[Advaita-l] [advaitin] request for PTB support for DSV and EJV

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

namaste all, thanks for the helpful responses. A response just concerning
mandukya from a post elsewhere


1. **Dream–waking equivalence in Gauḍapāda is epistemic, not explanatory.**
GK 2.4 and 2.6 indeed establish *vaitathya* by parity of *dṛśyatva*: both
dream and waking objects lack independent reality. But this functions
**negatively**, to dislodge naïve realism—not to posit a positive doctrine
that *perception itself produces objects*. The verses negate objectivity;
they do not install a constructive causal thesis.
2. **“Mind-based” does not mean “mentally produced” in a DSV sense.**
Terms like *manasa kalpitam* and *manodṛśyam idaṃ sarvam* (GK 3.31) deny
extra-mental objecthood; they do **not** assert a psychological or
quasi-causal projection theory. To move from “nothing is perceived apart
from mind” to “the mind creates the world” is a further step—one not made
by Gauḍapāda himself.
3. **Ajātivāda blocks ‘perception = creation’.**
GK 3.48 / 4.71 explicitly deny origination *altogether*. If nothing is ever
born, then nothing is produced—not by Īśvara, not by mind, not by
perception. Any formula like “perception is creation” risks reintroducing
origination at precisely the level Ajātivāda is meant to cancel.
4. **Śaṅkara’s bhāṣya (esp. GK 4.64–67) remains strictly pedagogical.**
Śaṅkara uses perceptual language to **undo doership, experiencership, and
objecthood**, not to explain how a world comes to be. The apparatus is
*adhyāropa-apavāda*, not ontology. Once negation has done its work,
perception itself is not retained as a metaphysical principle.
5. **The ‘sharpened dream’ trope is post-Gauḍapāda.**
The idea that waking is a clearer dream due to the senses is a later
explanatory gloss. Gauḍapāda’s point is simpler and more radical: **both
collapse under the same negation**. No residual theory of projection is
required—or permitted.
**In short:** Gauḍapāda establishes *non-objectivity*, not *perceptual
production*.
DSV-style slogans like “perception is creation” belong to later systematic
reconstructions, not to Gauḍapāda’s own Ajātivāda when read in Śaṅkara’s
methodological key.

On Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 2:34 AM V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
wrote:

> In this old post, a Mundaka Upanishad Bhashya observation is explained:
>
>
> https://adbhutam.wordpress.com/2017/07/29/the-world-is-mind-alone-shankaracharya/
>
>
> warm regards
> subbu
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 7:30 PM Michael Chandra Cohen <
> michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Namaste,
>> Would our esteemed members kindly contribute Prasthanatraya Sankara
>> bhasya references/citation that support Drsti Srsti vada and/or Eka jiva
>> vada.
>>
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