[Advaita-l] Jnana and ajnana (Bhakti vs. Jnana)

Rajaram Venkataramani rajaramvenk at gmail.com
Tue Jul 5 23:39:58 CDT 2011


Is there  sakshi ajnana? :) I don't think you get it though you claim
to be smarter than Vyasatirtha and Madhusudana. If it makes you happy,
feel free to hold that opinion.

I'd like to move on with developing my understanding of bhakti and
jnana in advaita please. I'm interested in the opinions advaitins held
around the time of sankara. It will allow me to compare and contrast
with what Madhusudana wrote. Thanks.

On 06/07/2011, Ramesh Krishnamurthy <rkmurthy at gmail.com> wrote:
> The way the question was posed, the response from Subbu-ji (and the rest of
> us) was natural. As a certain scholar told me, some of the medieval
> pUrvapakSha polemicists did succeed in tying themselves in knots by using
> complicated constructs to explain simple things, much like a person trying
> to touch his own nose by bringing his hand from around his head. Whether
> such an action is absurd or not, it is certainly not the simplest way of
> doing things.
>
> And ultimately, all these polemicists needed to know was something as simple
> as the sAkShI witnessing the pramAtA's ignorance or, to put it differently,
> the pramAtA's viSheSha jn~Ana/aj~nAna being predicated on the AtmA/sakShI's
> jn~Ana.
>
>
> On 5 July 2011 16:07, Rajaram Venkataramani <rajaramvenk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> You are quoting Sankara out of context. Madhusudana refutes the objector
>> (Vyasatirtha) correctly using differentiation between Sakshi and Vrtti
>> jnana. He does not say that the objector's position is absurd because he
>> understands the nyaya.
>>
>>
>>  On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:10 AM, V Subrahmanian
>> <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> > To experience that 'I am ignorant of an object' it is enough if i have a
>> > cursory knowledge of it.  I do not think this is so difficult to
>> > understand.  And the position that you are suggesting is also not
>> difficult
>> > to understand because it is so absurd. If I have the *knowledge of the
>> > object *as you say, I cannot be ignorant of it at the same time.   And
>> let
>> > me also make it clear that no one has proposed the absurd position that
>> > a
>> > person is totally knowledgeable about an object and yet has ignorance
>> about
>> > it.  Only such a position, if at all stated by anyone, will warrant an
>> > objection that you have proposed.  I would like to see based on which
>> > Advaita Acharya's above supposed absurd position has that objection been
>> > raised by whichever school.
>> >
>> > Having said this, I acknowledge what Ramesh Krishnamurthi has just said
>> > about the topic in summing up and rest the case here.
>> >
>>
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