[Advaita-l] (no subject)

Srikanta Narayanaswami srikanta.narayanaswami at yahoo.com
Thu Feb 16 07:49:33 CST 2012


The use of bhakti as an essential aid to jnana is easy to establish using
the upanishads. It is a matter of sitting with a traditional scholar and
getting a knowledge dump. Here is a sample

yasya deve para bhaktir
yatha-deve tatha gurau
tasyaite kathita hy arthah
prakashante mahatmanah (Sv. Up. 6.38)

The challenge will be in establishing bhakti rasa but not impossible (rf.
Sri Sriram Venkat post on raso vai sa:).
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The above quotation from Sve.Up is said with reference to prathikopasana.It is said as an idependent function that Bhakthi on the prathika.such statements we find in Isa upanishad and Shankara comments that the upasaka obtains the form of the ptathika.However,it is not Jnana that Shankara finally says.The statement "Raso vai sah"directly impliesĀ  that Atma is in the form of "rasa",that is essence.The later part of the Upanishads speaks only on "Brahmajnana" and not on Bhakthi.Moreover,Shv.Up is treated to be a later addition,and many scholars hold that the commentary on it is not by Shankara.
Regards,
N.Srikanta.


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