[Advaita-l] [advaitin] A Post-Shankara Advaitin says 'anādi ajnāna, etc. are mithyā'

[Michael Chandra Cohen]

Namaste Jaishankar,
I find it disappointing that you only present scant response to my critical
assessments. I understand, Bhasyakara is difficult to refute when he is
understood as SSS sees him. Nevertheless

you say, //Śaṅkara's avidyā is neither a bare abhāva nor a bhāva-padārtha;
it is atasmiṃs tad-buddhiḥ
That is the definition of bhAvarupa which you have given, which is the same
for moolAvidya as for viparyaya jnAna.//

Yes, quite interesting and too easily conflates the two understandings. So
what is the difference, do you suggest?

// bijAnkura nyAya which is appropriate only if the bIja is moolAvidya.  //
You are asserting, not arguing. The analogy simply presents a beginningless
causation. To say the analogy *requires* a positive substance is to smuggle
in the conclusion as a premise!!

Accusing SSS of postulating an abhavarupa ontic as seed, is a superficial
reading:
"But 'Ignorance' in the form of failure to apprehend the Self is only a
precondition
for misconceiving it: it may be referred to metaphorically as a seed, but
it is
not a substance (dravya) having a po\ver (saleti) in any concrete sense. As
S~kara puts
it, 'The "seed" is only failure to apprehend the real'
(tattva-apratibodha-matram eva hi
bijam, G.K.Bh. 1.11). If it \vere anything else it would be real, and then
it \vould be
impossible to cancel it through metaphysical knowledge. SSS, Heart of Sri
Samkara p212

Regards, Michael

On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at 12:56 AM Jaishankar Narayanan <jai1971 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Namaste,
>
> You claim
>
> Śaṅkara's avidyā is neither a bare abhāva nor a bhāva-padārtha; it is
> atasmiṃs tad-buddhiḥ
>
> That is the definition of bhAvarupa which you have given, which is the
> same for moolAvidya as for viparyaya jnAna.
>
> Further you are talking about bijAnkura nyAya which is appropriate only if
> the bIja is moolAvidya. The bIja cannot be abhAva in which case you are
> closer to Buddhists than Shankara who clearly talks about a bIja which is
> bhAvarupa and which needs to be burned by the fire of knowledge.
>
> I think enough has been said about these topics.
>
> With love and prayers,
> Jaishankar
>
>
> On Tue, 30 Jun, 2026, 4:45 pm Michael Chandra Cohen via Advaita-l, <
> advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>> Namaste Jaishankarji,
>>
>> You are quite right and I easily forget satkaryavada. Your 3 definitions
>> are helpful.
>>
>>
>>
>> The issue is how does SSS warrant the accusation of reifying a second
>> entity onto PSA? It is more subtle than just upAdAnakAraNa. There is
>> always
>> an implication of ‘something’ that is not Brahman with the notion of
>> mulavidya. Calling it anirvacaniya, maya or ‘not a tangible substance as
>> it
>> avyakta (unmanifest) and sookshma (subtle),’ only disguises by implying
>> there is something which is avyakta, sookshma, or indefinable.
>>
>>
>>
>> “mulAvidya is drishya as it is sAkshi-bhAsya and so it is mithyA.” –
>> reifying by way of both standpoint and explanation.
>>
>> “So it is created every time a samsAri wakes up.” – the mere idea of
>> creation, of a samsAri ‘waking up’,  is the subtle second thing SSS refers
>> to in all the above.
>>
>>
>>
>> However, none of this applies to simple error – adhyasa. Why add a cause
>> to
>> adhyasa and all sorts of weighty explanation to that which is to be
>> sublated in the end anyway? Instead, simply recognize Sankara’s words that
>> adhyasa is prasiddha, anadi, naisargika – no cause necessary to prove
>>
>>
>> Claude responds to the remainder of your attack:
>>
>>
>> First, the Taittirīya maxim you turn against us — abhāvād bhāvotpattiḥ
>> sarvapramāṇavyākopaḥ — charging that we breed the waking saṃsārin from the
>> jñāna-abhāva of suṣupti. But we assert no utpatti. The whole force of
>> "naisargiko 'yaṃ loka-vyavahāraḥ" is anāditva: the saṃsāra is
>> unoriginated.
>> Where nothing is produced, a maxim against production-from-absence has no
>> purchase. It binds precisely whoever needs a positive upādāna for an
>> arisen
>> effect — i.e., the bhāvarūpa account. The pramāṇa tells against the side
>> that requires a bhāva, not against ours.
>>
>> Second, the abhāva/bhāva pincer — "viśeṣaṇavattve bhāva eva syāt." A false
>> dilemma. Śaṅkara's avidyā is neither a bare abhāva nor a bhāva-padārtha;
>> it
>> is atasmiṃs tad-buddhiḥ — viparyaya-jñāna, erroneous cognition. A
>> cognition
>> may be false and still be a cognition, bearing its phenomenal features
>> without being reified into insentient stuff. The abhāva-horn is not ours
>> to
>> hold. It is mūlāvidyā that must be at once positive (bhāvarūpa),
>> insentient
>> (jaḍa), and the negation of knowledge — Padmapāda's own gloss — and it is
>> that composite which strains the very logic you cite.
>>
>> On naisargikatva: occurrent superimpositions do recur on each waking;
>> granted. But beginninglessness belongs to the series (bīja-aṅkura-nyāya),
>> not to a continuant dozing through suṣupti. To read a persisting positive
>> substrate out of the recurrence is to assume the reification under dispute
>> — no differently than inferring a stored homunculus from the daily return
>> of waking.
>>
>> @advaita-vedanta.org <listmaster at advaita-vedanta.org>
>>
>