Soul..There Yet Not There?

[renuka]

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Hi guys..before I go for a vacation I want to start this thread.

Sravna would surely be interested in this thread.

I was reading a few line from Brahma Sutra Bashya(BSB) and I wanted to discuss this.

BSB says:


1)The individual soul has no origin, because the Upanishads do not mention this because its eternality is known from them and(because of other reasons).

then this line is supported by Taittiriya Upanishad that says "He made Himself by Himself" therefore the individual soul has no origin.


Next

2)The Vedantin says: The individual soul should be a part of God even as a spark is of fire.The individual is a part of only apparent, for the partless Brahman can have no part in the literal sense.



Next

3) The Individual soul is only a reflection of the Supreme Self to be sure.

Commentary: And this has to be understood that this individual soul is a reflection of the Supreme Self like the semblance of the sun in water.
Not that the soul is the Self Itself nor is it something else.



Ok what I would like to discuss here is:

1)So it seems that the individual soul has no origin and is merely a reflection of the Supreme Self that is sort of compartmentalized Supreme Self Reflections like a house of mirrors..that is one man enters a house of mirrors and see countless reflections of himself.

So the Supreme Self here is reflected as the soul in the house of mirrors of Maya and we have the countless Jeevatamas(Souls)



2)So going by this..that means to say that a soul as an individual existence that is divorced from Brahman is not possible cos Brahman is partless.

Only a reflection as many but yet partless is possible.

3)That means that Technically Jeevas are just reflections so it can be said that a Soul on it own has no origin or does not really exists in the real sense.



I was just linking this to Lord Buddhas teachings when He said there is no soul.

It could be that He was not denying the presence of a Jeevatma (soul) as in reflection of Brahman but the fact that its only a reflection renders it not having an independent existence and what He said got misunderstood that there is no soul.

Becos Lord Buddha did preach about Karma and without the presence of the reflections of Brahman as Jeevas the Karma theory can not stand.


So is this what Lord Buddha really meant?

It seems to have a standing in Brahma Sutra Bashya.

 

[sravna]

Renuka,

Great topic! Great Questions.I will get back with my views on this

 

[sravna]

Let me take this opportunity to explain my views on how maya can be a reality along with nirguna brahman of advaita. Let us say we are in a reality that is the same as that of nirguna brahman. Since nirguna brahman is said to be the ultimate reality, in a similar reality we would feel that everything is real. Now consider another experience where we are in something that would make us feel whatever unreal is real. This experience would be similar to one under a reality such as maya.

Nirguna brahman is the ulimate reality and the experience would not include anything unreal and it sees only the real, from the point of view of nirguna brahman or the ultimate reality there is no maya. But both nirguna brahman and maya are said to be timeless. We have to view maya as the natural concomitance of nirguna brahman and all the projections such as saguna brahman, space and time, jivatmas are a result of the existence of both nirguna brahman and maya. But let me emphasize, maya does not exist for nirguna brahman.

There is only one ultimate reality and all including the souls or jivatmas are just projections or reflections, whatever you may call it. In reality individual souls do not exist just as physical entities, space and time do not exist.

 

[renuka]

There is only one ultimate reality and all including the souls or jivatmas are just projections or reflections, whatever you may call it. In reality individual souls do not exist just as physical entities, space and time do not exist.

Exactly!

So as Lord Buddha said that "there is no soul" would have been on these lines.

So come to think of it Lord Buddha was a true Vedantin and called a Nastika for nothing at all.

 

[tks]

Exactly!

So as Lord Buddha said that "there is no soul" would have been on these lines.

So come to think of it Lord Buddha was a true Vedantin and called a Nastika for nothing at all.

While I do not want to get into details I just want to make just one assertion.

The Shunyavadi's are held in high regard in the Sruthi and their view points are actually called out before refuting them. Sri Sankara had great respect for their view points in his commentaries to take the effort to properly refute them.

Shunyavada postulates that the ultimate reality because of which the Jagat exists is because it came out of non-existence and nothingness. Obviously to declare something is non-existent someone has to exist to say so. On these lines such beliefs are discarded.

Vedas assert the underlying reality as existence (Sat and Chit) called Brahman (Saguna and Nirguna are one and the same though they mean opposite descriptions but that is not relevant for this point).

Brahman is not nothingness - hence Buddha is a Nastika (believer or non-existence of Brahman)

 

[biswa]

I think Buddha was really an agnostic rather than an atheist. Certainly he did not believe in the Hindu gods. But he certainly believed in a universal law. What is that if not Brahman?

 

[tks]

I think Buddha was really an agnostic rather than an atheist. Certainly he did not believe in the Hindu gods. But he certainly believed in a universal law. What is that if not Brahman?

Veda do not require you to believe in any God (s).. that is why we had / have atheist Vedikas.

What I provided in my earlier post is not about any belief but donctrinal level belief about fundamental nature of reality.

It is not about labels in the end..

 

[renuka]

Most of the info we get on the Sunyavada of Nagarjuna is from books where a Vedantin is refuting the theory..so a book from the POV of a Vedantin will show the Vedatin as the one who wins.

We have no idea of the Buddhist POV about these debates..for all we know in Buddhist texts they would have refuted the Vedantin.

Anyway when I sat for my part 4 of my Sankrit exam...the text that was supplied to me about the 6 darshanas were very clear on the Sunyavadha that it does NOT mean Nothingness as in Void as most commonly thought.

The explanation given was the Ultimate Reality is beyond description and beyond comprehension hence it can not be deciphered so even though it is actually the Ultimate Reality it in "Void" on the account that the senses can not perceive it.

So Void here is not to be confused with Empty or Nothing..in fact the Void here encompasses "That" which the human mind can not decipher.

So that "That" is what Vedantins call Brahman.


This time when I land in India I am going to search for books from the Buddhist point of view.

We need to read both to come to a conclusion cos we are always hearing only one side of the story..in yesteryears winning was the middle name of different schools of thoughts. What actually happened might not be the same as what we are supposed to believe.

So my personal opinion is that Buddha was dealing only with Nirguna Brahman and hence remained silent about God cos how can anyone describe Nirguna Brahman?

Hindus on the other hand were more concerned about Saguna Brahman and to keep ritualism alive.


Even Adi Shankara asked for forgiveness for committing 3 sins and one of it was the sin of describing God.

Once, Adi Sankara went to Benaras and prayed to Lord Viswanath there
and asked specifically for three of his sins to be excused. The
disciples who followed Sankaracharya were surprised and were wondering
what those three sins for which he was seeking pardon were.

Sankaracharya then explained the first sin in the following words. He
addressed and said that knowing fully well that the Lord is
omnipresent and all powerful, he had undertaken the journey all the
way to Benaras to have the Lord's Darsan as if the Lord was present
only in Benaras. This, according to Sankaracharya, was the first sin.
The significance of this is that his practice was contrary to what he
already knew.

His second sin was that after recognizing the Lord as one whose glory
cannot be described or as one whose infinite nature cannot be
described in mere words, he had attempted to describe him in a string
of words and thus had ignored what he had already known about the
Lord.

His third sin was that having recognized that the human body is the
temple of the Lord and having recognized that the body is made of five
destructible elements, he had not put this knowledge into practice.
The Jiva that lives in the body is indestructible and if studied
carefully, we come to the conclusion that one who resides in the body
has no birth and has no death and has neither attachment nor
detachment.

He realised that the almighty is residing in him as the Atma and yet
he undertook the long journey to get the Darsan of the almighty in a
place external to his body. This was his third sin. Knowing that the
Lord is in him, he has committed the sin of undertaking the journey to
see the Lord

 

[mskmoorthy]

This could be one book

Nagarjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way - David J. Kalupahana - Google Books

Nagarjuna: The Philosophy of the Middle Way

David J. Kalupahana
SUNY Press, Jan 15, 1986 - Philosophy - 412 pages
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This is a completely new translation of Nagarjuna's major work, the Mulamadhyamakakarika, accompanied by a detailed annotation of each of the verses. The annotation identifies the metaphysical theories of the scholastics criticized by Nagarjuna, and traces the source material and the arguments utilized in his refutation back to the early discourses of the Buddha.

The Introduction presents a completely new hypothesisthe nature of the treatise. The work is a grand commentary on the Buddha's "Discourse to Katyayana" (Kaccayanaqotta-sutta). The concluding part of the Introduction compares the teachings of the Buddha and Nagarjuna in regard to epistemology, ontology, ethics and philosophy of language indicating how the latter was making a determined attempt to reconstruct the Buddha's teachings in a very faithful manner, avoiding the substantialist metaphysics of the scholastics.
The book shows that Nagarjuna's ideas are neither original nor are they an advancement from the early Buddhist period. Nagarjuna is not a Mahayanist.






A secretary who used to work in the office where my wife works passed away suddenly. He is a white american (jewish faith) and he was initiated Siva mantra deeksha. He had a large collection of books. He had earlier told my wife that he wanted to donate those books to local temple library. My wife is cataloging his books and I am helping her. Here is a partial list of his books.
My library

Besides these books, he has Monier William sanskrit Dictionary, books on all four vedas.