I should like your opinion on this post of mine, which is in response to your posts #544 and #550 about nirguNa brahman. You may please correct me where I go wrong or personal, as different from the Advaita philosophy of Adi Shankara and others, since I have only a surface knowledge of it.
Dear Saidevo,
Had dealt with this as a teenager. Now am completely different. All the teaching has been forgotten in bulk, over the years. Will give inputs from whatever little i know. Sangom Sir is highly knowledgable in this. So Sangom sir and others, please correct me, whereever have gone wrong.
Before i begin, wud like to mention these things:
1) All this is from the religious pov, which at best can be considered speculative, especially for those who have not experienced certain alter states of consciousness.
2) There are many divergent views and it is possible to create one's own concept of brahman; provided one is able to argue like a proper vedantin, with proper supporting material as pramana, against all the objections raised.
Here Pramana is similar to the 'references" we give to butress our arguments. One has to give references for his concept, by providing phrase(s) that could be interepreted to support his argument. Like Purnaamadah...purnamevavashishtaye, from an upanishad to support his concept that 'brahman is whole'.
3) Various schools have had their stand-offs. Ex: Brahmasutra (II.i.3) declares the view of Patanjali's Yoga stands refuted where it shows the Samkhya view is unsound. Samkhya argues based on logic, that pradhana or Prakriti is the cause of evolution. But Badrayana went against the view of Patanjali.
4) To argue like a vedantin, one has to forth basis by which his anumana is confirmed by pratyaksha. If one is a 'hindu', he must use the vedas and/or vedantas as his source of validation, not a buddhist or jain text. IMO basically anyone can butress their arguments by cherry picking points from vedantas, and vedas. This can lead to a situation where one is seen as 'taking sides'. Lets hope one does not want to take sides. But lets say, one wants to take sides, then all he needs to do is to butress his POV, or validate it, by providing references for his points from vedas and/or vedanta.
4) Additionally, one can been viewed as a person arguing like an escapist. By using vedanta as means of escape. Ex: One can say Pradhana of the Samkhyas is not the cause of the universe, just because it is not mentioned in the Upanishads. To butress this point, a vedantin can give some observable examples and go on to write / declare "this fact is clear from the fact of seeing / obervation (or thinking)".
5) From the religion pov, all this may be an exercise of concepts or words. Some concepts may not make sense to scientific thought. Ex: IMO, classifying so many emotions into just 3 categories of sattva, rajas, tamas is grossly insufficient. Descriptions on it are impractical, because, no one in this world can be ONLY sattva, ONLY rajas, and ONLY tamas.
Having said the above caveats, by which arguments in this subject can go in any direction, will proceed below.
• The term nirguNa, as Sravna indicated in post #548, means 'without any guNa', right? It is formed by the combination of the terms ni + guNa, ni--negation/privation and guNa--one of the three kinds sattva, rajas and tamas.
Yes agreed.
• If an entity is negated or deprived of all guNas--qualities/properties/attributes, and still it exists as consciousness, how best could it be described? As smt.ReNukA has pointed out it can only be a state of consciousness, which is beyond the triguNas.
• One way to describe that state is shUnyatA--emptiness, as in the Buddhist philosophy. But then this description raises the questions, "If it is empty, how can it be consciousness?", "If consciousness can somehow be emptiness, how can it be aware of itself?", "If it is emptiness, why should and how can there be existence?", "If there is no existence as universal consciousness what sustains this flow of life of sentient and insentient beings?"
• Another way to describe that state is pUrNatvam--fullness, as in the Advaita philosophy, enunciated in the famous shAnti mantra AUM pUrNam adaH pUrNam idam.
I agree with Renu. The nirguna of Shankara is similar to the buddhist Shunyata. So some people feel Adi Shankara (AS) should have used the word Aguna instead of Nirguna. On that basis, Sravna may have a point in saying his kind of brahman is 'nirguna'. But he cannot call it the nirguna-brahman of advaita, or that of Shankara.
In his Bhasya on Brahmasutra (BB), Adi Shankara accedes to the upanishadic view of brahman. So, Renu is right in saying sarvam khalvidam brahma, or, all this is verily brahman. This brahman is a whole. But this brahman is not the nirguna-brahman of AS. AS clearly differentiates between saguna-brahman and nirguna-brahman, as explained below.
We must be careful with the terms here. Those who wish to propound their own version of brahman must be able to discredit Adi Shankara's nirguna first, before proceeding to call "that", the nirguna of advaita.
In the Samanvaya section of BB, where AS deals with the first cause possessed of consciousness, AS establishes that this 'whole brahman' (of upanishads) is omniscient and the cause of the universe. AS postulates that this brahman has "eternal consciousness", it has no body, and is not dependent on means of knowledge.
This eternal consciousness being omniscient is ofcourse beyond all gunas. This consciousness is not empty. Being the 'universal consciousness' it sustains the flow of life of sentient and insentient beings. But this is not the nirguna-brahman of AS. Here the difference is in approach.
Nirguna-brahman is an atrributeless entity. One must be able to understand the differences between the terms used by Adi Shankara, that is 'conditioned-brahman', 'absolute brahman' and 'nirguna brahman'.
What an advaitin sadhaka seeks is the nirguna-brahman (to dissolve his consciousness into). 'Awareness' is what he experiences on the way.
For clarity, although not defined that way by AS, i would like to mention here what my guru said. My guru had said nirguna-brahman can be called an 'approach' by which a sadhaka seeks to merge himself into the 'absolute brahman'. Adi Shankara explains the same thing in his Brahmasutra Bhasya, in this manner :-
A sadhakas's organs merge in the mind, and mind merges in prana vital force, then prana merges in the soul, and prana merges in the self. In Shankara's advaita, a sadhaka first attains a brahman with attributes or a 'conditioned brahman'. Here again there is a difference in approach between Badrayana and Adi Shankara.
Badrayana says the soul gets merged in a 'conditioned brahman' but AS states in his BB, that this 'conditioned brahman' is designated that way because of its nearness to the 'absolute brahman'. IMO this premise of argument is not very sound (will not go into that now though, lets stick to the views of AS).
According to the view of AS, after the the soul merges in 'conditioned brahman', there comes a time when the world of 'conditioned brahman' gets dissolved. Thereafter, it attains a higher world. After reaching the highest "light", the soul becomes manifest in its own nature, that is, it attains liberation and becomes inseperable with the 'absolute brahman'.
Hope have been clear. IMO sravna is confusing the terms, 'whole brahman', 'conditioned brahman', and Nirguna-brahman. Agreed everthing is verily brahman, but this 'whole brahman' is not nirguna in advaita. This 'whole brahman' has attributes but is one without a second. Now we can bring out fallacies in the arguments of Adi Shankara. But will leave that for later.
Will continue on the rest of your points in the next point.
Regards.
