SAmkhya/Yoga question

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Edwin Bryant <ebryant at FAS.HARVARD.EDU> wrote:

> > notion of anirvacanIya-khyAti is inextricably linked with a position
>that
> > does not hold the material world to be ultimately real.
>
>That particular term, indeed, but a parallel term indicating that the
>ultimate nature of causality is beyond human reason can be coined by
>almost any school that runs into philosophical difficulties.
>

Well, Advaita Vedanta ultimately holds to a doctrine of ajAti. Here, it is
not so much that the nature of causality is beyond human reason, but that
the very notion of causality is a fiction.

>Yes.  But he has replaced one problem with another.  He has by-passed the
>need for explaining samyoga between prakRti and puruSa by positing that
>the former can only be apparent, but in so doing he has created a new
>problem -- whence the 'samyoga' between Brahman and this apparency,
>(Maya/avidhya)?  Sankara's detractors (Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka,
>Vallabh, Baladev and even Siva/Sakti monists), in turn, never cease to
>point out what they consider to be the achilles heel of Sankara's own
>solution to the Samkhyan dilemma.

Well, in the Advaita two-level perspective, the question of avidyA arises
only at a level that presumes avidyA. It does not arise at the level of the
highest Brahman. So he does not have to explain the samyoga, as he has just
denied its reality. As far as Sankara is concerned, on the one hand, you
have this paradox of creation, which ultimately defies human resaon, and on
the other, a way out of the entire paradox, and he prefers the way out.

Each of Sankara's detractors has his own version of problem that poses as a
solution. No one can adequately "explain" the first karma that causes
saMsAra. To say that it is beginningless is one solution, but this is
exactly Sankara's position too, and I suspect that it won't be a
satisfactory solution for contemporary sensibilities. One has to say that it
is all lIla, which can serve as an "explanation" for anything and
everything, while another has to invoke a strangely alien doctrine of
eternal damnation. A third detractor creates more logical difficulties than
he solves, by saying that Brahman is at once one and many. To qualify this
by the term acintya does not really solve the problem. Somehow, the
overwhelming reliance on a saviour God in the theistic schools masks these
issues, perhaps because the emphasis within the tradition shifts from
philosophy to other issues. But dig deep enough, and the same intractable
problems come out, only couched in different terms and in different
contexts.

Vidyasankar
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