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Post by vkaul1 on Nov 18, 2011 10:57:19 GMT -6
I saw that a professor had posted this and one of his students asked me to comment on it. I was not sure so I am pasting it here. Please give your comments, especially to things highlighted in bold.
John wrote: "The Gita seems to oscillate between personal theism and the impersonal Brahman view. Which pole do you think it leans towards overall?"
John: Thanks for raising this question. The answer depends largely on how we construe the contrasting views here.
If by "impersonal Brahman" you mean the advaita vedanta view (formless Brahman alone is real and everything else is illusion), then I don't think this can be supported from the Gita. Indeed, it seems to me that the teaching of the Gita is that ultimate reality is personal. It is Lord Krishna. So personal theism is the view of the Gita. I think this is supported by the verse I quoted, and advaita vedanta seems contradicted also by Krishna's opening statements to Arjuna in chapter 2 of Bhagavad Gita: "Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor these kings, nor shall there come a time in the future when we cease to exist" (Gita, 2:12). I agree with Ramanujacarya and the distinguished line of Gita commentators down to Baladeva Vidyabhusana of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition that this passage cannot be reconciled with sankaracarya's monism.
I also think that personal theism is an entailment of both the generic concept of yoga and in particular the notion of bhakti yoga, both of which form the essential structure of the Gita. Yoga means "union," but there can be no real union unless there are really two distinct beings who come together (in some way). "One without a second" can never *become* one. Sankaracarya's system renders the very notion of yoga unintelligible. However, even if Sankaracarya could find a way out of this difficulty, he can't affirm the reality of Bhakti yoga in particular. Bhakti, as articulated by Lord Krishna in the Gita, entails a distinction between the lover and the beloved. As the saying goes: "the bhakta wants to taste sugar, not be sugar." There is always some element of ego present in the state of devotion because the lover is drawn to another outside himself, and since the dynamic of bhakti is fueled by residual separation between the lover and the beloved, there is no way bhakti can be sustained without distinctness between the self and God. So on my view the teaching of the Gita is personal theism.
That being said, it should be emphasized that those Gita passages that affirm the existence of impersonal or formless Brahman are compatible with the reading I'm advocating. I think vaishnavism is correct that impersonal Brahman is merely an aspect of Krishna's being. Hence, the teachings of the Gita are both self consistent and compatible with the Upanishads (which affirm the existence of formless Brahman). I think this is supported by the verse I quoted. Krishna, the Supreme personality of the Godhead, is the *ground* of impersonal Brahman. Those who experience nondual consciousness through jnana yoga experience one aspect of Krishna's being (according to their own desires and expectations), the outer shell or aura of Krishna's being. This is real, not illusion, but it is not the experience of Krishna's heart. This is experienced only through bhakti.
Now advaita vedanta certainly allows for the practical efficacy of the personalist conception of ultimate reality that is at the heart of vaishnavism, just as vaishnavism accepts jnana yoga as one way to achieve liberation for the soul. Both approaches seem to acknowledge the variegated nature of liberation from the conditions of material existence. However, advaita vedanta entails a denial of the metaphysical validity of the vaishnava view, and vaishnavism entails a denial of the metaphysical validity of the advaita vedanta view. Vaishnavism affirms the notion of personality as the fundamental fabric of reality. Advaita vedanta denies this. However, and this is crucial, the metaphysics of vaishnavism either affirms or is compatible with the reality of impersonal Brahman, whereas according to advaita vedanta krishna is little more than a provisional manifestation in maya of nirguna Brahman. What the Gita teaches to me is the equal reality of God with form and God without form. This makes better sense to me fro the vantage point of vaishnava theology, than the monistic philosophical system of sankaracarya.
Finally, it seems to me that vaishnavas can explain the mistaken advaita vedantin inference from the experience of non-duality to the metaphysics of monism in much the same way that they can explain why Buddhists mistakenly infer no self (anatta) from the experience of non-attachment. When the false ego (the ego constructed by our attachments to material conditions of existence) dissolves, the world will appear exactly as if there is no enduring self (Buddhist view) or as if monism is true (Sankaracarya's "closet" Buddhist view). So there is really no way from *within* such an experience to sufficiently deconstruct the notion of an enduring self or the personal nature of reality.
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 2, 2011 15:12:42 GMT -6
This "professor" must be an ISKCON toady. I don't think anyone can rightly claim that Krsna is recommended over Brahman or even that they are different. They are regarded as essentially the same, even interchangeable. That is what makes the vadanti verse in the Bhagavata so significant. Sankara too regards them as the same. According to Hacker, Sankara used the terms interchangeably. He certainly does not express the view that Brahman is superior to Visnu/Krsna, that one is nirguna and the other saguna. I doubt whether this "professor" has even read Sankara.
Also Sankara accepts bhakti as a kind of knowledge and thus affirms that it leads to liberation. That too is in his Gita commentary. See my introduction to our edition of the Gita for the details.
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Post by vkaul1 on Dec 9, 2011 9:45:51 GMT -6
"brahmano hi pratisthaham" is used to establish that brahman is sub-ordinate to Krsna. What do you think of the use of this verse and verses in chapter 12 (where path of devotion is considered superior to renunciation) to show that worship of Krsna is superior to Brahman Nitai ji?
Another thing like you previously said mayavada is not the doctrine of Sankara. Is the word brahmavadi of any use to describe Sankara or is it better to just use advaita?
Are these three terms jivanmukti, krama mukti and videha mukti used by Sankara?
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 11, 2011 19:21:01 GMT -6
This "professor" must be an ISKCON toady. I don't think anyone can rightly claim that Krsna is recommended over Brahman or even that they are different. They are regarded as essentially the same, even interchangeable. That is what makes the vadanti verse in the Bhagavata so significant. Sankara too regards them as the same. According to Hacker, Sankara used the terms interchangeably. He certainly does not express the view that Brahman is superior to Visnu/Krsna, that one is nirguna and the other saguna. I doubt whether this "professor" has even read Sankara. This is ridiculous. How can Krsna be separated from his effulgence? You're imposing a distinction that is just not there. Yes. This is is from a verse in the Tattva-sandarbha. This distinction is not between Brahman and Krsna but between the different qualities or qualifications of the viewer. The very same object is seen by one man as Brahman and by another man as Narayana and by another man as Krsna. The distinction is not in the object but in the viewer. We are not justified to call them different. No. The totality is manifest in Brahman, but the viewer cannot see that totality. He or she does not have the eyes or the capacity. That is why the three words Brahman, Paramatman and Bhagavan are all equally applicable to advaya-jnana in the Bhagavata verse: vadanti tat tattvavidas Once again you misinterpret. He is not different from them. They are amsa because those who perceive them cannot see the full picture. It is the inadequacy of the viewer that causes the perception of amsa rather than amsi. You are mistaken. Jnana does not precede bhakti, bhakti is a special kind of knowledge. Baladeva distinguished between two types of knowledge in his Siddhanta-ratna, one attained by unblinking observation and the other by sidelong glances. The first is a kind of scientific approach to knowing and the second is the knowing that leads to love. How can one love without knowing. Loving is a conscious act that is built on awareness or samvit. Without the groundbreaking work of Sankara these ideas would never have developed. Bhakti gradually grows in the Advaita tradition until it became what we commonly identify with CV. But they could not have made that last step were it not for all the steps made before by Sankara and Vopadeva and Sridhara. That is why studying Sankara is important. Without understanding Sankara we cannot understand Sridhara and without understanding Sridhara we cannot understand Sri Caitanya. Madhva contributed nothing to this development. [/color][/i] [/quote] Sorry. This is a bunch of nonsense. The Gosvamis worked with the materials they were given and created what they could out of that. Without the prior discoveries and arguments of their intellectual antecedents they could not have created what they did. Unless we treat them as historical persons we will be guilty of doing what you have done here, applying to them ideas that they did not have and would have possibly been agast at had it been suggested to them. These are your inventions not theirs. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 11, 2011 22:26:43 GMT -6
"brahmano hi pratisthaham" is used to establish that brahman is sub-ordinate to Krsna. What do you think of the use of this verse and verses in chapter 12 (where path of devotion is considered superior to renunciation) to show that worship of Krsna is superior to Brahman Nitai ji? Another thing like you previously said mayavada is not the doctrine of Sankara. Is the word brahmavadi of any use to describe Sankara or is it better to just use advaita? Are these three terms jivanmukti, krama mukti and videha mukti used by Sankara? What is the verse just before the brahmano hi pratisthAham, baba? Why would Krsna say such a thing? |
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Post by vkaul1 on Dec 11, 2011 22:54:34 GMT -6
Yes it seems like the verse says Krsna is Brahman also rather than the source of Brahman. Like you said the same Absolute is perceived differently (advaya jnana tattva). It is not that you separate the effulgence from Krsna (though CC also seems to give that impression in some verse because of the propaganda needed there.)
So ultimately will the amsa always be perceived an amsa if one experiences Bhagavan not brahman?
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 11, 2011 23:18:46 GMT -6
Yes it seems like the verse says Krsna is Brahman also rather than the source of Brahman. Like you said the same Absolute is perceived differently (advaya jnana tattva). It is not that you separate the effulgence from Krsna (though CC also seems to give that impression in some verse because of the propaganda needed there.) So ultimately will the amsa always be perceived an amsa if one experiences Bhagavan not brahman? Well the previous verse says that if one serves Krsna with unfailing bhakti yoga he will cross beyond the guna and become Brahman. (!!!  ) Isn't that the wrong end for someone who serves Krsna with unwavering bhakti? This is what I have been saying. The Gita treats Krsna and Brahman as interchangeable. Sometimes it is mad-bhava and sometimes it is brahma-bhava or brahma-sthiti. Pratistha also means receptacle. So Krsna could be saying I am the receptacle of Brahman. Sankara too in his comm says that in which something is situated is called its pratitstha. So it may not be proper to only take it as "I am the foundation of Brahman," though Sankara also takes it that way. The last of his interpretations of this verse is that Krsna is saying that he is the undifferentiated source of differentiated Brahman. In other words he identifies Krsna with the nirvikalpa absolute and takes the word Brahman as referring to the savikalpa absolute. This is exactly the opposite of the position often ascribed to him. Yet, there it is in the commentary of this verse. Didn't anyone in CV ever read it? I don't know but I suspect that the situation is like this: someone with the qualification to see Krsna will never see his amsa, but always Krsna. It is like the time Krsna tried to hide from the gopis by taking his four-armed form. In their presence he could not maintain it. He immediately became two-armed Krsna again. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 12, 2011 11:02:15 GMT -6
Sorry, malati. I did not mean to be so snarky. The problem is one that I see all the time. The people who present CV tend to have only read the CV works (if even that). They are completely ignorant of all the ways CV has been influenced by other prior thinkers. Thus, someone reads some Rupa and says: Wow! What a brilliant display. This guy has thought of everything and makes great sense." They don't realize that the details of the rasa theory have been developed over nearly two millenia and that Rupa comes at the tail end of that. He benefited from all that careful thinking and discussion and when held up to his predecessors his penumbra rather fades. Even one of the greatest geniuses of Sanksrit aesthetics, Abhinavagupta, recognizes his predecessors (with whom he mostly disagrees) and recognizes that he is standing on the shoulders of giants. So when people make wild statements extolling the wonderful achievements of the Gosvamins in their refined conceptions of rasa and bhakti, it grates on my nerves because it is clear that they do not know how much the Gosvamins borrowed from others and how little that is new they actually contributed.
The Gosvamins were not stupid men, but they were also not geniuses. They were smart enough and well educated. They wrote for an audience that had educations similar to their own. They could not have anticipated that their works would some day be read by people completely ignorant of the great ideas that they knew in their day. If we read them without knowing something about those great ideas and those powerful influences they incorporated into their works, it is almost certain that we will not fully understand them. Much will be missed and that means that much will be lost. And that leaves the door open for many amateurish and simple minded comparisons and contrasts.
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Post by vkaul1 on Dec 12, 2011 23:25:43 GMT -6
Nitai ji, I agree with you that people do not function in vacuum. The quote, "standing on shoulders of giants", coming from Newton indicated the contribution of Kepler and Copernicus without whom he could not have gone further. Similar Einstein for all his originality could not have done so without the prior contribution of Poincare, Reimann, Lorentz and many others. Only when you dive deep into their work, you will realize the contribution made by others. Thank you for making me aware of the space in which the Goswamis function. It is a long exercise to come to terms with all this information but it is worth it.
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 14, 2011 12:37:10 GMT -6
Nitai ji, I agree with you that people do not function in vacuum. The quote, "standing on shoulders of giants", coming from Newton indicated the contribution of Kepler and Copernicus without whom he could not have gone further. Similar Einstein for all his originality could not have done so without the prior contribution of Poincare, Reimann, Lorentz and many others. Only when you dive deep into their work, you will realize the contribution made by others. Thank you for making me aware of the space in which the Goswamis function. It is a long exercise to come to terms with all this information but it is worth it. Yes, but is not drudgery in any sense. Exploring the thoughts of the great thinkers of any tradition is exciting. Here we are hobnobbing with some of the finest minds the human race has produced. It is interesting that you can name so many of the great thinkers and scientists of the West. Can you do as well with the great minds of India? Who would you list if you had to list only ten of the greatest thinkers of India without respect to which tradition they belong to? Don't google it. Give it to me right of the top of your head. Also, I need to say quite clearly that I am not very far in this process of educating myself so that I can understand the Goswamis on a deeper level. I have read very little of Sankara myself. I have read parts of his Gita commentary and am working my way through his commentaries on the Upanisads. I have not read his only independent thesis, the Upadesa-sahasri. I have read almost none of his commentary on the Brahma-sutras. So I am a novice at this. Still, my study has begun and after I finish Sankara I want to look more closely at some of the other links between him and the Goswamins. That would include Vopadeva's work on the Bhagavata. He was the first to apply the idea of rasa to the Bhagavata and he and his guru Hemadri were both in the Advaita tradition. After the comes Sridhara, and the Visnupuri, and Madhavendra Puri and finally Madhusudana Sarasvati. The last is not so much a link to Sri Caitanya as he is a near contemporary. He represents the culmination of the development of bhakti in the Advaita tradition, however, and it would be interesting to see how he differs from Mahaprabhu and his disciples in their understandings of bhakti. Then I can die in peace, because by the time I have read and thought about all of these things my life will be over. Still, I think I will be able to say that I have used it well. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 14, 2011 15:11:27 GMT -6
Here is a interesting thing from Sankara's commentary on the verse we have been discussing, the brahmano hi pratiSThAham verse (14.27):
yayA cezvarazaktyA bhaktAnugrahAdiprayojanAya brahma pratiSThate pravartate sA zaktirbrahmaivAhaM zaktizaktimator ananyatvAd ityabhiprAyaH|
By that power of Isvara by which, for the purpose of showing grace to the bhaktas and so forth, Brahma starts in motion, that power or brahma, indeed, am I, because the power and the possessor of power are not other than each other.
Is this the seed of acintya bhedabheda? zakti-zaktimator abheda? It is rather extraordinary to find it tucked away in a passage of Sankara's commentary.
I think this refers to the earlier verse which has always bothered me because of the use of the word Brahma to mean a feminine power:
mama yonirmahadbrahma tasmin garbhaM dadAmyaham|
sambhavaH sarvabhUtAnAM tato bhavati bhArata|| (14.3)
My womb is the great brahman. Into it I place the embryo. The birth of all beings comes from that, O Bharata.
Sankara comments that mahat brahma means maya here composed of the three guna and also known as prakrti. Clearly mahadbrahma is meant to be a feminine entity which Sankara later equated with Isvara-sakti.
Interesting, n'est ce pas?
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Post by vkaul1 on Dec 14, 2011 23:22:50 GMT -6
My naming the top 10 thinkers will be just a guess based on a cursory look at some of the overall thought of these thinkers. So my list will not be reflective of the truth. I will list down some of the people I have heard of:
1) Sankara
2) Nagarjuna (buddhist philosopher)
3) Abhinavgupta
4) Sri Jiva Goswami
5) Sri Ramanuja
6) Sri Madhava
7) Madhava Acharya (mathematician and philosopher)
8) Gautam Buddha
9) Vyasa (and whoever claimed to write in his name)
10) Sri Vallabha
My list will be hopelessly wrong, but I will keep on updating the list as I learn more about the people.
On a side note, I had asked on practitioner of Sri Vaisnavism who has been practicing for 30 years and is familiar with many works in the three major vedanta traditions. He is also aware of the modern world view and the tensions that exist. I asked him something to which he replied as follows.
A question linked to identity of people in a tradition ramanuja (sesa), madhva (mukhya prana), Sri Chaitanya (krsna). There are other people who appear with the prominent person and they have their identities. Their exceptional authority rests on that identity. What do you think of that?
I am personally indifferent to such identities. In fact, I strongly believe that these identities are close to nonsensical. Most of these are constructed by followers. In Ramanuja's case, this is quite clearly so. (The first reference to his being an avatara of sesha is after 200-250 yrs after his time).
Even if these are true in some sense, I think that people are more invested in the miracles attributed to these saints rather than their avatAra-hood per se'. For example, if a lay person has some serious doubt on Ramanuja's philosophy the thought process (as I have observed it) goes something like this :
"Could Ramanuja be wrong? ...But, he was an avatAra of sesha!...But others claim to be various avatAras too...Ah, but *this* miracle happened with Ramanuja...So Ramanuja must be great and hence he must be right"
Often, if it goes deeper, it goes like this .."But how do I know this miracle really happened?..Several good people tell me so...My guru tells me so...And my guru had this miraculous happening/Or my guru is so compassionate and so truthful and so were his gurus. They demand nothing from me so why would they lie?"
In my opinion, in the final analysis, the authority of the person only nominally lies on his true identity. It truly lies in the believer's perception of a miracle and in his experience of some genuine humane (or miraculous) qualities in those that tell him about the authority's identity.
I will also admit that I am somewhat suspicious about Madhva's mukhya-prana claim being interpolated (well, actually, added at the end of the text because, to my knowledge, it only comes at the end of the commentary in the "author's identity" section). I am not familiar how important identities in Gaudiya came into being
I do feel that the identities of personalities in Gaura Lila (mapping with Krsna lila) is central to CV much more than any other tradition and they are just thrown down as a gospel from Kavi Karnapura's book. Don't know if CV actually does have enough people like above who actually have any kind of doubt in the identities and can still practice the tradition.
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 17, 2011 12:07:29 GMT -6
My naming the top 10 thinkers will be just a guess based on a cursory look at some of the overall thought of these thinkers. So my list will not be reflective of the truth. I will list down some of the people I have heard of: 1) Sankara 2) Nagarjuna (buddhist philosopher) 3) Abhinavgupta I agree with you on these three. Definitely giants. I don't agree with you here. None of these with the possible exception of Sri Ramanuja deserves the title giant. That does not mean that they were not great in their own ways, but I don't think they made any major contributions to Indian thought. Yes. There are many proto-scientists, mathematicians, astonomers, and such who really were great and yet who have not received the recognition they deserve. I would throw in logicians like Dinnaga and Dharmakirti on the Buddhist side and Jayanta Bhatta and Udayana on the Hindu side. There are Jainas too who deserve credit. Those guys were brilliant and really made some solid contributions. Without them there could not have been a Gangesa in the world of Indian logic. Gangesa transformed the way Indians think and argue. But he could not have done it alone. Yes, but it is hard to tell what he really thought or taught. He is more like an icon for an important age in Indian history. The axis age or turning point. That was the age in which major ideas like karman, moksa, samsara, jnana, etc were developed. In other words, the four noble truths were developed in the period of roughly 6th cent BCE to 2 cent BCE and everyone was changed. I don't think the Buddha deserves all the credit, though. There was lots of creative thinking happening in many minds all over the place then. This is complex case. He might just be a fiction. If you mean by Vyasa Badarayan the author of the Vedanta sutra, perhaps yes. I am pretty sure that Badarayana and the Vyasa who wrote the Mahabharata were not the same person. Both were certainly geniuses. Still, Vyasa, per se, is a fiction. We need to replace him with the numerous anonymous savants who wrote under that name. Some were indeed brilliant and some weren't. Nah. He just wrote a lot. I don't think there is any innovative idea to his credit. Not a bad list to start with. Yes, keep it open and be ready to add names to it as you learn more. I agree. I think the move to identify the associates of Sri Caitanya with this or that character in Krsna-lila is an effort to lend authenticity to some otherwise rather preposterous claims. It also creates a kind of in-group, those who know the secret identities of main followers. It may also be a good example of what one theologian has called analogical thinking, a way of understanding unusual events on the basis of accepted mythological patterns. One can understand the odd things Mahaprabhu said and did better if one has a transcendent model or pattern on which they can be placed. It is a premodern way of understanding the world and making sense of surprising events in it. Perhaps we still do the same thing, but our shared models have changed. Part of becoming part of the tradition is changing the model one uses to understand the world around you. This probably means that you and I have not been properly "programmed." That is why we roll our eyes when KK says that so and so is so and so from Vraja lila. |
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Post by kirtaniya on Mar 18, 2012 7:27:11 GMT -6
This "professor" must be an ISKCON toady. I don't think anyone can rightly claim that Krsna is recommended over Brahman or even that they are different. They are regarded as essentially the same, even interchangeable. That is what makes the vadanti verse in the Bhagavata so significant. Sankara too regards them as the same. According to Hacker, Sankara used the terms interchangeably. He certainly does not express the view that Brahman is superior to Visnu/Krsna, that one is nirguna and the other saguna. I doubt whether this "professor" has even read Sankara. Nitai dasji, I want to ask about Pancayatana. Was it really introduced by Sankara? Those five gods – are they really saguna? What is the meaning of that upasana in Sankara’s teaching? And separately, how those five gods are seen in CV? Are they one or not really one? |
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Post by Nitaidas on Mar 18, 2012 11:32:38 GMT -6
This "professor" must be an ISKCON toady. I don't think anyone can rightly claim that Krsna is recommended over Brahman or even that they are different. They are regarded as essentially the same, even interchangeable. That is what makes the vadanti verse in the Bhagavata so significant. Sankara too regards them as the same. According to Hacker, Sankara used the terms interchangeably. He certainly does not express the view that Brahman is superior to Visnu/Krsna, that one is nirguna and the other saguna. I doubt whether this "professor" has even read Sankara. Nitai dasji, I want to ask about Pancayatana. Was it really introduced by Sankara? Those five gods – are they really saguna? What is the meaning of that upasana in Sankara’s teaching? And separately, how those five gods are seen in CV? Are they one or not really one? I have to say at the outset that I have not read all of the works of Sankara that are thought to be authentic. I am working my way through them as I get time. But based on what I have read in those who have done a more thorough study, the Pancayatana is not his idea. He was pretty clearly a Vaisnava. The only deity ever extolled in any of the works that are considered to be really by him is Visnu. This is consistent with his being a member of the Nambudri Brahmana community in Kerala. The Siva connection was dreamed up by Vidyaranya and his brother Sayana in the 15th century. They were responsible for turning him into a Saivite, indeed an incarnation of Siva. Their reasons for doing it were political and in support of the kingdom of Vijayanagari in South India in which they were at one point ministers of the king. I am not saying that they invented the pancayatana form of worship (though they may have). I am only saying it is not Sankara's. I am even suspicious of the saguna and nirguna division. It may be Sankara's but it may not. For him Brahman=Vishnu and he did not call one nirguna and the other saguna. This is what I get from the account of Paul Hacker in his work on the authentic works of Sankara. Again, i think it is very close to the real position of the Bhagavata (before the Goswamis try to reinterpret it). |
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) Isn't that the wrong end for someone who serves Krsna with unwavering bhakti? This is what I have been saying. The Gita treats Krsna and Brahman as interchangeable. Sometimes it is mad-bhava and sometimes it is brahma-bhava or brahma-sthiti. 