Samadhi and Advaita: Michael Comans

Read the following paper: The Question of the Importance of Samadhi in Modern and Classical Advaita Vedanta. It is very well researched and goes with many of the arguments that happen in advaitin and Advaita-L, about samadhi, yoga and meditation. Read the rest of this entry >>

Arvind Sharma's book on Sleep as a State of Consciousness

Thanks to a request of a dear friend of mine, I could read parts of this book again and write this review.
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This post, and the ones following it, are on the book Sleep As a State of Consciousness in Advaita Vedanta by Arvind Sharma. As the title explains, Prof. Sharma delves deeply into the avasthatraya aspect of Advaita. Prof. Sharma says in the introduction that "understanding this aspect of Advaita is the first, and possibly most important aspect of Advaita".

The book is organized as to how various philosophers of ancient and moden India --who have cast their long shadows on Advaita-- have thought of, and reasoned about the aspect of avasthatraya(the trichotomy of states), in Advaita.

In concrete, the contents of the book are as follows:

sleep in Prasthanatraya

sleep in Mandukyacharica (or Mandukya Upanishad)

sleep in Sankara Advaita

sleep in Later Advaita

sleep in Moden Advaita

Prasthanatraya is the three texts: Upanishads, Brahmasutras and BhagavadGita. The Mandukya Upanishad is one of the Upanishads, on which Gaudapada who preceeded Sankara (to whom Sankara originally wanted to be a disciple of?), is said to have a written a commentary, which in turn had a special influence of Advaita. Sankara of course, is the exegete from 8th century who cast, possibly the longest shadow on Advaita, Vedanta, Sanatana Dharma, and other Indic religions.

The later Advaita is about the points of view of Sureshwara, Padmapada --who were famous disciples of Sankara and set up the Vivarna school-- and Vacaspati Misra of the 9th and 10th century --who set up the rival Bhamati school-- and others. The two schools differ on various aspects: (1) "where does ignorance originate from": According to Vivarna, Brahman-Atman is the locus of avidya. Bhamati, on the other hand holds that jiva is the locus of avidya. (2)The other difference is the question of "the preexistence of Brahman vis-a-vis the creation" (did the creation of Brahman preceed the creation? If so how?). Another major later-Advaitin is Vidyaranya of the 14th century, who arguing about the characterizations of bliss experienced by human beings, explained on the blissful nature of dreamless-sleep. The chapter has points of views of other later-Advaitins, namely: Sadananda and Dharmaraja.

In the modern Advaita, the discussion is mainly about Swami Krishnananda (of the Divine Life Society), Ramana Maharishi.

In the introduction itself, Prof. Sharma asks,

This monograph deals with the question of sleep in Advaita Vedanta. But the theme presupposes that the phenomen of sleep is an issue of some kind for Advaita Vedanta in particular, or Indian philosophy in general. For the reader who does not share this presupposition, such questions as the following will naturally arise: 'why should philosophers be concerned with sleep as an epistemological or religious problem? Why are Indian philosophers concerned with it? Why do Advaita philosophers view sleep as an important philosophical dilemma, and why are they losing sleep over it?'

Giving a reply to the above question, Prof. Sharma smartly makes an analogy of Advaita with Physics and Chemistry. In Physics, the material world is reduced to either matter or energy. Chemistry on the other hand, reduces substances to the periodic elements. In a similar way, Prof. Sharma says, Advaita reduces the multiplicity of human experience into the avasthatraya, so that some "reasonable analysis" could be done. Prof. Sharma points out that this classification is extremely rational and experiential and not necessarily revelational or scriptural. (My posts on Prof. Sharma's other books: on his book on Advaita Vedanta and on his book on the experiential approach to Advaita.)

from the Sankhya yoga of Gita:

II.69: What is night to all beings, therein the self controlled one is awake. When all beings are awake, that is the night of the sage who sees.

To be continued... Read the rest of this entry >>

Criteria of Knowledge

In the summary of the book The Essential Vedanta : A New Source Book of Advaita Vedanta by Eliot Deutsch and Rohit Dalvi, there is a section in which the authors define the criteria of knowledge:

All knowledge is intrinsically valid. One can falsify a judgement by experience which is contradictory to it, but one can never completely verify a judgement by external means.

All knowledge acquired through the various pramanas [means of valid knowledge] is valid in its own proper sphere, but insofar as it is subject to contradiction by another qualitatively different kind of experience it is necessarily "relative" knowledge. Brahman-knowledge is alone incapable of contradiction.

There definitely are trends of similarity between these two statements and the statements of Godel's incompleteness theorem from logic.

I am not sure if these are general inferences that the authors make, or have translated them from definite sources in Vedanta. Yet to verify. Read the rest of this entry >>

Arvind Sharma's book on Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta

Reading the book, The Experiential Dimension of Advaita Vedanta, by Arvind Sharma.

This book is dedicated to Eliot Deutsch.



The preface itself is good. Sharma says that no word other than the sanskrit word "Advaita" is necessary to understand the concept of experiential advaita. To prove this, he claims to use only five previously unknown words in the book: Advaita Vedanta, Sankara, Ramana and Nisargadatta.

Sharma answers the question of "why is the concept of experience important or relevant" by saying that experience is something everyone can feel for themselves. This is to differentiate it from scriptural over emphasis someone may find in such an exposition.

A similar thought is given his other book titled "Advaita Vedanta", which seems to be written later. This is my post on that book (also contains the amazon link to that book). That book is divided into three main chapters: scriptural, rational and experiential aspects of Advaita. This is my post on the third part of that book.

Whose experience are we talking about? To disambiguate the term experience, as to who's experiences and which experiences, Sharma divides the term experience into the four categories:

ordinary experiences of ordinary people,

extraordinary experiences of ordinary people,

ordinary experiences of extraordinary people, and

extraordinary experiences of ordinary people.

In the introduction, Sharma says that Sankara is the leading expositor of doctrinal Advaita and Ramana is the leading expositor of experiential Advaita.

The first chapter titled "what is normal experience". At the end of chapter, Sharma raises 11 points and sub-points about how people give primacy to waking, over those of dream and dreamless sleep. This is even among among people who agree that all three are just states of consciousness and should be comparable.

In the second chapter titled "critique of normal experience" gives the counter arguments that Advaita provides to each of the 11 points and sub-points raised in the first chapter. Some significant conclusions seem to be in point 3.vi, where to answer the question 'If a contradicting experience is superior to a contradicted experience, is not waking state superior to dreaming?'. Sharma admits that a contradicting experience is superior to a contradicted experience. However all three states are capable of contradicting each other [How can dreamless state contradict any of the other? Ans: we experience pain when awake. When asleep, we donot experience it. So pain characterizes not the body but the body-consciousness as it comes and goes with it.]. For example, a rich man may dream that he is poor, which is a contradiction when he is in dream state. So, the fact that a state can be a contradicting some other state enforces our view that the contradicting state can be contradicted.

The third chapter titled "Conclusions on the critique" makes some conclusions. The important being that the three states contradict each other in terms of reality in each of them. None of these three states represents reality by itself. What is common between all three? The being I is common all three states.

The fourth chapter titled "Advaitin Experience and its relationship to Normal Experience", Sharma makes some interesting points. He answers the question, how does an Advaitin experience reality (and dualities like pleasure and pain) different from normal people. He says that

...
the realized person, however, in a sense experiences less than the ordinary person; in another sense experiences more than the ordinary person; and in another sense experiences the world differently from an ordinary person.
...

He says the following about the differences in experience of dualities by the realized and ordinary person.

The realized person experiences pain and pleasure but does not experience it in the same way as an ordinary person. ... In a sense it might be said that the realized person feels physical pain but nor mental pain. It could be said that the difference between a realized person and an ordinary person does not lie not so much in what the realized one experiences and the ordinary one does not but rather in what the ordinary person experiences and the realized one does not. The realized person and the ordinary person both experience sugar as sweet and wormwood as bitter, both see and smell and walk and talk. But the ordinary person also experiences anxiety, fear, suffering, hope, diappointment etc. These the realized person does not experience.

The eight chapter is titled "Some accounts of Advaitin Experience". It is mainly about the experience of Ramana, of his 'disciple' Paul Brunton and of Nisargadatta. [Paul Brunton wrote the book "Search in secret India". This is the Amazon link.]

Sharma concludes the book with the following:

There is starkness [emphasis mine] about Advaita Vedanta when presented in its experiential dimension. This starkness some find compelling and some repelling and others remain unaffected by it. All, however, would perhaps want to know: Does it have anything to offer?

The question was put to Ramana whose virtual nakedness symbolized, as it were, the starkness of the experiential dimension of Advaita Vedanta. He was once asked by a somwehat cynical seeker: 'Do you have anything to offer to me?'

'Yes', Ramana is supposed to have said, putting aside the comic book he was reading. 'But do you think you can take it?'

Read the rest of this entry >>

Arvind Sharma's Experiential Approach to Advaita Vedanta

The third part of the book covers Advaita Vedanta in an Experiential approach. Sharma asks, why an experiential approach? Are not the usual scriptural and rational approaches enough? He answers the question, giving an example of the the three states in which human beings can exist are waking, dreamin and deep-sleep. It seems that the
scriptural approach ==> deep sleep
rational approach ==> waking
experiential approach ==> dreaming state

If you ask most people, to group two of these as close together and the third as different, most people would give the configuration {waking}, {dreaming, deep-sleep}. This is because, the states in the second set are "without activity". Advaita notes that the following division is more appropriate: {waking, dreaming}, {deep-sleep}. This can be substantiated from the famous examples from Janaka dreaming that he was a beggar. Tzu dreaming he was a butterfly. Incidentally, it was Chuan-Tzu, not Lao-Tzu who dreamed so. He is said to be second only to Lao-Tzu as a representative of Taoism. Read the rest of this entry >>

Arvind Sharma's book on Advaita Vedanta

Reading the book "Advaita Vedanta: An Introduction" by Arvind Sharma. The Amazon link is this. In the book, he takes a simple introductory approach to the subject. The book seems a little verbose at places, but has summaries at the end of large paragraphs. It may be useful for someone to read this book prior to reading to Deutsch's rather terse book(Amazon link). Arvind Sharma takes a tri-fold approach to explain the concept of Advaita Vedanta: They are (1) the Scriptural, (2) the Rational and (3) the Experiential approach.



Shri. Sharma, in the introduction of the book, begins by stating that both philosophy and religion try to pose the fundamental question "What is real?"
The book begins with how the Hindus wanted to attain liberation in this world itself (jivanmukti) rather than, postponing it to a later time, either death or on the judgement day, as in Christianity and Islam.

The introduction explains the six systems of Indian philosophy nicely. My notes from Dasgupta's book on the same subject is here. Both agree nearly. Sharma orders the astika systems as (Nyaya, Vaiseshika), (Samkhya, Yoga) and (Mimamsa, Vedanta). The first pair, he notes, are closer to naastika systems, while the second pair accept Vedas a-posteriori. Sharma also notes that Mimamsa and Vedanta take a very close approach to how the Vedas are interpreted, i.e., both the schools base themselves on the Vedas. They are based on the "anta" part of the Vedas. Though, as in some other religions, Hindus accept that the Vedas were received, Hindus also recognize the limitlessness or infinity of Vedas. This also means that Hindus attribute no specific time or place or persons -- either cosmic or human -- for the "receiving process" of the Vedas.
Also he explains the four parts of each Veda as (i) Mantras or Samhitas: the hymns in praise of gods, (ii) Brahmanas: the prose explanations of the ritual use of these hymns (iii) Aranyakas: reflections on the significance of the ritual and (iv) Upanishads: Secret texts meant to communicate the highest mysteries which go beyond ritual into the realm of spiritual knowledge.
In the explanation of the first Mahavakya Aham Brahma Asmi (I am Brahman), Sharma nicely notes that though everything "is" Brahman, the way in which Maya (or the universe) "is" Brahman is not the same as Atma "is" the same as Brahman.

The conclusions has the following translation of the famous verse on the main tenet of Advaita:

The non-duality of the Brahman,
The non-reality of the world
and the non-difference of the Atman from the Brahman
These constitute the teachings of Advaita

Considering that one of Mr. Sharma's books is dedicated to Eliot Deutsch, It is surprising that the book does not to cite Deutsch's book.

On another note, Arvind Sharma's experiential approach to Advaita seems to be unique and special. This is partly because, one of the primary questions of Advaita is "What is Real?". This question has to arise in the seeker's mind, after he feels that some of his experiences are not real!

A reader on the advaitin mailing list had recommended strongly, the book "The Rope and the Snake" by him. This is the Amazon link.

Read the rest of this entry >>