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Re: Animal-killing and Soul-merging condemned
>vijaypai@mandolin.rice.edu (Vijay Sadananda Pai)
>
>Thank you, Ramakrishnan. You referred to an "ISKCON homepage on Shankara"
>and instead produced some tract written by the Gaudiya Vaisnava Society
>instead. My contention remains unchallenged -- I know of no ISKCON home-page
Congratulations! You have done it yet again. You seem to interpret things
literally and try to nitpick whenever you read a post which disagrees with
your views. By an "ISKCON" page I obviously meant an "ISKCON" related page. Say
I refer to the Ramana Maharishi homepage in Canada. It's not maintained by
Ramana. However I think it can be referred to as the Ramana homepage. Also
ISKCON and Ramana have a wide enough following to justify such usage. I think
it's definitely ISKCON related (whether you agree or not) and so do some other
ISKCON members. I can read plain English and did notice that the http address
for THE ISKCON homepage and the hp I referred to were different.
>on Sankara, although I know of one that mentions him momentarily.
>
>As far as Srila Prabhupada's purports stating that Sankara worked to
>defeat Buddhism, that is also part of the Advaita tradition. For
>example, see Vidya's Advaita home page at
>
>http://www.cco.caltech.edu:80/~vidya/advaita/sankara-life.html
>
>I quote directly from it "Thus Sankara debated with Buddhist
>philosophers, with followers of sAm.khya and with pUrva mImAm.sakas,
>the followers of vedic ritualism, and proved more than capable in
>defeating all his opponents in debate. Sankara then sought out
>kumArila bhaTTa, the foremost proponent of the pUrva mImAm.sA in his
>age, but bhaTTa was on his deathbed and directed Sankara to viSwarUpa,
>his disciple."
I have great respect for Vidya's knowledge and the effort he has taken in
putting together the Advaita page. However his opinions are by no means the
last word on Advaita and it's history. Vidya himself has given references on
various DigVijayas and why the Madhaviya-DigVijaya is considered the most
authentic. It clearly says that Kumarila and to a slightly lesser extent Bhatta
Bhaskara converted back huge numbers of Brahmins who had embraced Buddhism.
Lord Shiva appears to Shankara (after the Chandala incident) and asks him to
defeat Manadana(purvamimamsaka), Bhaskara (Dvaitin), Neelakantha (Shaiva),
Abhinavagupta (Shaktha) and other relatively minor schools at that time. From
the DigVijaya itself the minor schools seem to have been the Nyaya school,
Vaishnavas, Kaapaalikas and the Jainas. It is quite amazing that Shiva does
not mention any arguments with the Buddhists.
Also people in the Sringeri line ex. Krishnamurthi Iyer (later Gyanananda
Bharathi) who took sanyaasaa under the direct supervision of Chandrashekara
Bharathi have commented on the common misconception that Shankara defeated
Buddhists.
It is quite probable that the verse allegedly referring to Shankara, in the
Paadma puraanaa exists only in the copies from Vaishnavite regions. Also it
does not mention Shankara's name anyway. The common misconception that Shankara
argued with Buddhists may exist due to the fact that he explicitly denounces
Buddhist doctrines in the Sutra Bhashyas and Upadeshasahasri. However if one
applies even a modicum of thought it is not surprising, since till then the
Buddhist doctrines had a wide acceptance.
Finally DigVijayas written later may even mention that Shankara defeated
Buddhists, but this cannot be accepted. In later years Shankara became more
and more of a superman and every other work became HIS composition. If one
reads the Upadesha Sahasri and then reads quite sub standard works like the
Prabodhasudhakara (attributed to Shankara) he'll be able understand what I'm
talking about.
To put an end to other misconceptions (especially HKS's) I don't care a whit
whether Shankara or Kumarila were incarnations. As far as I'm concerned it's
only the story passed along by the mutts. It may or may not be true. Whether
Shankara was an incarnation of Shiva or Barney the dinosaur is of no concern to
me. My respect for him is just due to his composition of the Upadeshasahasri.
That one work alone is enough! (not that he hasn't composed other good works!)
Ramakrishnan.
>
>In article <4f6deg$ea3@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
>Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian <rbalasub@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
>>I haven't seen your homepage, I don't know if you have this gem. If you don't
>>please add the address http://206.86.8.2/~rayk/html/sankara.html to it.
>
>>The beginning of the page:
>> Shankaracarya
>> Originally published in "The Clarion Call"
>> by
>> The Gaudiya Vaisnava Society.
--
http://yake.ecn.purdue.edu/~rbalasub/
