brahman, that can be easily negated for the
purpose of realizing Its true nature.

Also, if jIva and jagat are inseparable from Brahman, it becomes necessary
to state in clear terms on what kind of relationship do they exist in
Brahman.  If it is samyoga sambandha, it will render Brahman finite, with
parts, and therefore perishable for only such objects can conjoin with each
other.  If they are inseparably there in Brahman, then their doshas are
unavoidable in / inseparable from Brahman.  Thus the only way they can
exist in Brahman is through adhyAsa which alone can make Brahman absolutely
free of their contact and the defects such a contact can bring.  That is
the Advaitic way.

subrahmanian.v