[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Why only jagat is mithya and jeeva is brahman !!??

akhanda akhanda at vsnl.com
Thu Mar 24 01:37:58 CDT 2016


Sorry for jumping in so late in this thread.  The thread has been 
meandering across many, highly interesting areas.  But to come back to 
the original question:

(a) As someone else commented earlier in this trhead, in this verse Shri 
Shankaraacharya is addressing the mumkshu, a jiiva. Hence he does not 
say that jiiva is mithyaa, even though he could, and only says jiiva is 
Brahman. Let us not forget for a moment, though, that there is an aspect 
of the jiiva that is mithyaa. Namely, the body-mind complex.

(b) The jiiva also has the reflection of consciousness in his sukshma 
shariira.  In all of creation, it is the jiiva alone that has both the 
mithyaa aspect (jada, the body mind complex) and the satyam aspect (non 
jada, consciousness). In the inert jagat, there is no sukshma shariira, 
hence no chidaabhaasa, hence no reflection of consciousness. It is jada 
through and through.

(c) As Sureswara puts it very well in his Naiskarmyasiddhi, the 
ahamkaara in the jiiva is both the subject (fire) and the object (fuel). 
The very first manifestation of adhyaasa takes place in the ahamkaara, 
which is found only in jiivas. Shri Shankaraacharya exhorts us to 
examine ourselves and discover that we call 'I' is the consciousness 
aspect in us,  not the false 'I mithyaa part in us.

Hence the statement by Shri Shankaraacharya seems to intentionally 
ignore the mithyatva of the jiiva (false 'I') and focusses on the 
Brahmatva of the jiiva (the true 'I'). The same cannot be done for 
jagat, which is false through and through.

My two cents.

Anil (Gidwani)

On 24-Mar-2016 8:19 AM, "advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org via 
advaita-l-bounces"@lists.advaita-vedanta.org wrote:
>>
>>> Thus, as per the above verse, which Sri Vidyaranya is only quoting, I
>>> suppose, those who hold
>>>
>>> māyā (the world, that is its effect) to be real are 'laukika-s'.
>>>
>>>
>> By concluding so, the author of above assertion is already under the spell
>> of mAya, for he is seeing "difference" and posting real distinction between
>> 'laukikAs' and not so laukikAs. This difference is not possible unless
>> oneself is laukika himself.
>>
>> To come out of this problem, I guess, one need not make such distinction;
>>
> vyavahAre bhaTTanayaH
>
>
>> or make the distinction but not hold difference is undesirable.
>>
> this sounds better ..
>
>
>
>> /sv
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