[Advaita-l] Question about Avaccheda vada

Aditya Kumar kumaraditya22 at yahoo.com
Fri Feb 9 21:28:48 EST 2018


Namaste,

If we try to remain faithful to Shankara bhashyas, a lot of concepts seem alien to early Advaita Vedanta

(1) The fact is that Avaccheda vada is the most preferred theory endorsed by Gaudapada Shankara and Vachaspati. The reflection theory cannot be found in original bhashyas "as we understand today". Nonetheless confining to the topic, if we have explain Jiva ishwara and brahman from Avaccheda theory, we have few pointers :
(a) The idea that ishwara is another ghata or mathakasha cannot be found in the original works of Gaudapada, Shankara and Vachaspati Misra.
(b) When we speak of Ishwara as the creator, the creatorship is imagined or superimposed or mistaken or as Subrahmanianji said, adhyaropa done by shastras. In any case, the delusion is that of jiva and Ishwara remains the same throughout as akarta, samsara guna vargita. 
(c) That Ishwara the creator has sattva guna as predominant - this idea cannot be found in prasthana traya bhashya. As indicated in another thread, Ishwara is without any guna vishesha or guna sambandha. Else it will be a samsari.
(d) The idea that a predominant sattva guna does not veil the self is another concept alien to SD itself.

Hence my understanding is that, by the potency of Ishwara, the true nature of Jiva is veiled. In this state there is jiva-ishwara, but on release there is no jiva-ishwara only brahman. So at no point does Ishwara sets out to create and hence justifiably there cannot be any guna karma association for ishwara whether in vyavaharika or paramarthika.


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