[Advaita-l] Advaita Standpoint Schema: An Article on Pāramārthika, Vyāvahārika, and Plurality after Knowledge

[Vikram Jagannathan]

Namaskaram,

Recently an opportunity arose to write down some thoughts on Advaita
standpoints. Sharing this with esteemed members for reflection and comments.

https://archive.org/download/advaita-standpoint-schema/Advaita_Standpoint_Schema.pdf

*Abstract: This article addresses a recurrent confusion in the
interpretation of Advaita: the tendency to mix absolute reality,
observer-side description, pedagogical concession, and the content of
realization into a single undifferentiated account. The problem becomes
especially acute when one asks whether the jñānī continues to perceive
plurality, whether plurality remains after knowledge, or whether
realization consists in seeing oneness underlying a still-appearing world.
The article argues that such questions become tractable only when one
distinguishes, with precision, between pāramārthika and vyāvahārika, and
then further differentiates the ajñānī’s experience of plurality, the
ajñānī’s observation of the jñānī, the pedagogical designation of the
jñānī’s true vision, and the pedagogical account of the jñānī’s continued
empirical functioning.*

*The central thesis is that only pāramārthika is absolutely real. All
discourse involving jñānī, ajñānī, plurality, perception, continuation, and
empirical interaction belongs to vyāvahārika as a domain of explanatory
discourse. Within that domain, however, not all descriptions are of the
same order. The article identifies three recurrent collapse-errors:
observer-side description is allowed to define the jñānī’s true vision;
pedagogical concession is allowed to redefine the content of realization;
and explanatory shorthand is elevated into a final statement of
pāramārthika content. Against these conflations, the article develops a
standpoint schema governed by a single interpretive rule: a designation may
be vyāvahārika in label while being pāramārthika in content. On that basis,
it argues that “continued plurality for the jñānī” may be admitted only in
observer-side or pedagogically explanatory registers, but not as the
constitutive content of the jñānī’s true vision.*

prostrations,
Vikram