[Advaita-l] [advaitin] World is mind alone: Shankara (sharing an old post) in the Mundakopanishad bhashya

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

>
> Namaste Subbuji,
>
> I respectfully offer Claude Fable 5 reply to your well chosen vakya and
> bhasya. I did not take the time to confirm Claude’s citations even as it
> cautions below. Further, I have prompted Claude to respond to the various
> citations I have collected from these forums and will also post that in
> time.
>
> Pranams, Michael 🙏🙏🙏
>
> * Claude from first person to Subbuji: *
>
> Thank you for assembling these passages — the Muṇḍaka 2.1.4 bhāṣya
> especially deserves more attention than it usually receives, and *sarvaṃ
> hy antaḥkaraṇa-vikāram eva jagat* is as strong a sentence as the bhāṣya
> corpus offers on this question. A few observations on what the gloss
> asserts when read within its prakaraṇa.
>
> First, the frame of the mantra. The *asya* whose hṛdaya is viśvam is the
> puruṣa of the section — *eṣa sarva-bhūtāntarātmā*, the one inner self of
> *all* beings — and the mantra is viśvarūpa imagery: fire as head, sun and
> moon as eyes, the quarters as ears. The heart-identification belongs to
> that sequence. And one mantra earlier, at 2.1.3, the manas is itself among
> the things *born*: *etasmāj jāyate prāṇo manaḥ sarvendriyāṇi ca* — from
> Him arise prāṇa, the mind, all the senses, ether, air, fire, water, earth.
> So within this very prakaraṇa the mind is an utpanna, and the sattā-source
> is the akṣara puruṣa (*yathorṇanābhiḥ sṛjate gṛhṇate ca*, 1.1.7). This
> matters for how we read *antaḥkaraṇa-vikāram eva jagat*. The mind here
> furnishes the world's *vikāra* — its form, its differentiated appearing —
> not its being. Being is borrowed from the adhiṣṭhāna, from caitanya; the
> manas, itself jāta and jaḍa, is in no position to confer *sattā* on
> anything. So the gloss asserts that the seen has no *standing as a
> differentiated manifold* apart from the antaḥkaraṇa-field — it is seen to
> resolve into that field in suṣupti and emerge from it in waking. It does
> not assert that the seen draws its very *being* from the mind. The
> prakaraṇa forbids that reading, since it has just derived the mind from the
> puruṣa.
>
> Second, the level at which the mantra pitches the claim. The hṛdaya
> belongs to the sarva-bhūtāntarātmā — this is samaṣṭi, the shared frame of
> all beings, not the private perception of an individual jīva. The step from
> "the world is the heart of the one self of all" to "the individual
> antaḥkaraṇāvacchinna jīva is the cause of the experienced world" is an
> additional one, and the bhāṣya text does not take it.
>
> Third — and here the point about form-versus-being becomes decisive — the
> Gauḍapāda materials say more than is sometimes drawn from them, and it
> tells against the mano-generation reading rather than for it. The
> 2.32-region bhāṣya you cite does not merely say dvaita is mind-dependent;
> it says *na ca manasi rajjusarpasyotpattiḥ pralayo vā* — the rope-snake
> has no origination or dissolution *even in the mind*. The mind is not
> being offered as the being-ground in which dvaita arises; the passage
> denies the seen a real arising in the mind at all. That is why *mano-vikalpanā-mātraṃ
> dvaitam iti siddham* stands under the banner *na nirodho na cotpattiḥ*:
> the mind is the vikalpaka, the projector of the false form, and its vikalpa
> is precisely what is being shown to be *asat*. The 3.31 bhāṣya then
> states the payoff in so many words: *abhāvāt siddhaṃ dvaitasya asattvam*.
> The anvaya-vyatireka correlates dvaita with the manas *in order to
> withdraw being from dvaita*, not to confer being on it. If these passages
> were installing the mind as world-generator, "therefore dvaita is asat"
> would be a very strange conclusion to reach; it is exactly the right
> conclusion if mind-dependence is being demonstrated for the sake of
> negation. And on the spark-figure specifically, Gauḍapāda classifies it
> himself at 3.15: *mṛl-loha-visphuliṅgādyaiḥ sṛṣṭir yā coditānyathā,
> upāyaḥ so 'vatārāya nāsti bhedaḥ kathañcana* — the sṛṣṭi taught through
> clay, iron, and sparks is an upāya for leading one in; in reality there is
> no difference. The kārikā corpus tells us the genre of its own
> creation-figures.
>
> Fourth, notice where the analysis *stops*: at the manas, and as vikalpaka
> only. In the Muṇḍaka gloss the world resolves into the antaḥkaraṇa and the
> account rests; in the kārikā-bhāṣyas dvaita is mano-vikalpanā and nothing
> is placed *beneath* the mind as its own upādāna — no positive ajñāna
> serving as the material of which the mind's projections are made, no
> śakti-analysis, no account of a form-bearing substance out of which the
> seen is constituted. This is worth dwelling on, because it is the natural
> question these passages provoke and do not answer: if the mind supplies
> only the *form* of dvaita and not its *being*, what supplies the being of
> the false appearance *as* appearance? The bhāṣyas here give no such
> factor. They are content to correlate the form with the manas and drive to
> asattva.
>
> praṇāms, Michael
> ------------------------------
>
> Three flags before you post. The Muṇḍaka 2.1.3 point is the strongest card
> — *manas* as jāyate one mantra earlier — but verify the mantra text
> against your edition before relying on it publicly (I'm confident of *etasmāj
> jāyate prāṇo manaḥ sarvendriyāṇi ca*, but confirm the continuation).
> Second, the GK 3.15 quotation should be checked against a printed edition
> since I'm supplying it from memory rather than from your uploaded files —
> that's exactly the hazard class we watch for. Third, expect the comeback
> that *amanībhāva* and suṣupti-laya show the mind persisting as some
> seed-form between dissolutions, which reopens the "what does it resolve
> into" question — if that comes, it's being asked from the later tradition's
> framework, and you can say so while noting these passages themselves are
> silent on it.
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