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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).
>
>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.
Kashmir Saivism is itself pronouncedly non-dualistic in nature. Any
philosophical problems that one faces with advaita will ultimately come up in
Kashmir Saivism also. The problems may not be readily apparent because Kashmir
Saivism keeps the distinction between "Pure consciousness" and "awareness"
fuzzy. But Kashmir Saivism's conception of nishkala Siva, and its idea of
moksha as absorption in nishkala Siva are very close to the classical advaita
ideas of nirguNa brahman and moksha.
This is not very surprising, if you take the historical relationship of Kashmir
Saivism to advaita vedAnta into account. The spanda kArikAs are modelled
closely on gauDapAda's mANDUkya kArikAs. For an account of these relationships,
please see P.T. Raju's write-up in "History of Philosophy, Eastern and Western"
vol. 1, edited by S. Radhakrishnan, and a recent book by Natalya Isaeva, titled
"From early advaita vedAnta to Kashmir Saivism", published in 1995 by SUNY,
Albany. Kashmir Saivism and advaita vedAnta have been cross-fertilizing for
quite a few centuries now, and SrIvidyA upAsanA which is supposedly Kashmiri in
origin, is very popular in orthodox advaita circles.
>
>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
>
I have a feeling that Mark Dyczkowski is being misled by the advaita theory of
truth - svata: pramANa, parata: apramANa - i.e. all knowledge is self-valid,
unless sublated by other knowledge. This means that the reality of the world is
never called into question for the ordinary man. Advaita does not ask every man
to reject duality as "provisionally real". Rather it is the aparokshAnubhUti of
brama-jnAna that destroys duality. This leads to the distinction between
pAramArthika and vyAvahArika satya. But to interpret vyAvahArika satya as
"provisionally real" misses the point. So, there is no duality between the real
and the illusory. This criticism (of a duality between the real and the
illusory - I don't agree with the word illusory, but I'll go with it anyway)
has been raised centuries earlier by Jayatirtha in his nyAyasudhA and answered
by Madhusdana Sarasvati in his advaita-siddhi.
Besides, advaita vedAnta is faced with the additional responsibility of
interpreting Sruti, something that Kashmir Saivism does not try to do. neha
nAnAsti kincana - there is no plurality here, says the upanishad. The
maintenance of non-duality as the essential nature of the absolute is based on
such upanishadic teachings. However, this is valid only for the mukta. The
promised non-return (na sa punarAvartate) holds only for the mukta and not for
the rest of us.
Whether we emphasize sat (Being) or cit (Consciousness) or Ananda (Bliss) in
our respective philosophies, the truth is that It is ekameva-advitIyam. All
criticisms of this teaching of non-duality are based upon a reluctance to give
up one's habit of thinking in dvandvas, and are due to extending one's
experience of ordinary reality to the realm of moksha, of which the vast
majority of us have had no experience.
Regards,
S. Vidyasankar
