Sunday 29 August 2021

Thou art That #141, #142, #143

 Please tell us (Idealists)  what benefit you derive by holding that knowledge depends on other things.  If it is contended that dependence (of knowledge) on the knower is desirable (we reply that) the knower also, according to us, is nothing but Knowledge.

The intellect itself, though indivisible, is looked upon by deluded people as consisting of the division of the knower, knowing, and the known.

Action, agents etc. consist, according to us, (Idealists) of knowledge only.

(Reply from advaitin). You must accept an agent of this knowledge, if you admit its existence and destruction (every moment).   (#141, #142,  #143 Chap. XVIII Upadesa Sahasri)

The locus classicus for a thoroughgoing refutation of Buddhist Idealism (Vijnanavada) is of course Bsb.Bh. II.ii.28.  It is ironic that what is called British Empiricism shares the same view that what we are in contact with is a state of consciousness and anything further is an inference of some kind or native faith.  In other words we perceive perceptions.

Sankara in this comment on Vijnanavada impugns the annica/annata (no-self/momentariness) aspect since the topic of the chapter is the Self.  Holding that there in no knower only knowing implies that the agent of knowing is created and destroyed in every moment.  Thereby they (Buddhist Idealists) contradict themselves.

Friday 27 August 2021

Thou art That #136/7

 “Does substantiation mean being known, being endowed with existence, or anything else?  You should remember the two alternatives spoken of in the previous verse if it means ‘being known’.

As it is well-known that all things come in to existence from their causes no effort ( by way of the application of an evidence ) is necessary for substantiation.”  (#136/137 Chap. XVIII Upadesa Sahasri)

This is a puzzling if not somewhat gnomic verse.  What I understand from it is that the Self is self-evident, ‘pratibodha videtam’ known with every state of awareness and therefore substantiation in the received sense of established by the use of evidence does not apply.

Thursday 26 August 2021

Thou art That #135

 “If the conscious Self Itself is taken to be ignorant an evidence is necessary  in order that It may know Itself to be so.  It is surely necessary in knowing the Self if one  (i.e. the ego) other than It be regarded as ignorant” (# 135 Chap. XVIII Upadesa Sahasri)

The Self is taken to be changeless and as knowledge arising out of the activity of knowing or cognition implies a change the Self is not a knowing subject.

“The intellect has no consciousness and the Self no action.  The word ‘knows’ can, therefore, reasonably be applied  to neither of them.”  (#54 Chap. XVIII Upadesa Sahasri)

The evidence for the Self comes via its reflection in the intellect.  The Body/Mind/Intellect complex is inert matter seeming to be conscious due to its pervasion by the Self.

“The intellect, being transparent and next to the self, easily catches the reflection of the intelligence of the Self.  Therefore even wise men happen to identify themselves with it first..”

“It (the Self) thinks as it were:  By illumining the intellect, which does the thinking, through its own self-effulgent light that pervades the intellect, the Self assumes the likeness of the latter and seems to think.....”   (Brh.Up. IV.iii.7 Sankara’s commentary)

Wednesday 18 August 2021

Thou Art That # 134

 #134:  Is the Self also substantiated by means of an evidence or not?  Though the Self Itself is independent of evidence, evidence is necessary in order to know It.

Evidence is necessary to know it.  Must that be the case because there are so many theories of the Self some argument must place some evidence, some chain of reasons above the others, more cogent than the others.  How else are we to be persuaded or convinced.  What does evidence mean in this case?  Could you miss it?  It’s all there, all that is to be known but you have missed something, a factor that you have discounted perhaps.

What are the means of knowledge (pramanas) that can precipitate some evidence, some knowledge.  There is the dog that didn’t bark in the night time, the non-apprehension of existence.  Is it something like that, an inference maybe from the immediacy of memory  My memory now is of my experience then.  That indicates the apperceptive unity of experience but not I think the Self in Vedanta.

Sankara is being as usual very condensed, an inspiration to ‘atma vichara’ (inquiry into the Self) and not offering solid answers that give us full marks without true insight.  Substantiation for instance, does that mean establishing that the Self exists?  Our intuition is that the Self is self-evident but is it, so to speak, free standing?  Can the knower be known, can the hand grasp itself?

More anon on #135 etc.

Friday 13 August 2021

Irish Crony Virus generates Bull Variant.

 Lately Ireland has been hit by the recurring , all season crony virus.  The Zappone affair involved a former minister for children and an abortion advocate who had decamped to the U.S. to live out her retirement after losing her seat, proposed herself for the job of special envoy to the U.N. Her remit was to be Freedom of Expression.  She’s 70 so this was a nice little earner for the sunset years.   She was appointed by fiat which annoyed the public greatly sunk as we are in the most repressive covid regime in Europe beset with contradictory guidelines.  No other candidates were interviewed, the job was a pure invention.  As the government was weathering the storm for this stroke it was revealed that she had hosted a garden party for 50 guests two weeks prior to her appointment which had been attended by government figures.  No masks, no covid passports just a general love in with tables for 6 scattered in the ample garden of a posh hotel near the parliament buildings.  What?  The populace are forbidden communion, confirmation and all kinds of celebrations for fear of the ‘plague’.  A priest saying an open air mass for 20 people was stopped by the police and fined 500€.

It’s the small things that catch them out, the stuff that isn’t complicated which refuses to spin.  Bring on the Attorney General who explained that if you looked at the actual emergency legislation an open air gathering of 200 people was permissible so by retrospective legal legerdemain it was all ok.  Why had not this been made clear to all other hotels who didn’t know about this and lost a great deal of revenue through obedience to guide lines which were restrictive.

An ex T.D. (member of parliament)Sean Kyne, now an appointee to the Senate was sent out to meet the media.  He explained -

“The garden party was legal but the guidelines were not followed”.

In the end Zappone resigned the position and is now back in New York.  There’s a saying - “The back of one is the face of another”.

Thursday 12 August 2021

Advaita versus Self-Luminous Cognition

 

“#123: The modifications of the intellect are manifested, known and endowed with existence by another, i.e. the Self which is immediately known and different from them.  It is inferred with the help of the example of a lamp.”  (from Chap.XVIII. Upadesa Sahasri of Sankara)

The lamp is one of those basic analogies in Advaita which act to prime the intellect..  A lamp renders visible both itself and whatever is in its vicinity.  The bodymind is not self luminous as is held by Buddhist and Western philosophy.  It is inert by nature.  In the presence of the Self the modifications of the mind  become apparently self conscious.  This occurs through their superimposition on the Self which is pure consciousness.

In another remark on self-luminous cognition BsBh. II.ii.28 Sankara writes:

“When you assert that cognition shines by itself like a lamp without requiring some other cognition, you virtually say that a cognition is not apprehended by any other means of knowledge or by anything else, which would be like saying that a thousand lamps shine (unknown) within a massive boulder.”

If you think solely in terms of cognition as an ultimate that is its own basis then you accept a cognition without a cogniser or an infinite regress.

Friday 6 August 2021

The Irony of Error in Vedanta

 As I was saying (prev.post), when hieratic realism tries to intellectually resolve the problem of error philosophy is born.  The witty ironism of Vedanta is to analolgise error itself as having the same form as perception.  Error is defanged and sways to the philosopher’s flute.  Whether the rope seems a snake or the snake seems a rope there has been a superimposition (adhyasa) of the object on the subject.  This is the ontological ground beyond which we cannot dig.  The focus on the psychological basis of error severally; memory, faulty sensory input, organic loss of function etc., is very interesting but it does not touch the ontological event.

The next concern must be - what is the nature of the object such that it can come in some sense to be ‘in’ the subject.

Wednesday 4 August 2021

Getting the Real Right

 

I am going to be more than usually tendentious in asserting that Realism is fundamental and Idealism a reaction to it.  What use are sacrifices, mantras, invocations, prayers, rituals etc. unless there is a reality corresponding to the performers intent?  Philosophy begins when that Realism becomes critical and considers the incorporation of error into experience.  Prior to that the fear of error gives rise to an immensely complex congeries of safeguards to prevent the priest from getting the Real wrong.