Tag Archives: myth

Revision of ‘Critical review of article on Shankara’ – part 2

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‘A New Approach to Understanding Advaita as Taught by ´Sa ˙ nkara Bhagavadp¯ada’ – by Ramakrishnan Balasubrahmanian – 2

We saw in the 1st part of this Review the primary or prior, not to say exclusive, importance that the author, RB, gives to the superimposition of a subject, individual mind or jiva, on the self: “the superimposition of an observer is avidy¯a and is prior to the reverse superimposition” – not mentioning that Shankara does not talk of a ‘reverse process’, as if it was something happening through time, but of mutual superimposition of self and non-self. Period.

As we noted in the first part of this Review, RB ‘half’ concedes the point:  “It is not completely incorrect to say that avidy¯a is the mutual superimposition of the real and unreal. ´ San˙ kar¯ac¯arya and Sure´svar¯ac¯arya do mention this … the superimposition of an observer on the inner-self naturally leads to the reverse process of superimposing the inner-self on the inner organ”. His objective in maintaining this priority of the subject in this ‘act’ seems to be to show that SSS is guilty of circularity (petitio principi, in logic). Even so, and rather surprisingly, he claims that avidya is not something subjective (neither is it ontic nor epistemic – see below). Continue reading →

What is Death – part 4 (Mythology).

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aesculapius2

(Asclepios or Aesculapius)

Part 3 of this essay should have ended with the clarification that the statement:  ‘there is no other transmigrant but the Lord’, is but a doctrine, even though a very high spiritual or metaphysical doctrine, and, as every doctrine, it is (only) mithya, that is, ultimately not real, not the “realest” real. It can be stultified.

During my long written dialogue with Peter Bonnici centering on the ‘terrestrial garden’, I had said: ” They (myth and mithya) are quite different, though there is an overlap in the way we can make use of either of them in order to bring out a deeper understanding of something that may only be implicit”.

Peter’s eloquent reply was: “There is definitely a difference between the two. Though, as you say, there is overlap. Everything, including language and stories and concepts and symbols come under the category of mithyā– their existence cannot be denied, their usefulness at the transactional level cannot be denied, but their absolute independent reality can be denied. They are expressions of sat-cit, pure existence-consciousness. And they ultimately resolve into sat-cit, a thorn to remove a thorn is also discarded at the end. There is only one thing that isn’t mithyā: Brahman, Reality, the Whole. So myths do have value and are not to be dismissed. The analogy given is of using the branch to locate the moon”. Continue reading →