Name and Form

[Guest guest]

Namaste Madathil-Ji:

 

I have never read or practiced "lalitaa-saharanaama" per

say. After reading Chitaranjan's and your post following thoughts

came to my mind and getting attracted to read it.> >We are all

familiar with the "four-vaaNi (paraa, pashyanyanti, madhyamaa, and

vaikhari)". It's practice in yoga is stressed by our sages. It is

interesting to see the bhakta and it's association with the form

ha.msaa which is united using the word "maanasa". I think the

suffix "sa" is very important because it tell us to use mind and to

think on the form "ha.msa".

 

ManusmR^iti tell us – manaHpuutam sadaacareta.

 

Meaning - Purify with the help of conscious mind. > >Now if we apply

this principle to "lalitaa-saharanaama", it reveals beautiful and

yet practical meaning that is helpful for saadhakaa at all levels.

 

All the understanding when purified with mind suggests the form

of "ha.msa". The characteristic of

ha.msa is –

 

It is capable of separating water from milk. (The "aamla" and

high concentration of stomach acids and high potency pancreatic

enzymes instantly curdle the milk and there-by separating Cheese and

Water.) The feathers have a unique structure that repels water

(hydrophobic character). This tells us to remain in water without

getting attached to it.

 

This suggests that we need to swim in the world without getting

attached to it. This can be done only with understanding and

realization that we need to develop our own ability to be able to

separate (concentrates) the "satva" from milk (by separating what

really matters, identifying the essence of milk).> >Unfortunately if

we interpret this as the "Love" and then drown ourselves in the

ocean of "forms – maayaa" then how we could possibly liberate, if we

remain attached to the form? As a saadhaka it is our responsibility

to understand the deeper meanings why our sages may have used

specific meaningful words.

 

IMHO - All nouns designate some forms and it is up to the saadhakaa

to understand their meaning and practice them as verbs in order to

enrich our lives.

 

Just some thoughts,

 

hariH OM tat sat !

 

Dr. Yadu

 

advaitin, "Madathil Rajendran Nair"

<madathilnair>

wrote:

>

> >

> While chanting the LalitA-sahasranAmAs, I always pause at the

beauty

> of the names beginning with parA and ending with bhakta-

mAnasahaMsikA

> (parA pratyak chitIrUpA pashyantI paradevata madhyama vaikharIrUpa

> bhakta-mAnasahaMsikA) Having read your essay now, I would much love

> to live with Ms. Avidya than look for Ms. Para, because she holds

out

> the promise of keeping me in the company of Ms. Bhakta-

> mAnasahamsika. There is such a lot of beauty in the avidya of the

> bhakta singing in joy his gaze fixed on the smiling face of the

> hamsikA!

>

> >

> Madathil Nair

> ___________________

>

[Guest guest]

Dear Sri Michaelji,

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva

<ombhurbhuva@e...> wrote:

 

> going back to your original position the central misapprehension

> is that a word supplies a sense. It does not, human minds supply

> that by their thoughts about an object.

 

Going by the same argument, one might say that the colour of an

apple

is not supplied by the apple, but that the human sense (sensibility)

supplies it to the apple, and then it would all reduce to a kind of

Lockean duality.

 

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M: We have moved away here from the discussion of word and sense

to sense-data which is a different thing. My point is the simpler one

which is unconnected to this: a word in a dictionary will have different

definitions according to the sense in which it is taken by native users

of the language. There are different senses of 'sense'. In the Shorter

Oxford Dictionary I find over 30. Sense has to be agreed upon for

communication to occur. That agreement may be tacit via the context

of the discussion or achieved e.g. 'do you mean criterion in the sense

of logical entailment or symptom, Wittgenstein worries.

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According to Advaita, the word, the sense of the

word (meaning), and the mind are all inert things. Ultimately, only

the Sentient Self supplies to our awareness both the words and the

meanings, as well as the associated relationships betweem them. A

word is not simply a pattern of sound (or letters) but is a pattern

with a sense. Take away that sense from the pattern and it is no more

worthy of being called a word. So, irrespective of how it comes to

be, the sense is invariably attached to the word.

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M: A sense is attached to the word

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C.N.:

In Vedanta, words

are classified into two - Vaidika (Vedic) and laukika (worldy). The

meanings of Vedic words are said to be intrinsic and invariant. The

meanings of laukika words may be born through convention though all

such associations are eternally existent in Reality.

 

> For instance if I were to say to you 'Zeus is fierce' you

> might take Zeus to mean the God who dwells on Mount Olympus..

> bull-dog of my neighbour and so for me Zeus would have both

> sense and reference.

 

If I were to take a purely Advaitic stand, then the statements 'Zeus,

the Olympian, is fierce' and 'Zeus, the bull-dog, is fierce' are both

true as they conform to some feature in Reality, and Reality is

Existence Itself. But in the Creation of Ishvara where only some of

these features are projected as 'manifest reality' the truths of

sentences are given by the correspondence of their meanings to the

features of the projected world. That is the way of the vyavahirika

world. I would say that in paramarthika all meaningful sentences are

true, and that is the reason why a jnani who has given up everything

has indeed gained everything - for him all things are true and his

Self is full.

 

I believe that there is a normal tendency in samsara (vyavaharika

sathya) to mix up the existential predicate of the object and the

object itself. In other words, we have a tendency to say that those

objects that don't qualify to be predicated as existent are not

really objects (and that they are mental images only). From what I

know of Analytical Philosophy, a Natural Language sentence is first

paraphrased so that it may be accomodated into the Symbolic Logic

framework and then it is quantified for enabling the truth judgment

to be made. I would say that this method is valid only in so far as

the true meaning of Existence (which is synonimous with

Consciousness 'Sat-Chit') is not revealed.

 

> I won't burden you too much on your trip but it would be

> interesting to hear how you justify the idea that all words

> are objects including some, 'not', maybe, perhaps etc.

> Is 'roundness' an object? How does this work?

 

Yes, roundness is an object. It is an object that falls under the

category called 'guna' (attribute). An attribute (say, roundness) has

existence not by itself but in another padhartha i.e., substance. It

might be of interest to note that Nyaya lists things such as 'doubt'

(samsaya), 'ascertainment' (nirnaya) and 'deficiency' (nigrahasthana)

as objects (padarthas). I would say that the mind- matter dualism

which poses such a big problem to us today is absent in Nyaya - all

padarthas are simply features of Reality.

 

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M: Clearly you are using the word 'object' in a special sense. In this

sense the smile of the Chesire Cat is an object which winks in and out

of existence, as Lewis Carrol wrote.

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C.N.:

> (By the way I found the quote B.S.B. I.iii.28. You have been

> putting in the topic number (8) between the section

> (iii) and the sutra(28) number which is redundant and confusing.)

 

You are right Michaelji. I used to pick up this superfluity from the

contents section of the book, and I'll drop it henceforth.

 

> Shankaracarya does seem to reject the sphota theory as fanciful

> (pg.216) Similar ideas are to be found in Arabic (abjid) Judaic

> (Cabalah) and Greek (Gemetria) thinking.

 

Yes, Shankaracharya rejects the sphota as a separate 'thing' apart

from the letters of the word. He says that the sphota is a redundant

posit and that the meaning of the word is illuminated from the

letters that are heard just like the ants that fall into a line.

 

Does the concept of sphota exist also in the Cabalah and Greek

philosophy?

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M.:

Essentially it is a theory of the power of the word and the transmission

from the uncreated to manifest reality. You will have heard of the

Tetragrammaton YHVH "of which every consonant reveals and

symbolizes one of the four aspects or fundamental degrees of divine

all-reality." (from The Universal Meaning of the Kabbalah by Leo

Schaya).

 

There is much of interest in B.S.B.I.iii.28, thanks for your ref. I am

studying it at the moment and may offer some thoughts on when done.

 

Best Regards,

Michael.

[Guest guest]

Dear Sri Michaelji,

 

advaitin, ombhurbhuva <ombhurbhuva@e...> wrote:

> There are different senses of 'sense'. In the Shorter Oxford

> Dictionary I find over 30. Sense has to be agreed upon for

> communication to occur. That agreement may be tacit via the

> context of the discussion or achieved

> M: A sense is attached to the word

 

It is true that many different senses may be attached to a word. In

hermeneutics (Vakhyartha), the intended sense of the word is obtained

by considering the vishayata (context) which provides the appropriate

akanksha (expectation) in the mind of the hearer.

 

By the name being attached to the sense, a non-duality is meant

somewhat like colour being attached to a substance. The colour,

though it may not be the substance itself (distinctively), is

existentially not separate from the substance when it is attached to

it. Likewise, the word is married to the meaning (sense).

 

> M: Clearly you are using the word 'object' in a special sense.

> In this sense the smile of the Chesire Cat is an object which

> winks in and out of existence, as Lewis Carrol wrote.

 

I believe this special sense is the native sense of the word. If you

go back to much of ancient and medieval philosophy (both Eastern and

Western) I believe you will find the word 'object' used in this

sense. I feel the smile of the Chesire cat is a good example for

explaining Shankaracharya's commentary on the meaning of existence

and non-existence in the vyavahrika world. The word hypostasis used

by Plotinus also seems to point to something of this kind.

 

Warm regards,

Chittaranjan