[Advaita-l] Does Brahman's svaprakAshatvam make it mithyA?

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms Sri Anand prabhuji
Hare Krishna

>  thanks for spending your precious time with me prabhuji.  I am always grateful to you for that.   

I don't understand why the confusion here.

>  This confusion is because I thought anrutaM is synonym to asatyaM.  But your clarification is clear below :

 In the taittiriya bhAShya, Shankara has defined anRta and says in the very next sentence, "ato vikAro anRtam vAcAraMbhaNaM vikAro ...". So it is clear he does not mean asat here, in the sense of shashaviShANa or hare's horn, but mithyA, which is the same as sadasadvilakShaNa, which is the same as tattva-anyatvAbhAm anirvachanIya. This becomes further clarified if you see the gItAbhAShya
(2.16) words, "vikAro ayamasanneva marIcijalavan*mithyA* avabhAsate."

>  So, anrutaM here is mithyA not asatyaM ( absolute non-existence like hare's horn)  hence anrutaM / mithyA which is also sadasadvilakShaNa.  Now we have to get the clarification where in bhAshyakAra used the word 'asatyaM' in the absolute non-existence sense ?  To get answer to this we have to go to shankara bhAshya with regard to asadvA idaM agra Asit again in taitereeya.  Here shruti says asadeva idam agra Asit somewhere else it also says sad eva soumyaM idaM agra Asit.  What exactly the meaning of sat and asat here in this shruti context??  Does bhAshyakAra here says asat means absolute non-existence (atyanta abhAva like shashaviShANa) or something else??  I don’t think bhAshyakAra here implying asat means non-existence.  Hence I asked for the various meanings of asatyaM, anrutaM, mithyA in shankara's prasthAna traya  bhAshya.  While giving the dviteeya Chandra example, shankara in tai. Bh. Says that the dviteeya chandrasya asatvaM yadataimirikeNa chakshushmata na gruhyate.  Here dviteeya Chandra is kevala avidyA kalpita or due to cataract problem (karaNa dOsha), whereas those who do not have this cataract problem would not see the dviteeya Chandra for them dviteeya Chandra is kevala avidyA kalpita, a non-existent entity or mithyA like sarpa on the rajju.  Here mareechyudaka and dviteeya Chandra both avidyA kalpita / mithyA only.  

Or, if one wants to justify the stand that Shankara never made a distinction between asat on the one hand and mithyA/anirvachanIya/sadasadvilakShaNa on the other, it can be done as follows. 

>  prabhuji I don’t know about others..but what I am thinking is asat is not about non-existence ( as we know asatyavanta is the one who changes his words very often but we don’t say he is non-existent) but that which is changing its colour having the substance of unchanging (example for the changing ring, bangle etc. the substance is gold, shankara gives the example of water and foam with regard to this and says tatvAnyatvAbhyamanirvachaneeya)  OTOH a mithyA vastu is kevala jeeva maanasa pratyaya which cannot have existence and hence cannot gives us the room to doubt whether it is sat or asat.  At the first place to doubt something whether it is real  or unreal (sadasad) there has to be something that needs to be  existed..nAmarUpAtmaka prapancha suits this since it has the qualities of asti-prateeti.  Whereas sarpa on the rajju is mithyA since it is 'kalpita jneya' in the mind of ajnAni.  

From a pAramArthika viewpoint, there is only AtmA, and everything else is anAtmA. 

>  Yes, there is only AtmA everything else (if at all there is anything) is also Atma only...since there is no distinction of Atma and anAtma in paramArtha neha nAnAsti kiMchana.  There is a reason for this to emphasis that there is nothing that can be called 'anAtma' in paramArtha because bhAshyakAra clarifies : yattu sarvAtmabhAvAt arvAk vAlAgramAtramapi anyatvena drushyate nAhamasmeeti tadavasthA avidyA.  

So we could say AtmA or Brahman is sat and everything else is asat. However, for purposes of vyavahAra, we have to make a distinction between atyanta asat, such as a hare's horn, and adhyasta asat, such as rajju-sarpa.

>  I onceagain wholeheartedly thank you for your time prabhuji.  If you think I am repeating same thing without  understanding traditional stand with regard to these terms and their contextual meaning.  You are welcome to ignore my mail prabhuji.

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar