[Advaita-l] 'Prana' as Brahman

V Subrahmanian v.subrahmanian at gmail.com
Sun Feb 19 02:04:37 EST 2023


On Sun, Feb 19, 2023 at 12:23 PM Kaushik Chevendra <
chevendrakaushik at gmail.com> wrote:

> Namaste sir.
>
> While the Bh.Gita Vishvarupa has everyone else 'within' Bhagavan, here
>> everything, including Rudra and Vishnu, is 'within' Prana.  And Shankara
>> says clearly there: this Prana is prathamaja.  (And the Brihadaranyaka
>> Bhashya about Prajapati who has attained that status through sadhana is
>> stated to have independent capacity to create, sustain, etc. by Shankara.)
>>
>> In continuation here. It's a wrong statment to say that everything is
> within "prana" here.
>
> 1) In the gita bhasya acharya says that with one fourth of himself krishna
> has pervaded the entire universe (including various brahmanadas). It would
> be ridiculous to say that there is another jeeva "prana" who is above him
> etc ignoring the statments of acharya saying "none is equal or greater than
> you".
>
> 2) In the prashnopanishad acharya identified this prana as the Atman
> (brahman) in the 2.7 bhasya. Because there is a stuti of prana by other
> jeevas, here he is being identified as the Atman of all. Verily it is this
> Chaitanyam on whom all the upadhis of creation, sustenance etc are
> superimposed on. Hence the stuti is of Atman and not the diety prana.
> Because in the upanishad itself this prana is created by brahma.
>

Shankara calls this Prana 'prathamaja' an epithet for Brahmaa.  At the end
of that section Shankara says: इत्येवं सर्वात्मतया वागादिभिः प्राणैः
स्तुत्या गमितमहिमा प्राणः प्रजापतिरेवेत्यवधृतम् ॥   In the stuti it has
been emphatically established that Prana is indeed Prajapati.  It is this
Prana that was stated to pervade everything in the creation.

regards
subbu

>
> Namo narayana
>
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