[Advaita-l] Brahmajnani / Atmajnani

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms Sri Srinath Vedagarbha prabhuji
Hare Krishna

> praNAms
> Hare Krishna
>
> Just on the lighter note, I would have loved a lot this Upanishad 
> mantra had it been free from other adjectives like : karmAdhyaksha, 
> ekO devaH etc.  because kevala nirguNa brahman cannot be adhyaksha of 
> avidyAkruta karma and giving the phala etc.  these adjectives will be 
> a hindrance to maintain the brahma svarUpa lakshaNa i.e. nirguNa, 
> nirvishesha, niraakaara, niravayava, niraamaya etc.  :-)  Ofcourse, as 
> per Advaita Ishwara's sarvajnatvaM, sarvashaktitvaM etc. holds water 
> ONLY in avidyA kshetra whereas in paramArtha he is kevala nirguNa and sAkshi cheta.
>
>
>
Just curious -- since this mantra is mixing vyavahara and paramatha dristis in one mantra, are you people blame this upanishad too just as you blame dvaitins confused viewpoints?

>  No prabhuji, we don’t blame Upanishad pramANa, since for us shruti is the untya pramANa and as per our tradition the shruti is not an admixture of any contradiction and it has unambiguous uniform teaching in all through its flow.  You may ask : is it not a problematic assertion by shruti for you advaitins when it is presenting two entirely different lakshaNa-s of brahman?? How nirguNa and sAkshi brahman be karmAdhyaksha, karmaphala dAta??  How nirvishesha and nirAkAra brahma can be ekO devaH, lord of all lords etc.  is it not contradicting your fundamental claim that brahman is absolutely nirvishesha and nirguNa ??  We, the advaitins, to these questions (may I say mockeries) do answer that NO it is not contradicting each other it is because of lack of doing appropriate samanvaya, you are getting these trifle doubts.  Shruti is having both saguNa para and nirguNa para mantra-s and we ultimately have to do the samanvaya holding only one brahma as per the Upanishad siddhAnta.  Now the question is who is the ultimate brahman of Upanishad?? Whether it is saguNa or nirguNa ??  how can you or on what basis you decide that ONLY nirguNa brahman is Upanishad pradipAdita brahman  when both saguNa and nirguNa para mantra-s equally finding the place in Upanishads ??   What is the criterial that you are using while doing the samanvaya to uphold the ultimate reality of nirguNa and nirvishesha parabrahman??  It is a subject matter of another thread and I strongly believe advaitins do have valid and very logical reason to uphold the ultimate nirguNatva of parabrahman despite saguNa para vAkya-s are aplenty in shruti.  We shall have a look at it some other time.  Now, in short, the answer to your doubt is :  by doing the samanvaya, without seeing any contradiction / problems in these seemingly contradictory statements we arrive at Upanishad siddhAnta.  We only blame dvaitins for lack of their understanding of this 'samanvaya' which we do within the realm  of shabda pramaaNa :-)

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar