[Advaita-l] [advaitin] T&D – Avidyā

[Sudhanshu Shekhar]

Namaste Venkat ji.

You have explained as clearly as one can. And I am sure that any person of
ordinary prudence and ordinary cognitive capacity will understand what you
said.

Advaita says:

1. Only sat exists. Both mithyA and asat are non-existent.

2. MithyA is sublatable. Both sat and asat are non-sublatable.

This is the clear Advaitic siddhAnta.

I don't understand how law of excluded middle is stated to be violated.

Namaste Michael ji.

//I believe you mean to say, non-existence like snake appears but
non-existence like hare's horn does not appear. And, I get the third
category - sat/asat and phenomenological.//

True.

//But, both snake and horn are asat - they are both errors and sublatable -
one seen, the other not seen. The point of bhasya is that neither are real,
both are illusion. period.//

Illusory snake and hare's born are both non-existent. However, while the
former is termed mithyaa, the later is termed as asat. That is just a
definition issue.

It is not correct to say that hare's born is error and sublatable. No one
mistakes anything for horns of hare. So, when there is no error, naturally
it is not sublated either.

//Prātibhāsika is not taught as some separate quasi-epistemological, class
of provisional entity. It is simply misperception (adhyāsa). What appears
is only the substratum, wrongly cognized. -a cognitive error.//

Cognitive error requires mind. You cannot err without mind, can you? And
this mind is not the substratum. Mind itself is prAtibhAsika. "Simply an
error" needs to be explained. You have accepted mind when you say it to be
"simply an error".

//Indeed, the entire triad—seer, seen, and seeing—belongs to avidyā alone
without distinction. By positing a distinct prātibhāsika level, the theory
covertly treats illusion as something positively produced,
as though error required a subtle material manifestation. This mistakes
misapprehension for creation. Illusion is not produced; it is only falsely
attributed.//

Sir, from the frame of reference, one is logically constrained to accept
modification. It is a fact of our life. You have to dwell on
misapprehension.

Tell me:
1. Does misapprehension require mind?
2. Is mind misapprehension?

Answer pointedly.

//The result is a violation of the law of excluded middle: what is neither
sat nor asat is granted a quasi-status. But for strict Advaita there is no
third category. The real alone is unsublatable; everything else is simply
unreal.//

As explained by Venkat ji which can be understood by any person of ordinary
cognitive capacity.

//What has happened in this departure from PTB is this elaborate
construction explaining and inadvertently reifying creation. The
distinction between DSV adn SDV are only further constructions - mula and
tula ajnana - vivarana and vishepa shakti - bhava-abhava vilakshana - on
and on - all constructions not found in PTB. Sankara wasn't interested in
building explanation only dismissing the superimposition//

Irrelevant imagination liable to be ignored. Instead, there is Shruti
pramANa of NAsadIya Sukta, which says -- there was neither sat, nor asat..
tamas was there. This clearly explains that tamas is sat-asat-vilakshaNa.
The omniscient SAyaNAchArya clearly explains that bhAvarUpa ajnAna is the
meaning of tamas.


//“Epistemic” in this context does not imply a pre-existing mind as a
substance; it simply denies that ignorance is an ontological principle.//

Useless stuff. You need to define epistemic.

//Mind, ignorance, and error all belong to the same empirical explanatory
framework and are jointly sublated.//

Sir, if you hold ignorance is cognitive error, you ipso facto accept that
mind is a pre-requisite of ignorance.

//The idea of one who is in ignorance and one who becomes free from
ignorance, is a serious distortion of Sankara's PTB. 🙏🙏🙏//

The absence of sAdhaka and sAdhya is certainly true from pAramArthika view.
But to deny their appearance from the frame of reference of avidyA is
useless and self-defeating. Whoever proposes this has no idea what PTB says.

Regards.
Sudhanshu Shekhar.



-- 
Commissioner of Income-tax,
Delhi.

sudhanshushekhar.wordpress.com