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Post by meeno8 on Aug 14, 2020 14:06:37 GMT -6
Are there slightly different siddhantas presented on jiva-tattva within the CV tradition, or just the one? It is perhaps questionable how much the comparison between the concept of the jiva and the soul of Christianity has real validity, if any. That is, of course, if someone is attempting to make such a comparison in the first place. I am not familiar with scholarly works on that subject, but then again, I was never in search of any. I don't recall anything in Eliade's books on it, but I read those decades ago.
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Post by madanmohandas on Aug 14, 2020 16:10:03 GMT -6
As far as I know the Christian dogma on the soul is that it comes into existence in the womb and has no antecedent existence. Some doctors may differ, but I think that is the general view. There is a passage in one of the Gospels, can't remember which, where Jesu and his train come across a man who is blind from birth, and the question is raised as to the cause. Someone suggested it might be the sin of the parents otherwise the blind man's own antecedent sin, which seems to imply that the soul does exist before the present life. And of course there is no metempsychosis, the soul is saved or damned after the present life to eternal bliss or eternal fire. The soul is also restricted to humans and women are souls gone a bit wrong. It might be argued that the ancient Greeks and Romans had more cogent conceptions of the soul and divinity before Christianity was introduced, though still ambiguous. Perhaps the latter Platonists had a more Vedantic idea as all being one and different or all is one by participation. As for the CV standpoint I guess the primary source and comprehensive treatment on Jiva tattva would be Paramatma Sandarbha. Which one might say is a development on Shankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. I know a lot of might and perhaps and maybe.
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Post by Nitaidas on Aug 14, 2020 16:54:34 GMT -6
Another issue is that the term जीव is much broader term than soul. Only humans have souls, whereas all living beings are जीव-s. I think the idea of soul is borrowed from Greek religious notions by the Jewish followers of Jesus since Judaism had (has?) no idea similar to that in its tradition. Those who die die and at the end of the world are resurrected from the dead if they were good. Nothing continues to exist in between.
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Post by madanmohandas on Aug 14, 2020 17:25:00 GMT -6
Yes, and 'atma' or self, which can only be distinguished by context and interpretation whether it refers to god or the soul, ishvara or jiva. I suppose the broadness of the term jiva can be subsumed into soul, whereas atma more readily translates as self.
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Post by narottamadasa on Aug 15, 2020 3:32:57 GMT -6
Greetings All, Sorry for my absence for so many days. We were in Kentucky burying Betsy's sister, Catherine. We had a big ceremony planned that had to be cut way back because of the covid restrictions. Still, about 50 family and friends attended her funeral mass, all scattered around the church she grew up attending. The rest of the weekend was spent watching slides of her life and telling stories about her. Her ashes were buried on the family plot at the Catholic cemetery in Lebanon, KY. We are back in Missouri for a week and then we will fly back to Colorado. I have not been able to do much work during this period, but I am my desire to get back to work started to revive yesterday. I will pick up the Manah-siksa again and try to post the complete work before leaving for CO. I started working on the Tattva-sandarbha again yesterday. That is coming along, slowly but surely. I give warning about this text. I am reading it as a sceptic and interpreting it along those lines. If anyone wants to be lulled to sleep about this text and never entertain a doubt, I don't recommend reading my translation and commentary. Stick to Satyanarayana's. He will put you right into a deep dogmatic slumber and you will be well rested and free of any need to wake or think. From my perspective much of what Sri Jiva says in the Ts seemed true to him in his time, but today we know much more about the history of ideas in India and many traditionally held views have been debunked. Should we take these things into account or should we bury our heads in the sand? I am for the former. Samasti-guru speaks through linguistics, text-criticism, history, logic, and science and we should listen. If we don't it is guru-avajna, the worst of the offenses to the holy name. My two cents for the day. I continue to read Sankara's Upadesasahasri. It is an amazing text. It truly fills in the non-dual or abheda side of our tradition. Two thumbs up. Next, his commentary on the Brahma-sutra. Back to work. राधे राधे हे नितै पण्डित नमो नमः My my sincerest condolences on your loss. What are the statements made by Sri Jiva that you are questioning? जय श्री राधे श्याम!
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Post by Nitaidas on Aug 15, 2020 13:21:54 GMT -6
Greetings All, Sorry for my absence for so many days. We were in Kentucky burying Betsy's sister, Catherine. We had a big ceremony planned that had to be cut way back because of the covid restrictions. Still, about 50 family and friends attended her funeral mass, all scattered around the church she grew up attending. The rest of the weekend was spent watching slides of her life and telling stories about her. Her ashes were buried on the family plot at the Catholic cemetery in Lebanon, KY. We are back in Missouri for a week and then we will fly back to Colorado. I have not been able to do much work during this period, but I am my desire to get back to work started to revive yesterday. I will pick up the Manah-siksa again and try to post the complete work before leaving for CO. I started working on the Tattva-sandarbha again yesterday. That is coming along, slowly but surely. I give warning about this text. I am reading it as a sceptic and interpreting it along those lines. If anyone wants to be lulled to sleep about this text and never entertain a doubt, I don't recommend reading my translation and commentary. Stick to Satyanarayana's. He will put you right into a deep dogmatic slumber and you will be well rested and free of any need to wake or think. From my perspective much of what Sri Jiva says in the Ts seemed true to him in his time, but today we know much more about the history of ideas in India and many traditionally held views have been debunked. Should we take these things into account or should we bury our heads in the sand? I am for the former. Samasti-guru speaks through linguistics, text-criticism, history, logic, and science and we should listen. If we don't it is guru-avajna, the worst of the offenses to the holy name. My two cents for the day. I continue to read Sankara's Upadesasahasri. It is an amazing text. It truly fills in the non-dual or abheda side of our tradition. Two thumbs up. Next, his commentary on the Brahma-sutra. Back to work. राधे राधे हे नितै पण्डित नमो नमः My my sincerest condolences on your loss. What are the statements made by Sri Jiva that you are questioning? जय श्री राधे श्याम! राधे राधे! Just about all of them, I am afraid. It is not his fault. His data was bad (ie., the other Puranas, many of them, like the Padma, are in part quite late and corrupt). Imagine considering the Bhagavata to be a commentary on the Gayatri on the basis of one word: धीमहि which occurs twice in the Bhagavata (First verse and in one of the last). That is like claiming that a piece writing is a commentary on the Declaration of Independence because somewhere in it appear the words, "truths to be self-evident." Similarly, to claim the Bhagavata is a commentary on the Vedanta-sutras because the first verse begins जन्माद्यस्य is also a huge stretch. These and other claims come from other Puranas, but Sri Jiva tries to justify them often quite cleverly, but for me never convincingly. Claiming that the Bhagavata was written by Krsna-dvaipayana Vyasa is also problematic, especially because of the second verse of the text. Is is likely that Vyasa would describe himself as "महामुनि"? That has to be a third person's account of him. Those early verses and even the whole first Skandha and perhaps the second seem more like advertisements for the text instead of parts of the text itself. One could make the same claim for the last Skandha. Those are clearly by a third party or parties, easy to add because they come at the front and at the end. It is more difficult to add something in the middle when books were written on palm leaves. Sri Jiva was an excellent grammarian. How does he deal with the over three thousand grammatical errors in the Bhagavata? Was Vyasa not very good at composing Sanskrit verses and prose? I have been looking at the critical edition of the Bhagavata and was surprised to find out that the earliest surviving ms only dates from the 12th century. Sridhara's commentary is the earliest surviving commentary, though it refers to an earlier one by Citsukha. Sridhara is dated middle of the 14th century. Every other commentator is later than that. This does not bode well for the text as ancient. I have always assumed that the text comes from roughly the same time as Sankara (650-700 CE) and that that was why he never commented on a text with views so similar to his own. But perhaps Van Buitenen was right when he argued that the Bhagavata was a product of the 8-9th cents. CE. This is why Sankara did not comment on it. Anyway, I am taking Sri Jiva's statements as representative of what was the best that could be known in the mid 16th century when books were rare and hard to acquire. There is a list of the books in Sri Jiva's library, many of which were probably inherited from his uncles, at the Vrindaban Research Institute. That was published some time ago. I need to look that up to get a better idea of what was at Sri Jiva's disposal at the time. Anyway, there are many more points that are dubious. It would be so easy and a bit lazy to just believe everything Sri Jiva says, but this is the more responsible course and it is a lot like doing detective work. A lot more challenging and fun.
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Post by madanmohandas on Aug 15, 2020 16:10:05 GMT -6
Just a random thought, but is the antiquity of a text the only real basis of it's validity? I suppose if much effort has been made to establish an early antiquity, then upholding a certain opinion is important ( despite contrary evidence). I'm glad you have taken the approach you speak of, since, perhaps because of having read the Bhagavat several times and in several editions with a some little comprehension of the original, without reference to commentaries, when reading Jiva's interpretation on certain passages, I cannot avoid the thought that he has intentionally introduced a counter intuitive reading, with as it seems, the intention of reshaping concepts to fit in with the ideas expressed in Rupa's Laghu Bhagavatamrta in regard to celestial hierarchy; which is hard to squeeze out of the Bhagavat without a certain distortion. Anyway perhaps I say too much.
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kd91
Full Member
Radhe Radhe.
Posts: 107
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Post by kd91 on Aug 16, 2020 9:40:19 GMT -6
"I am reading it as a sceptic and interpreting it along those lines. If anyone wants to be lulled to sleep about this text and never entertain a doubt, I don't recommend reading my translation and commentary."
I have been hoping that such an edition would one day be available. I especially look forward to the commentary.
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Post by Nitaidas on Aug 16, 2020 11:12:25 GMT -6
Just a random thought, but is the antiquity of a text the only real basis of it's validity? I suppose if much effort has been made to establish an early antiquity, then upholding a certain opinion is important ( despite contrary evidence). I'm glad you have taken the approach you speak of, since, perhaps because of having read the Bhagavat several times and in several editions with a some little comprehension of the original, without reference to commentaries, when reading Jiva's interpretation on certain passages, I cannot avoid the thought that he has intentionally introduced a counter intuitive reading, with as it seems, the intention of reshaping concepts to fit in with the ideas expressed in Rupa's Laghu Bhagavatamrta in regard to celestial hierarchy; which is hard to squeeze out of the Bhagavat without a certain distortion. Anyway perhaps I say too much. Good question, Madanmohandasji. I think certain worldviews prize the ancient over the modern and Indian culture is certainly one of them. I can't tell you how many times I have come across the word Adhunika in Kanupriya Goswami obviously used as a put down. An Adhunika opinion is almost automatically false, unless of course it is based on or repetitious of an earlier work that is considered "authentic." In other words, modern writers are wrong unless they are mere repetitions of ancient writers. That is why one of the noticeable features of the Bhagavata is that is tries to use Vedic words and constructions, often, I might add, wrongly, in order to present itself as a more ancient text than it is. This is a feature again pointed out by van Buitenen in his seminal essay on the Bhagavata. Apart from this fakery and its many grammatical irregularities and apart from its relative lateness (8-9th cents. CE), I think the Bhagavata is an enormously important text, possibly because of its lateness. It combines a number of important strands in Indian intellectual and religious history: Advaita vedanta (of the early Vedanta closest to Sankara and his immediate followers), Mahayana Buddhism (the Bodhisattva ideal in Prahlada), emergent, ecstatic bhakti from the South (probably from the Alvars), tantrism (mostly of both the Sakta/Saiva and Buddhist varieties), and last but not least the development of rasa aesthetics (after the Natya-sastra and possibly some of the early rasa theorists mentioned in Abhinavagupta, but before Abhinavagupta's own mature reflections on rasa). Its lateness made it a much richer text than it would otherwise have been and may account for its extraordinary impact on later Vaisnava and Advaita traditions. I don't think there is any other text like it. To add two comments to what I said yesterday, it has come to my attention that the word mahAmuni महामुनि in verse two is sometimes interpreted as a reference to Narayana because he "revealed" the core text of the Bhagavata in the Catuh-zloki. This seems like a stretch to me, but it indicates that others have been bothered by Vyasa's appearing to refer to himself by that term. Mostly, though, translators take mahAmuni to refer to Vyasa (Gita Press, for instance). Secondly, Sri Jiva inherited the idea that the Bhagavata or at least that first verse refers to the Vedic Gayatri mantra from previous commentators on the text. It was not sva-kapAla-kalpita in his case. It was invented in the skull of some other commentator, possibly even in Sridhara's skull. I have not checked his comm. for that yet. And yes, every commentator does what I have come to call the hermeneutics dance. Some are more elaborate, with many different postures and steps, and some more simple, but nevertheless counter intuitive. Even Sankara has some good dance moves when he needs to rein in an errant text. I have noticed it several times in his comm. on the Isopanisad. The master of all time when it comes to disfigurative, wildly interpretive dance has to be Madhva. Again I am mostly familiar with his comm. on the Isa, but I am sure he has some pretty amazing moves no matter what text he tackles. Anyway, enough for today. राधे राधे!
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Post by madanmohandas on Aug 16, 2020 12:08:25 GMT -6
I suppose dating will always be difficult. I am presently half way through the Hamrivamsa translated by Manmatha natha Datta, and it is full of interesting perspectives and variations. In some respects it seems more embellished with long descriptions and speeches than the Bhagavat, although some episodes in the Vraja Lila are omitted. I wonder which is the earlier; the only reference I have for such things is Prof. Wilson's Intro to the Vishnu Purana. In European literature there is a similar prejudice, either in favour of the ancients or the moderns, but more in terms of style and elegance perhaps.
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Post by meeno8 on Aug 16, 2020 12:50:45 GMT -6
Not having been through all the tikas on the Brahma-sutra, it is my tacit assumption that it is somewhat enigmatic on the face of it without some further explanation. Take the beginning of it, for example:
om tat sat (that or tat being sat) tat tvam asi = you are that (the word 'tattva' being derived from this) aham brahma asmi = I am brahman
Sat, as we know is one component of sat, cit and ananda. However, in the text in question exactly who is the 'you' and who is the 'I' being referenced? Can it be the jiva for both, as well as the supreme brahman for both? In other words, are they interchangeable? Or, is the 'you' only the jiva and the 'I' only the supreme brahman? I think we could say we have some clear idea from the acintya-bheda-abheda school of thought on this.
It will be interesting to see what Shankara, Ramanuja et al have to say on the subject. Also, it would not make a lot of sense to jump right to Baladeva with his Govinda bhasya, because that would be leaping over the others and reading it without any historical context. Does Baladeva build on the foundations laid by the earlier commentators, or not? And, if so, which ones?
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Post by madanmohandas on Aug 16, 2020 15:56:17 GMT -6
Well, most if not all the relevant texts are available in English, with the commentaries of Shankara and others, which one can read and make up one's own mind. There is a book called 108 Upanishads by Roshen Dalal which I found good for an overview. Also available, going back about as early as one can, is an excellent recital of the Rig Veda translated by Ralph Griffith, narrated by Arya Sagar. Over 40 hours, very helpful in understanding the context of the Upanishads and by consequence, the Brahma Sutras.
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Post by Nityānanda dāsa on Aug 17, 2020 2:51:33 GMT -6
Good morning. Radhe Radhe!
Just catching up on this thread. Good stuff! More seeds for future works! Thanks everyone and especially Nitai dasji! 🙏🏻
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Post by Nitaidas on Aug 17, 2020 10:37:17 GMT -6
Not having been through all the tikas on the Brahma-sutra, it is my tacit assumption that it is somewhat enigmatic on the face of it without some further explanation. Take the beginning of it, for example: om tat sat (that or tat being sat) tat tvam asi = you are that (the word 'tattva' being derived from this) aham brahma asmi = I am brahman Sat, as we know is one component of sat, cit and ananda. However, in the text in question exactly who is the 'you' and who is the 'I' being referenced? Can it be the jiva for both, as well as the supreme brahman for both? In other words, are they interchangeable? Or, is the 'you' only the jiva and the 'I' only the supreme brahman? I think we could say we have some clear idea from the acintya-bheda-abheda school of thought on this. It will be interesting to see what Shankara, Ramanuja et al have to say on the subject. Also, it would not make a lot of sense to jump right to Baladeva with his Govinda bhasya, because that would be leaping over the others and reading it without any historical context. Does Baladeva build on the foundations laid by the earlier commentators, or not? And, if so, which ones? Well, of course, Baladeva's commentary depends heavily on the Madhva tradition of Vedantic interpretation. And Madhva's hermeneutic is a response to Sankara. And Sankara is a response to earlier writers whose comms. are now lost. The question you raise about tvam and tat is a big one and receives lots of attention in the Advaita tradition. Rather than reproduce that discussion here, have a look at the relevant section of Sadananda's Vedanta-sara, an early version of which is posted on academia.org under my name. You can find it here. The relevant section is The Great Pronouncement 1.3.1.
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Post by narottamadasa on Aug 17, 2020 10:47:01 GMT -6
हे नितै पण्डित नमो नमः My my sincerest condolences on your loss. What are the statements made by Sri Jiva that you are questioning? जय श्री राधे श्याम! राधे राधे! Just about all of them, I am afraid. It is not his fault. His data was bad (ie., the other Puranas, many of them, like the Padma, are in part quite late and corrupt). Imagine considering the Bhagavata to be a commentary on the Gayatri on the basis of one word: धीमहि which occurs twice in the Bhagavata (First verse and in one of the last). That is like claiming that a piece writing is a commentary on the Declaration of Independence because somewhere in it appear the words, "truths to be self-evident." Similarly, to claim the Bhagavata is a commentary on the Vedanta-sutras because the first verse begins जन्माद्यस्य is also a huge stretch. These and other claims come from other Puranas, but Sri Jiva tries to justify them often quite cleverly, but for me never convincingly. Claiming that the Bhagavata was written by Krsna-dvaipayana Vyasa is also problematic, especially because of the second verse of the text. Is is likely that Vyasa would describe himself as "महामुनि"? That has to be a third person's account of him. Those early verses and even the whole first Skandha and perhaps the second seem more like advertisements for the text instead of parts of the text itself. One could make the same claim for the last Skandha. Those are clearly by a third party or parties, easy to add because they come at the front and at the end. It is more difficult to add something in the middle when books were written on palm leaves. Sri Jiva was an excellent grammarian. How does he deal with the over three thousand grammatical errors in the Bhagavata? Was Vyasa not very good at composing Sanskrit verses and prose? I have been looking at the critical edition of the Bhagavata and was surprised to find out that the earliest surviving ms only dates from the 12th century. Sridhara's commentary is the earliest surviving commentary, though it refers to an earlier one by Citsukha. Sridhara is dated middle of the 14th century. Every other commentator is later than that. This does not bode well for the text as ancient. I have always assumed that the text comes from roughly the same time as Sankara (650-700 CE) and that that was why he never commented on a text with views so similar to his own. But perhaps Van Buitenen was right when he argued that the Bhagavata was a product of the 8-9th cents. CE. This is why Sankara did not comment on it. Anyway, I am taking Sri Jiva's statements as representative of what was the best that could be known in the mid 16th century when books were rare and hard to acquire. There is a list of the books in Sri Jiva's library, many of which were probably inherited from his uncles, at the Vrindaban Research Institute. That was published some time ago. I need to look that up to get a better idea of what was at Sri Jiva's disposal at the time. Anyway, there are many more points that are dubious. It would be so easy and a bit lazy to just believe everything Sri Jiva says, but this is the more responsible course and it is a lot like doing detective work. A lot more challenging and fun. नितै पण्डित नमो नमः Thank you for your response. I do not think Sri Jiva would invent something that would contradict his uncles or, more importantly, Sri Krsna Caitanya Mahaprabhu. It was he who spoke in Sri Caitanya-caritamrta (if we believe his author of course): praṇavera yei artha, gāyatrīte sei haya sei artha catuḥ-ślokīte vivariyā kaya (CC 2.25.94) “ei artha — āmāra sūtrera vyākhyānurūpa ‘bhāgavata’ kariba sūtrera bhāṣya-svarūpa” (CC 2.25.94) ataeva brahma-sūtrera bhāṣya — śrī-bhāgavata bhāgavata-śloka, upaniṣat kahe ‘eka’ mata (CC 2.25.100) Sri Haridasa Sastri also wrote Vedānta-darśanam bhāgavata bhāṣyopetam in order to show which verse of Bhāgavata Purāṇa corresponds to a particular aphorism of Brahma-sūtra. Sri Jiva's assumption of Bhāgavata Purāṇa being a commentary on Gāyatrī is not explained in detail in Tattva Sandarbha, yet he does that in Paramātmā Sandarbha (Anuccheda 105). I cannot verify at the moment, but महामुनि refers to Bhagavān and not to Sri Vyasa himself. I could check as soon as I am back to Paris. Anyhow, I agree that blind faith cannot be beneficial in this field. जय श्री राधे श्याम!
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