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Re: Lots of hogwash!NOT!!!!!!
In article <ghenDr4DwE.70D@netcom.com>,
Mani Varadarajan <mani@srirangam.esd.sgi.com> wrote:
>shring@interlog.com (JBhardwaj) writes:
>> Under Hinduism it is well known that this so called real world that we
>> experience is totally an illusion.
>
>Really? Who pray tell told you this? Are you at all
>familiar with most of the philosophical and religious
>works of Hinduism, which most emphatically declare
>that the world is real?
In addition to that, how is it known that the world of experience is
an illusion? Illusion is known only with reference to a higher
reality. But once experience itself is denigrated wholesale, where is
the higher reality that can show it to be illusion? Thus, experience
does not prove illusion.
Can illusion be inferred? All inference is of the form "if A, then B."
Now, no illusion-proving inference can exist that considers its
antecedent itself to be illusory. If we have "if A, then the world is
illusory," then A cannot itself be a statement of illusion (because
such is being proved and is not yet known) and must be a statement of
reality -- which means that the illusion-inference itself needs an a
priori acceptance of reality. Besides, how is the inference rule
itself known? The rule itself cannot be from illusory
experience. Thus, illusion is not known from inference either.
For a last alternative, suppose you have a scripture that declares the
world to be an illusion. Now, is that scripture real or not? If it is
thought to be not real, i.e., as illusory, its interpretation strikes
at the roots of its own validity. If the scripture itself is real, as
it must be for it to be meaningful, then the interpretation cannot be
right, and the world cannot be illusory.
It is for reasons such as these that Madhva emphatically declares that
the universe is not illusory: `tatra pramaaNaabhaavaat.h' -- because
there isn't, and cannot be, any proof of illusion. All three types of
pramaaNa -- `pratyaksha' (experience), `anumaana' (inference) and
aagama (scripture) fail to show illusion because of the inherent
self-contradictions in any attempt at so showing. To accept something
that cannot be upheld by any evidence plays hell with the very
concepts of reality and illusion, and one might as well accept that
such non-entities as a rabbit's horn, a childless-woman's-son, etc.,
are also real.
If you are interested in discussing these sorts of topics at some
length, you may want to join the Dvaita mailing list, also known as
the Cyber Maadhva Sangha. Send mail to dvaita@pobox.com to join up.
Regards,
Shrisha Rao
>Mani
