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Re: Advaita
Hi Anand,
Thanks for your post.
anand hudli (ahudli@silver.ucs.indiana.edu) wrote:
:
:
: The discussion between Vidyasankar Sundaresan
: and Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian bring out two
: aspects of advaita.
:
: Although GauDapaada and Shankara were both advaitins,
: there is a vital difference between their approaches.
: Gaudapaada explains everything from the paaramaarthika
: view point whereas Shankara explains both from the
: paaramaarthika and vyaavahaarika view points. Ofcourse,
: the terms paaramaarthika and vyaavahaarika satya were
: invented by later advaitins; neither Shankara nor
: GauDapaada used them.
:
: Another observation is the way Shankara treats the reality
: of the world vis-a-vis the reality of a dream. For him,
: the world is ultimately unreal, but it is more
: consistent than a dream which is pure imagination.
: Thus the world is somehow "more" real than a dream.
: Shankara is more of a "realist" than GauDapaada.
Probably, you may elaborate on what is meant by "more real".
A dream is always REAL in the domain of the dream, meaning
while dreaming it is real for you, in the same way the world
is also REAL as long as we are in IT. When we come out of
the dream, we say it was an imagination/manifestation of the
mind and was an illusion. On the same ground, we can look at
the world, as long as we are IN IT, we perceive IT as REAL,
when we go beyond that "World also becomes an illusion". To
me "If the dream is REAL, then the world also is real in that
limited sense, otherwise both are just illusions". I do not
agree with the concept of "more real", you may elaborate it.
:
: GauDapaada, on the other hand, makes no distinction
: between the unreality of the world and that of the
: dream. In fact, in his MaaNDuukya kaarika he explains
: that the world is as imaginary as a dream.
I would like to agree with this view point! I would like
to view the world as real as a dream.
:
: Shankara never decried worship of the SaguNa Brahman, but
: GauDapaada condemns this in his kaarika. He calls a person
: who meditates or worships the conditioned Brahman, a
: pitiable one.
Advaitins, mainly Adi Sankara, say that a Sadguna Brahman
can lead the path to Nirguna Brahman.Probably, that is why
Adi Sankara did not decry idol worship. I also heard views on
the contrary, those following the path of Bhakthi considers
Brahman as Sadguna Brahman, and for them it will remain to
be Sadguna always, it never becomes Nirguna Brahman as it
should be for an Advaitin. The example is that of juice and
the one who enjoys juice, as long as he enjoys the taste( love in
the case of Sadguna Brahman ) juice , he would like to keep
on enjoying it. Wonder, whether there is any meeting point!
regards,
Santhosh
