[Advaita-l] Defintion of anubhava

Praveen R. Bhat bhatpraveen at gmail.com
Tue Jul 4 04:38:19 EDT 2017


Namaste,

I hear a lot of refutation of the word अनुभव by translating it as
'experience' first and then beating it up by saying that ब्रह्मज्ञान is not
experential.

However, when Bhashyakara himself uses the word अनुभव, he means
अपरोक्षज्ञानम् variously called as अपरोक्षानुभूतिः (using the suffix क्तिन्
instead of अप् with the same भावे व्युत्पत्ति), साक्षात्कारः, or even
प्रत्यक्ष। That being the case, could someone confirm as to what exactly is
the definition of अनूभव in orthodox Advaita Vedanta? To me, it appears that
we agree with the Nyaya definition of अनुभव as स्मृतिभिन्नज्ञानम् अनुभवः।
If we disagree, what is the definition?

I'm not particularly interested in what it translates into English, since
it seems to be that the connotation of the word अनुभव is unfortunately
reverse-engineered from its English translation 'experience'.

​Thanks much
,
--Praveen R. Bhat
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