[Advaita-l] Buddhism, Advaita and Dvaita - 1

[ShankaraBharadwaj Khandavalli]

"When the rope-knowledge is had, what gets sublated is the 'snake' alone and NOT 
the 'existence', sattA.  In fact, sattA, which is truly Brahman, Sat, Itself, 
can never go out of existence: न अभावो विद्यते सतः. Now he will start saying 
'there IS a rope' or 'a rope exists'.  But this will be too much for the 
Dvaitins to admit although they mean this alone without saying it in so many 
words."

I think they (dvaiti-s) differ here. They do not agree that the snake gets 
sublated, because for them snake is not an appearance. Snake is a state of 
existence, and rope is another. And bring rope itself is not a realization but 
just another level of existence. In fact they do not admit a "mukti" in the 
sense of one being swatantra - atma is itself essentially a paratantra 
principle, whether it has the other upadhi-s (ahamkara etc) or not. 


As such, they do not agree to the classification of existence/reality into 
absolute and phenomenal frames. So as such there is no place for arguing about 
the absolute nature of the world. The world in its essence is not absolute - the 
world is what it is, evolutionary in nature and its existence is because of 
brahman. 


In effect, if one can say this, dvaita is more of visva mImAmsa than brahma 
mImAmsa. 




Shankar

V Subrahmanian v.subrahmanian at gmail.com 
Wed Jun  1 04:28:02 CDT 2011 
________________________________
 
On Sat, May 14, 2011 at 5:02 PM, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at 
gmail.com>wrote:  > > //Everything in finite reality is grounded in the Infinite 
reality and > needs it for its *being and becoming*.//  p.62 >  *The dependence 
of the world of matter and the souls on Brahman is in the > sense that both are 
functioning at His will, which is the essential > condition and sustaining 
principle that invests them with their reality > and without which they would be 
but void names and bare possibilities.* //(emphasis mine) (page 67) > > My 
comments:  The above statements show very clearly that for Dvaita, the > 
paratantra cannot even 'be', 'exist', in the absence of the 'sattaa' > provided 
by / drawn from the Swatantra.  There is no 'svatantra-sattaa' for > the 
paratantra, it is 'parataH sattaa' alone it enjoys.   Namaste,  In the earlier 
post on this topic, I had made the above statements purely based on logic taking 
the basic data from Dr.BNK Sharma's statements in his book.  I continued to have 
a feeling that I had made a wild guess that the 'paratantra' (dependent reality) 
of the Dvaita school has no 'sattaa', existence, of its own; it exists solely on 
the 'sattaa' of the Swatantra. Recently someone drew my attention to a statement 
from Sri Raghavendra Tirtha's (a highly respected Acharya of the Madhva 
sampradaya) commentary on the PuruSha sUktam.  The Swami, while commenting on 
the words 'पुरुष एवेदं सर्वम्’ [All this is that PuruSha alone] has cited a 
verse from a smRti:  "*yadadHInA yasya sattA tat tadityEva bHanyatE*"  यदधीना 
यस्य सत्ता तत् तदित्येव भण्यते ।  [That whose sattA, existence, is dependent on 
Him (something other than itself) is spoken of as 'He Himself'.]  To explain, 
the 'idam', the created world, the paratantra, depends on That (Him) for its 
very existence.  That way it (the created world) is spoken of as 'The PuruSha, 
the Creator, Himself'.  Of course the Madhvas carefully avoid giving it an 
advaitic meaning.  So here there is a confirmation from the Madhva school itself 
for the fact that the paratantra (the dependent reality, the vyAvahArika of 
Advaita) has no existence, sattA, of its own; it exists on the borrowed 
existence of the Swatantra (the independent Reality, the paaramArthika of 
Advaita).  As I had stated earlier, such a situation is best explained by the 
rope-snake analogy.  The illusory/superimposed snake has no existence, sattA, of 
itself.  As long as one sees a snake there, its 'existence' is no different from 
the existence of the underlying rope there.  The rope's existence itself is 
transferred, as it were, to the snake and the vyavahara goes on: there exists a 
snake.  While in truth there is the rope alone and no snake at all, the sattA 
being One Only and not two, it is concluded that the rope alone appears as the 
snake.  When the rope-knowledge is had, what gets sublated is the 'snake' alone 
and NOT the 'existence', sattA.  In fact, sattA, which is truly Brahman, Sat, 
Itself, can never go out of existence: न अभावो विद्यते सतः. Now he will start 
saying 'there IS a rope' or 'a rope exists'.  But this will be too much for the 
Dvaitins to admit although they mean this alone without saying it in so many 
words.  Regards, subrahmanian.v    > The characterization of the true status of 
the paratantra as 'mere void > names and bare possibilities' by none other than 
an acclaimed authority on > Dvaita Vedanta, Dr.BNK  clearly depicts the Advaitic 
position with regard to > the naama-rUpa prapancha. > > All that Advaita 
categorises under 'vyavahaarika' is shown under > 'paratantra' in  Dvaita. While 
Advaita holds Brahman alone as the > PaaramArthika, Dvaita has 'ViShNu' alone to 
show under Swatantra.  Thus, the > two-fold categorisation of the Tattva/Satya 
is not avoidable even for > Dvaita. > >