Who Is A Hindu

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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Which shlokas of the BG talk about Vaikunta?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Quite a few. The one that comes to mind immediately is "yad-gatvA na nivartante, <b>tad dhAma paramam mama</b>" (15:6 I think). In various parts of the BG, this transcendentally variegated "dhAma" is spoken of distinct from immediately preceding descriptions of preliminary brahman-realization. This transcendental Realm is also clearly differentiated from the 7 "heavens" and 7 "hellish" worlds that are described as part of the material universe in Vedic literature. So we must try to find out what exactly this so-called Vaikuntha sky is, and how can such variegatedness exist outside this material universe (as we know it). We cannot simply sweep all this under a carpet, or shrug at it, because it is being pointed to as most desirable, and importantly, the <i>only</i> position from which there is no return to the material world.

This last point is of note, because sAyujya-mukti is not considered final in many interpretations. SAyujya-mukti, as you know, is liberation from material mahat-tattva into a state of (being under the impression of) annihilation of one's sense of identity (pure ego). The jiva apparently loses its identity in Brahman. Compared to material suffering, this is a blissful state, because the <i>cessation of suffering</i> is itself a phenomenal relief. The example is given: after prolonged, forceful immersion under water, a gulp of fresh air is a great pleasure, even if one is still being subjected to other constraining conditions, ie., even if one is not totally free. This is analogous to sAyujya mukti according to several authorities. And they insist that, even though it is liberation from Time-bound existence, it cannot be the final journey of conditioned Soul, simply because it is not the <i>constitutional nature and position</i> of the soul (which is bliss-seeking by nature). To give a comparison with mystic literatures from other traditions-- <b>sAyujya-mukti is somewhat analogous to a state of Limbo</b>. Therefore, the "bhagavan-realized" (if I may use that phrase) sages have said that sAyujya is "as palatable as Hell" to them!

Now here's an important point: Krishna, for the umpteenth time, repeats after the above quoted verse that the jivas are "My infinitesimal, eternal parts and parcels" (mamaiva-<b>amsho</b> jiva-loke jiva-bhUtaH <b>sanatanaH</b>). Quite early -- and repeatedly -- in the BG (from ch. 2 onwards), <b>the Soul (atman) is declared to be atomic, i.e. indivisible, and the unit of conscious experience</b>. Therefore it would make no sense to say that we are all the Supreme Soul, because clearly we are different points of consciousness. If we were not, then one person gaining moksha should mean that all jivas would become liberated simultaneously, since they are all supposedly One Soul according to mayavada. <b>No amount of "maya" philosophizing can reconcile the atomic definition of atman with the FACT of different points of experience.</b> Therefore the term amshaH is significant, and that amshaH-nature is sanatana -- eternal.

The word “amshaH” is also significant for its assertion of <b>infinitesimality</b> contrasted with the infinite-ness of the Supreme, because then there is no conflict with the idea of “pUrNam adaH purnam idam…”, etc. <b>Infinitesimal particles cannot affect the infinity of the Supreme Infinite. This is the position of Godhead. But from the point of view of an infinitesimal particle, being separated from the Infinite Whole by any finitude...is as good as being infinitely separated from its Source, i.e., it is incapable of even <i>conceiving</i> or <i>measuring</i> the “separation”. The latter is our position as jivas.</b> This is another reason why the One Central Axiom of any philosophy about Absolute Truth MUST necessarily be an inconceivable paradox -- <b>achintya</b> bheda-abheda tattva. Some nice cut-and-dried "kevela"-something (like kevala-advaita) is anomalous when the subject matter is Absolute Truth.

To be "one" with the Supreme does not mean to be identical in ALL respects, but to be "organically <b>united with</b>", i.e., a condition where the jiva's Marginal Free Will is dovetailed with the Will of the Supreme. Apparent "separation" under mahamaya (avidya-maya) occurs due to a dislocation of the individual soul's conscious will, which creates a false Center of Reference, called ahamkaara (false-ego). The goal of yoga (yoke, unite) is to re-unite by realizing our true constitutional position of sat-chid-ananda.

To give a closer understanding of this unity, various purvAcaryas have used various metaphors. To begin with, Sri Ramanuja has so many metaphors. One example is that of attribute-object. Nilo ghaTaH (the blue pot). At the abstract level, the attribute (blue colour adjective) is differentiable from the object (pot), but actually they are inseparable. Of course, these are all inadequate examples, but Sri Ramanuja is trying to show us various levels of "difference", as we go towards the more abstract, ultimately beyond Time-bound Mind. Or another example is of the sunlight and the sun. The sunlight is inseparable from the sun. But when the sunlight is streaming into your room, we would not say that the sun itself is in your room.

These metaphors are taken from Vedic literature. Similarly, there are many Vedic metaphors to give an idea of paramatman. The two birds (jiva and paramatman) on a branch is a well-known example. Another, better metaphor is of the moon reflected in different pots of water. Although the 13th chapter of the BG makes clear that there are 2 kshetrajnas in every material body-field, mayavadis want to argue that actually its one and the same kshetrajna. But then there are many contradictions, one of which has been presented above. (The limited yoga-siddhi of parakAyA-pravesha is by no means a confirmation of this mayavadi claim!)

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The three terms above, specially NIR-Guna sounds more like absence of gunas. Like Niraakara, nirmala...
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To my understanding how is nirguna to be taken only as lack of rajo-thamo gunas, and not as lack of all three gunas<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Who said it means only lack of rajo-tamo gunas and not all 3? nis-trai-gunya means "transcendental to (ALL THREE) gunas".

My post to Ashok Kumar was mostly about this. As Ashok specified, all material qualities are merely produced from different combinations of the 3 gunas, like the primary colours of light combine to give all colours in the spectrum. That much is clear. But the nuance I was trying to throw light on is the semantic definition of "guna" itself. This word is to be translated not simply as "quality", but as "<b>material</b> quality". Therefore, nirguna does not mean "no qualities", but "no material qualities".

What is the basis of this qualification? This is tied directly to the definition of mAyA (illusion). Throughout the Vedas, when avidya is being differentiated from vidya, sat from asat, the crux is – eternality (niya-anitya vastu viveka, as Sripada Sankara concisely puts it). Sat is eternality, asat is transience. <b>"Eternal" means "beyond the dominance of Time"</b>. It doesn't mean something that goes on and on in a linear time-scale. Avidya-maya is the condition of misidentification, misdirection, dislocated intelligence. In this condition, we, the bliss-seeking Soul, are trying to find bliss in this material world. But because the material world is anitya (transient, time-bound), and our Soul is eternal, therefore we will NEVER find real happiness in this world. We are like fish out of water in this material-world. Forgetfulness of this is one aspect of maya. The Arabic word for the conditioned human being (insaan, which we use in Hindi), is from the rroot meaning "the forgetful".

But as Krishna says in the BG (15:15), He alone is the Cause of forgetfulness, remembrance and knowledge. Therefore, mAyA is His own potency, with which He covers certain jivas (because of their own Marginal Free Will). It is entirely conceivable that the infinitesimal, particle jiva can be covered by the energy of the Supreme, but it is a contorted argument to suggest that the Supreme Whole is covered by this mAyA-sakti, and that, to obviate the obvious contradiction, some -redefinition of "vivarta" is the actual explanation of this. <b>Now HUNDREDS of quotes from Vedanta (and the BG itself) say that the Supreme Brahman is eternally transcendent to any illusory or degrading potency (avyaya, acyuta, etc). Any suggestion that Supreme Brahman itself becomes subjected to, or transformed into a self-hypnotic illusory state is really quite ridiculous.</b>

Vivarta and parinAma, correctly understood, are the transformation of one potency/energy into another, e.g. of avidya-maya into vidya-maya, etc. It is a transformation of the consciousness of the jiva-Atman, not the Supreme Atman. The original definitions of vivarta and parinama are:

satattvato'nyatha buddhir vikara ity udiratah
atattvato'nyatha buddhir vivarta ity udahrtah

"The perception of a different object when a real object takes another form is called parinama. Perception of a different object when there is actually no different object is called vivarta. " But the later followers of Shankara changed the definitions of vivarta. They simply redefined it, and actually swapped meanings with parinama. Of course, parinAma also speaks of the transformations of internal energies (like the ontological derivation of Sadashiva from The Supreme). But that’s another bunch of concepts. Moving on:

The root agent of avidya-maya is ahamkara, i.e. False Ego. To put it very briefly, false ego is the mistaken identification of our individual soul as the Reference Point of our Conscious Will, instead of the Supreme Soul. There are very wonderful explanations of this, and of the constitutional position of the Individual Soul w.r.t. the Supreme. Even philosophically ambiguous teachers like Yogananda have beautifully described this. One of the ways the Supreme is defined is as “the impetus and reservoir of all rasa”, while the individual Soul (in its constitutional position) is compared to an organic instrument or medium in this eternal, constantly expanding, constantly fluctuating “flow”. Yoga is the process of slowly uncovering our true, organic relationship with the Supreme by dovetailing every impetus toward the Supreme, instead of the false sense of self. When the river runs toward the ocean, then it widens and deepens, but if it is mistakenly redirected to the mirage in the desert (false ego), then it only travels a small distance, leaving behind a quagmire and eventually drying up. This is the gist of avidya-maya and its enactment in material consciousness. The Bhakti-shastras describe the ultimate constitutional position as being one of a river constantly running to the ocean -- the river always remaining a river, a conduit for the water that originally comes from the ocean through the water-cycle, and goes back to the ocean.

Like avidya-maya, any form of “liberation”, ANY state of the infinitesimal living entity, is also always under some or the other potency of the Supreme. Therefore, if you noticed, when speaking about sAyujya-mukti, I inserted the text “being under the impression of” in braces. This is because that condition of “annihilation of identity” is ALSO an “illusion”, since the Self is never annihilated, and this is made very clear in all Vedic scriptures. There is no question of complete “merging” of jiva with the Supreme, because the scriptures, immediately after pointing out the <b>atomic individuality of all Souls</b>, say that this is the eternal state of things. There is no question of a jiva really “losing” its identity in the Supreme eternally. This state of sAyujya limbo is also under an illusory potency. And so is BhagavAn-realization. That ultimate, eternal realization, never to return, is also under the potency of yogamaya, the “antaranga-sakti” (Internal Energy) of the Supreme Godhead.

So I just want to make that clear. “Illusory” potency is always there -- in and out of material existence. Its just that one transforms to another. Therefore, the jivatman, who is also an energy of Godhead, is described as being taTastha-shakti (marginal energy), because, using our marginal free will we can take shelter of the Exterrnal, inferior potency, or the Internal, superior potency of Godhead. Of course, the Vedic literature has more to say about this, but this is the basic idea.

Now we can return to the question of why it is valid to qualify the definition of “guna”, when writing in English, as “material qualities”, and not just “qualities”. In my last post to Ashok, I urged that we should understand that Time is not as rigid as we know it in this state of conditioned, bound (baddha) existence. When we start to think “beyond Time”, then we can understand that rigid, Time-bound relationships (like object- observation-observed) are meaningless. Therefore, in Realms like that, two points of conscious experience CAN exist, and at the same time “difference”, or “separateness” is no longer there in the way we understand it in our Time-bound existence here. Similarly, transcendental variegatedness can exist, in which Time (and the Gunas themselves, BTW) are devoted Actors, as described in the Bhagavata. Indeed, observing and meditating on how Vaishnava literature treats Time is a thrilling exercise. Krishna lila is full of Time-dilation, telescoping, etc…I tell you, the depth and brilliance of Bhagavata lila far excels any other such literature, leave alone the DRY, directionless, dislocated koans of Zen without any larger philosophical context or understanding, that certain “hip and fashionable” gasbags like to indulge in.

It is also worth trying to understand the relationship between Time and Mind, which are very closely intertwined, as I indicated in my last post.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> I did not know Ramanujacharya had great love for Shankaracharya.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->To give you just one example of the sense of loyalty that Sri Ramanuja had for Sankaracharya: When he and his disciples were fleeing persecution and murder from the pseudo-Advaitins, he entered a region of Karnataka that was dominated by Jains. Ramanuja writes that he feels he has fallen from the frying pan into the fire, and he quotes Sankara. Sankara said that if one is being charged by a mad elephant, and the only place to hide is a Jain temple, then better to be trampled by the elephant! Ramanuja went through great austerity and hardship in that region, even though he could have easily lived among the Jains and accepted their hospitality in return for not being too evangelistic about his Vedanta. Of course, a little later the local king was converted to Vaishnavism by Ramanuja.

Its quite common for people from caste-ridden places like Tamil Nadu to be surprised at this, because certainly there has been endless petty bickering between the so-called dogmatic followers of these great personalities. As I indicated, TN is really a bad case of mockery of Vedic religion, comparable to pre-Islamic Arabia. Please note that my own father is Tamil, so don’t take these comments as some personal insult. It is a historical mess worth noting and studying for people interested in “saving Hinduism”.

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->how (or more accurately why) the acharyas themselves admitted that their views were incomplete? How did this incompleteness turn into perfrection with the advent of Sri Chaitanya?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->The different Vaishnava sampradayas differ in the varying emphasis on devotional attitude. In this sense, all are equal but different (like different flavours), and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has said so Himself. All the Vaishnava acharyas were engaged in philosophical teaching only to the extent of convincing the people of their time to take to the most effective PROCESS of bhakti-yoga. The philosophy was needed to remove all doubts, and also to remove all traces of undesirable notions like “we are all God” and other mayavadi contamination. So the Vaishnava acharyas were not interested in endless philosophical argument for its own sake, and they said so time and again. And they were all pretty effective in revitalizing and spreading true Vaishnavism. But in time, when things had time to sink in, certain questions would arise, which some carping mayavadis liked to pick on. And so on. As for Lord Chaitanya, I am in no position to judge which theory is “perfect”. But we do know that His explanations took all previous Vaishnava-acharyas into its fold, and in fact He traveled widely, including in peninsular India.

I've been on holiday for 4 days, so its been fun sharing some of my limited understanding of Vaishnavism with you. But returning to the gist of this thread: The main point I want to make is that there is so much to Vaishnavism. It is so rich, philosophically, and more importantly, in the effectiveness and power of its process of yoga. So firstly I wanted to point out that Vaishnavism is highly misunderstood by the Hindu intelligentsia, some of whom think it is actually a sectarian bunch of Vishnu-bigots, in competition with "Shiva" or other deities. IMHO, by distracting the innocent masses with gross misrepresentations of Vaishnavism (and Vedic philosophy), certain pseudo-philosophers are committing a crime against the Vedas and Hinduism in my humble opinion. Vaccuous armchair philosophies litter the slippery slope to atheism, and these are sold to people, laced with whatever is the fashion of the day -- ethnic/nationalist pride at one time, or some perverted forms of modern relativism and "Zen", etc at another. <b>Therefore, in defining "who is a Hindu", there is a risk of severely compromising and misrepresenting Vedic philosophy by making the term "Hindu" too inclusive, but there may be a loss of social capital by being too dogmatic about phlosophy. This is the "tension" between the two desirable objectives that I was mentioning to rajesh_g at the start.</b>