To a spiritualist, apart from resorting to faith, invoking of the authority of religious celebrities of the bygone eras, is a sine qua non of dogmatic rationalization.
No defense of the Vedantic dogma is complete without employing the arguments of Adi Sankara as supposedly irrefutable clinchers of the Advaita gospel.
Adi Sankara is the poster-boy of the 'purity' and 'perfection' of traditional vedantism.
It is not unusual to find such arguments as these attributed to Vedantins like Sankara:
Though Sankara is known and acknowledged as the foremost evangelist of Advaita Vedanta yet quoting Adi Sankara is a lame exercise in argumentative brow-beating that is not going to work.
Sankara has used means both fair and foul to carry the message of Vedanta far and wide in India. And he has made no bones about his true opinion of humanity and life in general by calling people “Mooda Mathe” or fools.
One would need to ask who gave Adi Sankara the license to discredit the aids of reasoning and understanding such as perception, observation, experience ( not just individual), inductive, inferential and deductive logic by voicing such ridiculous and arrogant nonsense as
“Atman (The Self, brahman) CANNOT be known by means of perception or inference”
Also where did this self-appointed gate-keeper of the mystical/airy-fairy/pixie dust abode of the Brahman know the rules of a compliant seeker of Brahman and what is the proof that a ‘tranquil mind’ and ‘control over senses’ etc. is the passport to knowledge of Brahman.
And how does the spiritual witch Dr. Adi Sankara measure the tranquility of the mind and control of the senses.
Is there a Baashya on these esoteric measurements and traditional vedantic algorithms for their derivation?
The point is not that independent thinking is falling over itself to seek the elusive Brahman, but that the ill-deserved reputation of demagogues like Adi Sankara and their irresponsible endorsement of supra-sensory concepts denigrates the cause of empirical reasoning that has been the engine of human progress.
Before accepting the primacy of scriptures in showing the validity of opinions on 'Brahman', 'Atman' and Moksha', we must question how its defenders like Adi Sankara and the rest, resort to pointing to its so-called divine origin and revelatory nature and inspirations?
If they did, which they very likely did, how did they prove these assertions other than by resorting to tautological arguments? ( Sankara has surely attempted the discredited ‘primary uncaused cause’ argument). This article on spiritualist fads references a link to his long-winded dogmatic bhaasyas
The problem with Sankara or other Vedantins assuming the divine origin of the Upanishads is that the non-human origin/composition of the scriptures is not axiomatic or self-evident anymore.
The human composition of these can and has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. Only spiritualists blinded by their religious allegiance can’t see or accept it.
Brahman as a hypothesis can start with an axiom, but the phenomenon underlying that hypothesis should satisfy various tests of rigorous validation.
Since Brahman has failed even the smallest of the validations or tests of reason and logic, it is a null and void hypothesis, which no amount of endorsement from the likes of Adi Sankara can rescue it from.
People like LN can make absurd inferences, because religious affiliation does not recognize the primacy of logic and reason
I will tell why I think Sankara ends up discrediting objectivity and reasoning.
Sankara’s argument implies a dichotomy of phenomenon that is either false on one hand or what can be termed as UN-falsifiable on the other hand. That is, there supposedly exists a distinction between a temporal or physical world or reality and a higher or greater realm or reality which is called the Brahman.
Sankara has very emphatically defended this position (which implies dualism) and yet claimed that Brahman which is incapable of perception is yet the Ultimate reality which is hidden from our senses though the illusion of Maya and subsumed in it.
He has termed physical appearances and reality as ‘Mithya’ or fiction and that release from it is required and possible only thru asceticism and bhakti. This is again a contradiction of non-dualism and an obvious absurdity.
No defense of the Vedantic dogma is complete without employing the arguments of Adi Sankara as supposedly irrefutable clinchers of the Advaita gospel.
Adi Sankara is the poster-boy of the 'purity' and 'perfection' of traditional vedantism.
It is not unusual to find such arguments as these attributed to Vedantins like Sankara:
- "All traditional vedantins hold that humans are not the source of the knowledge of Upanishads"
- "This is purely accepted as an axiom and is not forced upon an opponent"
- "For Adi Sankara, the nature of Upanishads as not having human authors, is an axiom"
- "Vedantins never insisted that the opponents should accept their scriptures as true"
- "There are three “valid” sources of knowledge for traditional vedantins – 1. perception 2. inference 3. scripture."
- “In his Upadesasahasri, Adi Sankara says that only to a disciple who satisfies some requirements, like having a tranquil mind, control over his senses etc. can the knowledge of Brahman be taught.”
Though Sankara is known and acknowledged as the foremost evangelist of Advaita Vedanta yet quoting Adi Sankara is a lame exercise in argumentative brow-beating that is not going to work.
Sankara has used means both fair and foul to carry the message of Vedanta far and wide in India. And he has made no bones about his true opinion of humanity and life in general by calling people “Mooda Mathe” or fools.
One would need to ask who gave Adi Sankara the license to discredit the aids of reasoning and understanding such as perception, observation, experience ( not just individual), inductive, inferential and deductive logic by voicing such ridiculous and arrogant nonsense as
“Atman (The Self, brahman) CANNOT be known by means of perception or inference”
Also where did this self-appointed gate-keeper of the mystical/airy-fairy/pixie dust abode of the Brahman know the rules of a compliant seeker of Brahman and what is the proof that a ‘tranquil mind’ and ‘control over senses’ etc. is the passport to knowledge of Brahman.
And how does the spiritual witch Dr. Adi Sankara measure the tranquility of the mind and control of the senses.
Is there a Baashya on these esoteric measurements and traditional vedantic algorithms for their derivation?
The point is not that independent thinking is falling over itself to seek the elusive Brahman, but that the ill-deserved reputation of demagogues like Adi Sankara and their irresponsible endorsement of supra-sensory concepts denigrates the cause of empirical reasoning that has been the engine of human progress.
Before accepting the primacy of scriptures in showing the validity of opinions on 'Brahman', 'Atman' and Moksha', we must question how its defenders like Adi Sankara and the rest, resort to pointing to its so-called divine origin and revelatory nature and inspirations?
If they did, which they very likely did, how did they prove these assertions other than by resorting to tautological arguments? ( Sankara has surely attempted the discredited ‘primary uncaused cause’ argument). This article on spiritualist fads references a link to his long-winded dogmatic bhaasyas
The problem with Sankara or other Vedantins assuming the divine origin of the Upanishads is that the non-human origin/composition of the scriptures is not axiomatic or self-evident anymore.
The human composition of these can and has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. Only spiritualists blinded by their religious allegiance can’t see or accept it.
Brahman as a hypothesis can start with an axiom, but the phenomenon underlying that hypothesis should satisfy various tests of rigorous validation.
Since Brahman has failed even the smallest of the validations or tests of reason and logic, it is a null and void hypothesis, which no amount of endorsement from the likes of Adi Sankara can rescue it from.
People like LN can make absurd inferences, because religious affiliation does not recognize the primacy of logic and reason
I will tell why I think Sankara ends up discrediting objectivity and reasoning.
Sankara’s argument implies a dichotomy of phenomenon that is either false on one hand or what can be termed as UN-falsifiable on the other hand. That is, there supposedly exists a distinction between a temporal or physical world or reality and a higher or greater realm or reality which is called the Brahman.
Sankara has very emphatically defended this position (which implies dualism) and yet claimed that Brahman which is incapable of perception is yet the Ultimate reality which is hidden from our senses though the illusion of Maya and subsumed in it.
He has termed physical appearances and reality as ‘Mithya’ or fiction and that release from it is required and possible only thru asceticism and bhakti. This is again a contradiction of non-dualism and an obvious absurdity.
No comments:
Post a Comment