Monthly Archives: December 2014

Three Advaitic Views on Creation

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The Supreme Brahman is both the material as well intelligent 
cause but unchanging;

The creation is transfiguration and not production of a thing not 
existing before or transformation.

97668_web_R_by_Hans Georg Staudt_pixelio.de

  1. yathA srShTi tathA drShTi – as the creation so the vision 
(experience) is put forth by advocates of many 
individual souls. Hence creation of the world is by God; certain experiences (universal) like fire burning whether you know it or not, 
sun will rise in east and set in west even if you know truth to be 
otherwise; sky will appear blue though colourless…. World has 
empirical reality.
  1. yathA drShTi tathA srShTi – as the vision (experience) so the 
creation is put forth by advocates of single soul. 
One’s own likes and dislikes are the cause for 
experience of pleasure and pain and contact of senses with objects is 
the producer of heat and cold. So whole world is subjective. World is 
apparent reality.
  1. ajAta – not separately born is put forth by those who say there is 
no individual soul separate from brahman at any point of time. 
As all have to agree that in the beginning (before world) only brahman was there and after dissolution it is only going to be there, that 
which was not in the beginning and not going to be in the end need not be accepted to exist in the middle. Since Vedas declare all these are brahman only, they hold at no point of time there is a jIva
(individual soul) ever separated from brahman to be re-united through efforts and become brahman – none in bondage or trying for release or as released. Since brahman cannot be grasped but is the substratum of this 
superimposed world, all talk about world/its creation by Veda is to teach about the brahman.

All three are advaitic in nature and based on Vedas. So no one school needs to criticize the other two.

From a post of Br. Pranipata Chaitanya in the Yahoo Advaitin group (March 2009)

Photo Credits: Hans Georg Staudt@pixelio.de

Creation according to Vasishtha

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P1000932asa~NkalpajAlakalanaiva jagatsamagraM

sa~Nkalpameva nanu viddhi vilAsacetyaM
sankalpamAtramalam utsRRijya nirvikalpa

mAshritya nishcayam avApnuhi rArna shAntiM (39)

 

VASISTHA continued:

To illustrate this there is an interesting legend. Kindly listen to it,

A young boy asked his nanny to tell him a story, and the nanny told him the
following story to which the boy listened with great attention:

Once upon a time in a city which did not exist, there were three princes who
were brave and happy. Of them two were unborn and the third had not been conceived. Unfortunately all their relatives died. The princes left their native city to
go elsewhere. Very soon, unable to bear the heat of the sun, they fell into a swoon.
Their feet were burnt by hot sand. The tips of grass pierced them. They reached
the shade of three trees, of which two did not exist and the third had not even been
planted. After resting there for some time and eating the fruits of those trees, they
proceeded further. Continue reading →

Science and Vedanta (Part 1)

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P1030138_tonemapped-1Part 1 of a 3-part essay by Dr. K. Sadananda, AchArya at Chinmaya Mission, Washington.

Science is Objective

The word science is derived from the root ‘scire’, meaning to know. Hence science really means knowledge which reveals a fact or truth. In Sanskrit, ‘vid’ means to know, and ‘veda’ means knowledge. Combining these two statements we can say that Veda means science. Vedanta means that which reveals the ultimate knowledge or absolute truth. From this, it follows that Vedanta is the ultimate science. This is not a fanatical statement but a statement of fact, as in ‘Light travels at 299,792,458 m / s’. This is not an opinion or belief but just plain fact, whether one believes it or not. We will examine here why Vedanta is the science of absolute.

Epistemologically, the word ‘knowledge’ without a qualifier, cannot be defined. The qualifier objectifies the knowledge as in ‘knowledge of Chemistry’ or ‘knowledge of Physics’, etc. It is always knowledge of something. It can be knowledge of the physical or phenomenal world, or knowledge of some subtle entities such as emotions, thoughts, intellectual concepts, etc. The former can be considered as the knowledge of gross entities that can be known via sense input, while the latter can be called the knowledge of subtle entities and can be known without the need of any sense input, or can be inferred indirectly from the sense input. Continue reading →

Topic of the Month – Creation

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Creation

The ‘original’ topic for discussion! Lots of potential material here. I have a number of interesting extracts to post, as soon as I can get around to scanning them in.

Meanwhile here are a couple of my favorite quotes, which I used in ‘Book of One’:

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move. Douglas Adams

In the beginning there was nothing and God said ‘Let there be light’, and there was still nothing but everybody could see it. Dave Thomas (This one especially for budding Buddhists)