Dvaita and Sophistry - Part 3(Inherent natures of jivas)

[Shrisha Rao]

On Thu, 13 Mar 2003, kalyan chakravarthy wrote:

> In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna tells Arjuna about sattvic, rajasic and
> tamasic foods. Each kind of food when eaten produces a different result.
> Otherwise, if all foods act on the jiva in the same way, then it is useless
> to classify them. For example, rajasic foods increase rajas.

Actually, in the BG, it is clearly the jIva-s, and not the foods, who are
labeled as sAttvika, etc.  The usages in chapter XVII are clearly `AhArAH
sAttvikapriyAH' (foods dear to sAttvika-s), `AhArA rAjasasyeshhTAH' (foods
liked by rAjasa-s), and `bhojanaM tAmasapriyam.h' (meal dear to tAmasa-s).
To support your contention, the usages *should have been* `AhArAH
sAttvikAH' (foods that are sAttvika), &c.

> Is it not therefore logical to say that the jivas do different actions and
> have different desires and differnt levels of joy(in this world)due to
> prakriti being heterogenous and acting heterogenously on them and not due to
> their own inherent natures being different?

No, because your interpretation of the relevant scriptural text is clearly
incorrect.

Regards,

Shrisha Rao

> Thus, the attempts to divide jivas based on their different levels of
> suffering or joy is mere sophistry.
>
> Best Regards
> Kalyan