[Advaita-l] [advaitin] A talk in Sanskrit on 'Darkness is material' (bhAvarUpa)

[Raghav Kumar Dwivedula]

On Wed, 30 Oct, 2024, 3:28 am Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l, <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Namaste,
>
> Absence and presence cannot be co-located. Where a thing is absent, it
> cannot be present and vice versa. Therefore, it follows that one cannot see
> the presence of an object in a location at the same time as seeing the
> absence of the object at the very same place.
>
> However, darkness and light can be co-located and 'co-observed', like in
> the case of a partially dark / dimly lit room where the outlines of objects
> can be seen, but not their specifics.
>

Namaste Venkat ji
Can we therefore make the corresponding positive statement in favor of the
bhAvarUpatvaM of tamas ( to say that it can accommodate the co-observation
of light and darkness in a dinky lit room), in the following manner?

In a dimly lit room two existent entities are present in tension, I e ,
trying to counter each other's nature viz., darkness which is tending to
envelop/cover everything from being experienced and light which is tending
to bring things to 'being experienced'.


The fact of grades of darkness observed by all, goes against the abhAvatvaM
of darkness.

Om
Raghav


> Now, human beings can see light frequencies in the visual spectrum, but not
> the ones outside the visual spectrum. I am not aware of any research that
> has conclusively established that that is the only visible spectrum for
> every species in the known universe. It is quite conceivable that there may
> be species out there that see light beyond the reach of the human eye.
> Therefore, what constitutes darkness (absence of light in your view) is
> different for different species. Cats and other nocturnal creatures have
> ability to see in the dark, that humans lack.


Yes, 'Birds and bees' can see in UV light. But we see only darkness even in
the presence of UV light.

But abhAvavAdins would say that darkness, (be it a relative) definition, is
only absence of light in the visible spectrum.  The more they refuse to
'see the light', the more it looks like they are merely defining the word
'darkness' as "absence of light'.

Those who argue for abhAva should at least understand, in mainstream Advaita
these three words mean three different things
1. prakAsha - light (directly experienced)
2 tamas - veil of darkness (directly experienced)
3. prakAshAbhAva - absence of light (which is appreciated by a quick
analysis of  2.)

All the three above words are accepted as valid in mainstream Advaita.
3. follows 2.    But 2. And 3. are cognitively processed different.

2. employs pratyaxa
3. employs anupalabdhi

Even humans do not see light
> and dark the same way - I may be able to see more in the dark than you can
> and vice versa.


> That being the case, "the impossibility of mistaking light and the absence
> of light for one another" is only true for one individual of one species at
> one time - it turns out that it is not the universal example that the
> bhAShyakAra had in mind when he used the phrase tamahprakAshavat, if
> darkness and light are the absence and presence of light, respectively.
>
> So the example of tamahprakAshavat in the adhyAsabhAShya cannot be taken to
> mean "taking the self to be the non-self and vice versa, should be an
> impossibility, like the absence and presence of light", because such a
> meaning (the impossibility of their co-location or knowledge of their
> co-location) does not universally apply in the case of the example itself
> (dark and light), let alone the exemplified (anAtma and Atma) - if Shankara
> had referred to the absence of light by the use of the word 'tamas'.
>
> Kind regards,
> Venkatraghavan
>
> On Tue, 29 Oct 2024, 18:22 Michael Chandra Cohen, <
> michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Namaste Sudhanshuji, pranam
> > How the text distinguishes between vishaya and vishayi is not as two
> > substances but as real and unreal (*satya anṛte mithunīkṛtya*) which are
> > opposed to each other epistemologically not ontologically. Who commonly
> > takes darkness to be a thing?
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > On Tue, Oct 29, 2024 at 7:05 AM Sudhanshu Shekhar <
> > sudhanshu.iitk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Dear Michael ji.
> >>
> >> SSSS points out "tamah prakashavad" ' is simply intended as an example
> to
> >>> be understood in common parlance. It is a diversion of intention to
> >>> discover controversial logical nuance in a drstanta. The merits of the
> >>> argument is mere scholasticism.
> >>>
> >>
> >> SSSS ji's statement is devoid of merit and logic. The intention of
> >> BhAshyakAra is to display mutual-anAtmatA of asmat-pratyaya-gochara and
> >> yushmat-pratyaya-gochara and for that he chose prakAsha and tamas, which
> >> indeed possess mutual anAtmatA.
> >>
> >> I had earlier refuted whatever SSSS ji said on this topic in my post at
> >> https://tinyurl.com/m45jesps. I had received no response on this.
> >>
> >> Regards.
> >> Sudhanshu Shekhar.
> >>
> >>
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