Causal versus Nondual Nonduality

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

where does avidya reside? what is its locus?

does it reside in the supreme self? this cannot be so. for the supreme self is never ignorant. it is pure awakenened consciousness (bodha). aslo, to admit a coterminous existence with the supreme self would sully the purity (suddha) of the supreme self. and to admit its existence alongside the supreme self would mean that we are positing a second reality, and thus the non-duality of the supreme self would be jeopardized.

does it reside in the individual? how could it? avidya or ignorance is the cause of the separate self sense. in order to say that ignorance exists in the individual or egoic self would mean that the separate self exists prior to avidya. but if avidya is the source of the separate self sense, how could it exist prior to its cause.

conclusion: the advaitic doctrine of avidya is incoherent. QED Wink

questioner: "whose is avidya?"
ramana: "who is asking this question?"
this showstopper (used by the advaitin in the face of metaphysical quandry) is an adaptation of shankara's response to the question as found in his commentary on the Gita. there he basically says, "anyone who would ask such a question is under the spell of ignorance." Very Happy

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

This paragraph seems to sum up your ideas:

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

You quote:

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

What I give above is a typology of forms of non-dualism that can also account for them historically and philologically. We can relate the four structurally in this manner:

The first deals with Being. It says that Being alone is the real. The third also deals with "being," but it says that being is relative to nothingness and that neither alone are absolute.

The second deals Consciousness. It says that the pure Subject, the Seer (or Witness) is alone real. The fourth also deals with "consciousness," but it says the subject is relative to the object and that neither alone is absolute.

The third and fourth senses of "non-dual," which derive more or less from Buddhist sources, can be understood as responses to the first and second senses.

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

The Jain scholar Vidyananda describes four types of non-dualism:

brahma-advaita
shabda-advaita
vijnana-advaita
citra-advaita

The work where he presents his refutation of these four forms of non-dualism is unfinished and it is thought he died before he finished it. What Vidyananda does, to save time, is classify the second form of non-dualism as a version of the first and the fourth as a version of the third. He then goes about refuting the brahma-advaita of the Vedantins and the vijnana-advaita of the Sautrantika-Yogachara school.

After having read the brahma-advaita section with two experts, I have prepared a (yet unpublished) translation of the chapter on brahma advaita. It's interesting.

In the chapter on brahma advaita, Vidyananda also speaks of a "purusha-advaita." By this, I take it that he is referring to a form of non-dualism that is also theistic. Now scholar Frits Staal has said that a personalist non-dualism is an impossibility; but historically there have been forms of theistic non-dualism. Kashmiri Shaivism is a good example. For many years it was thought that there was no Vaishnava non-dualism, but it appears now that there was, though the lineage has died out and the school no longer exists. The text Paramarthasara ("The Essence of the Absolute") is thought to be an old Vaisnava work. The text was rewritten/commented upon by Abhinavagupta, the great Kashmiri polymath and yogi. Its form of non-dualism is typologically very similar to Shankara's.

Shabda advaita refers to the non-dualism of the shabda-brahman. This is a school of Vedanta that predates Shankara. Its principal philosopher was Bhartrhari, who was also a grammarian. His great tome the Vakyapadiya, like the Gaudapada Karika, shows a great deal of influence from Mahayana Buddhism.

Though rather superficial, this book attempts to describe a kind of continuity between the non-dualisms of Bhartrhari, Gaudapada, and Abhinavagupta.

kela · Joined: 08 27 04 Posts: 2612

As my above post shows, the creation of "sahaja samadhi" is, to a considerable degree, the result of a certain form of thinking. This is to say, that it is "created" so as to fulfill the theoretical requirements of finding a "state" wherein the "absolute" and the "relative" are "reconciled."

This goes a long way toward explaining where this monstrosity came from, no? My point is that people think these things up.

But apparently you are too dense to see that what I'm saying here is in line with what you yourself are often spewing from yer gob.

You think I'm "doing philosophy" here because that is what you do here and because you see everyone else as engaging in what you are engaging in. Yes, that's right gad, you're no different the rest of em. You too are a theologian.

Gadfly · Joined: 08 25 04 Posts: 2522 Location: Seattle

I knew that would bother you.

Love Gaddy

Laughing

Gadfly · Joined: 08 25 04 Posts: 2522 Location: Seattle

Try again.

Gaddy Laughing

Gadfly · Joined: 08 25 04 Posts: 2522 Location: Seattle

Who you been reading ?

Gaddy

- Can you say "soteriological" ??? Laughing

theurj · Joined: 01 05 05 Posts: 162

Bright_Abyss · Joined: 08 25 04 Posts: 313 Location: Canada

Wilber has two views (relating to two levels of truth) on the topic of non-duality, from what I can tell, and BOTH have to be taken into account.

Briefly, Wilber believes that we A) evolve the relative (proximate) bodymind towards non-dual realization, resonance, or manifestation, and B) non-dual Reality is always already everywhere -- as One Taste. Tis' a paradox yes, but only for those stuck in conceptual-based awareness. Yet, for those who have the requisite capacity to understand, and then let go of that understanding, the paradox is resolved.

So just as the many 'faces' (perspectives and definitions) of spirituality must be considered, so must the many 'faces' (complexities) of non-duality.

At least in Wilber's view. And emphasizing one of those views over the other would be to "misrepresent" his overall opinion.

Is this a correct reading??????

M~

PS -- Of course, I would frame the nondual-situation differently, but who cares what I think, right?
_________________
The Artist Formerly Known As PATHOS ~
http://integralpraxis.blogspot.com

Bright_Abyss · Joined: 08 25 04 Posts: 313 Location: Canada

theurj · Joined: 01 05 05 Posts: 162

theurj · Joined: 01 05 05 Posts: 162

As to concepts being somehow not part of the equation of nonduality, see the following abstract of the article "Buddhist Hermeneutics" by Robert Thurman. Granted Thurman makes some of the same kinds of mistakes by differentiating concepts from the "real" deal but the main point is that such rational (including postformal rationality, aka "2nd-tier" thinking) is part and parcel of "enlightenment."

From http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/XLVI/1/19:

The abstract (minus the special characters that didn’t translate here):

“Hermeneutics” as a philosophical discipline of rational interpretation of a traditional canon of Sacred Scriptures authoritative for a religious community has usually been considered peculiar to the West. This notion is anchored only in the misconception that “Eastern” thought is somehow “non-rational,” or “mystical,” hence excused from the burden of reconciling the tensions between some forms of authority and philosophical reason. Buddhism in particular has been misconceived in this way, due to its emphasis on meditational experience and non-dualistic wisdom. These misconceptions are quickly cleared away when we examine the role of authority in Buddhist teaching, appreciating the predominantly pedagogic concerns of kyamuni during his long tenure as a teacher who sought to encourage the individual disciple’s ability to think for himself; the role of analytic reasoning in Buddhist practice, wherein a practitioner’s first task is to sift through the complexities of Doctrine to discover its inner meaning as relevant to his own experience and its systematic transformation; the role of hermeneutical strategies in guiding the practitioner’s analytical meditations, wherein the first two stages of wisdom (prajñ) are cultivated through a refined discipline of philosophical criticism of all false views (drsti), such as naive realism, nihilism, etc., as to the nature of ultimate reality and of the self; and finally the role of transcendent experience, wherein the transcendence of verbalization is approached not as a non-rational escape into mysticism, but as an affirmation of empiricism, a rational acknowledgement of the fact that reality, even ordinary reality, is never, in the final analysis, reducible to what we may say about it. These four functions in Buddhism are traditionally expressed in an ancient rule of thumb known as the “Four Reliances”: “Rely on the Teaching, not the Teacher; rely on the meaning, not the letter; rely on the definitive meaning, not the interpretable meaning; rely on wisdom, not on consciousness.” To examine the traditional usage of these Reliances, we must trace the work of the Buddhist hermeneuticians, who, far from maintaining any “golden silence” beyond the silvery speech of philosophers, have kept alive over two and one half millennia an illustrious line known as the “Golden Speech” (Ch. jin ko) tradition, whose members include from among the sage-scholars of India, Tibet, China, and Japan, kyamuni himself (himself the first hermeneutician of his own Holy Doctrine!), Ngrjuna, ryadeva, Asanga, Chih I, Candrakrti, Fa Tsang, ntaraksita, and Tsong Khapa. This latter, working in the 14th and 15th centuries, was one of the greatest scholars of any of the Buddhist cultures, and his masterwork, Essence of the Eloquent, composed in 1407, provides a golden key with which the door to this tradition can be opened.