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Re: Siva as Yogi?
kstuart@snowcrest.net (Ken Stuart) wrote:
>On Mon, 8 Jan 1996 23:41:00 -0500 (EST), Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian
><rbalasub@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>
>>are almost there Ken, you'll become an Advaitin in a short while :-).
>
>Not likely. :-)
>
>There are certain problems with Advaita (as a philosophical system).
There are problems with Vishistadvaita too. The point is this : Both
philosophical systems admit that truth is beyond logic. Hence it is possible to
punch logical loopholes through both systems. It purely depends on the
intellect of the people arguing. Shankara could defeat Vishishtadvaitins (ex,
Bhatta Bhaskara) and Ramanuja could defeat Advaitins.
>Kashmir Shaivism, instead of basing its system on Being as the
>fundamental unit, rather bases it on Consciousness (Awareness), which
>resolves the odd contradictions that the various strands of Vedanta
>have been trying to resolve for centuries.
As I said, Vishishtadvaita has been doing the same thing as advaita. I am not
knowledgeable about Kashmir Shaivism, but I have read the Yoga Vashishta (a
major Kashmir Shaivite text) and it says the same stuff as the Ajata school,
with the word consciousness used more liberally.
>
>Here is another quote from Mark S.G. Dyczkowski, as a small example:
>
>"The [Advaita] Vedantin, who maintains that non-duality is the true
>nature of the absolute by rejecting duality as only provisionally
>real, is ultimately landed in a dualism between the real and illusory
Provisionally real !!??? If it is reality it is not provisional and if it's
provisional it's not reality.
I don't know who Mark S.G. D* is, but if he thinks advaitins admit "provisional
reality" he's sadly mistaken. If at all any advaitin uses any phrase like
"provisionally real" it's probably for people of low intellect who cannot get
beyond the delusion that the "waking state" has some sort of special reality.
Or he must be a mole planted by the dvaitins :-). There is no duality and hence
no "provisional reality".
One can profitably read the following books about all this.
1. Ribhu Gita - by Ribhu.
2. Avadhuta Gita - by Dattatreya.
3. Gaudapada Karika - by Gaudapada with Shankara's excellent explanations.
4. Vicharasangraham, Arunachala Pancharatna - Ramana Maharishi. One could also
read "Talks with Ramana Maharishi". It's particularly illuminating.
>by the foolishness of his own excessive sophistry (vacatadurvidya).
Well, As I said I haven't read any of Mark D*'s works. But he seems to have
some wrong notions of what Advaita is. He also seems to have been carried away
by his own eloquence :-).
>Oneness is better understood as the coextensive unity (ekarasa) of
>both duality and unity. They are equally expressions of the
When there is oneness, where is the question of duality? In fact the word
advaita itself is a sort of misnomer. When reality alone is, where is the
question of either dvaita or advaita (or Vishishtadvaita)? Advaita is used in
the same sense as Sat, Chit, Ananda. The self is neither sat nor asat and so
on. But the word sat is used since the self is not false. So on and so forth.
>absolute."
>Ken
>kstuart@snowcrest.net
And BTW, you seem to have missed the point of my previous post.
What you wrote in the previous post:
>Okay -- are you ready now, here it comes.... (B.U. 3.7 cont'd):
>
>"There is no other Seer than He, there is no other hearer than He,
>there is no other thinker than He, there is no other knower than He.
>He is the Inner Controller -- of our self and immortal. All else but
>He is perishable."
>
>SO, no eternal jivatmas. Just He and perishable jivas.
My point was,
1) If there are perishable jivas they are either He or not He.
2) If they are He, then they can't be perishable, since they are He.
3) If they are not He, then for the period of their existence they are
NOT He, which would contradict your quote from the Bri* Upanishad, SINCE the
JIVAS see, hear, think etc. (note that the quote says He is the only seer,
hearer, thinker and knower). If you say that He JUST does everything through
them, then it is as good as saying that the jivas ARE He, since they have NO
independent existence. It would be exceedingly silly to say that He is the
seer, blah blah blah, and the jivas have no say in anything, but somehow
are independent from Him.
It is highly important to note that the seeing, hearing etc has absolutely NO
qualifications: "good" or "bad", "realized" or "non-realized", "awake" or
"asleep", etc, DO NOT matter.
This absence of qualifications leads to the following. In my dream I see, hear
feel etc. In deep sleep I just know. Since He ALWAYS IS, the thinker in
these states HAVE to be He. My dream has a "reality" only for ME, when I wake
up. In deep sleep there is nothing other than the feeling of "I". Thus it is
obvious that since the truth always IS, He has to be the self. Thus the
argument that there are different jivas and He somehow "acts" through them,
and is still apart from them, holds no water whatsoever.
Also in the light of the previous statements in the BU, the last sentence "All
else but He is perishable." can only mean that all else is a delusion and
actually doesn't exist and hence "perishable".
If you see my previous post, I said there are NO jivatmas, perishable or
un-perishable. I certainly did not attribute any "temporary reality" to them.
Ramakrishnan.
