Wednesday 21 August 2019

Vedanta and Anit-Natalism


Having approached the Teacher in the prescribed manner i.e. with fuel in his hand; he thus addresses him:

Thus in this beginningless world on account of my own actions I have been giving up successive bodies assumed amongst gods, men, animals and the denizens of hell and assuming ever new ones. I have in this way been made to go round and round in the cycle of endless births and deaths as in a Persian wheel by my past actions, and having the course of time obtained the present body. I have got iired of this going round and round in the wheel of transmigration and have come to you, Sir, to put and end to this rotation.
(from Upadesa Sahasri Chap.1 by Shankaracarya)

This sounds arguably very much like prospective anti-natalism. Gratitude for this birth and the meeting with a Teacher is a given that mitigates that. One might also press the point that the doctrine of maya in Vedanta is nihilist. We are, it is held, radically deluded and under a misapprehension of what our true nature is. That is a shallow understanding of maya and a simplistic grasp of the snake/rope analogy. Creation is not free standing and self supporting. It is non-different from Brahman, an indescribable (anirvachanaya) relation, neither identical nor different.




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