Dvaita List Attacks Bhagavad-Gita As It Is

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>-- Mensaje Original --

>Tue, 8 Jul 2003 14:06 -0400

>"H. Krishna Susarla" <krishnas

>"H. Krishna Susarla" <krishnas

>"VAST (Vaishnava Advanced Studies)" <VAST

>Dvaita List Attacks Bhagavad-Gita As It Is (and as usual,

no one

> bothers to respond)

>

>

>I found this at

>http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/gita/prabhupada_review.shtml

>

>With as many scholars as we have today working in the ISKCON

community,

>I wonder if any of them would be interested to writing/posting a

>refutation of this nonsense. It's obviously written by someone who is

>ill-mannered and dishonest. But then again, many academic scholars

are

>similar in their behavior, and I do not notice any reluctance to

refute

>their misconceptions.

>

>The basic problems with this author are two as far as I can see it.

>First of all, he assumes that Srila Prabhupada is trying to follow

Sri

>Madhva's philosophy because of claiming disciplic descent. A large

>majority of his essay is based on this misconception.

>

>Other issues are in relation to various statements Srila Prabhupada

has

>made about astronomy, cosmology, etc. I'm sure these could be easily

>refuted if one could fight the shaastric basis for some of Srila

>Prabhupada's remarks in this direction.

>

>Yours,

>

>- K

>

>

>H. Krishna Susarla

>www.achintya.org

>

>from http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/gita/prabhupada_review.shtml :

>

>In the Upanishads, the sacred Vedanta texts of yore, one finds in

more

>than one place the well known metaphor of a blind person leading

other

>blind people astray, to illustrate what happens when an incompetent,

>styling himself a learned man, attempts to teach others what he knows

>not himself. This metaphor is very apt to describe Prabhupada's

>translation and purport for the Bhagavad Gita. For while he claims

that

>his translation and purports follow a "disciplic succession" (see

bottom

>of Prabhupada's Introduction

<http://www.asitis.com/introduction.html> )

>of traditional commentaries and understanding of the work deriving

from

>the dualistic school of Vedanta of Madhva (number 5 on Prabhupada's

>claimed list of succession), they in fact show a great divergence and

>opposition to the traditional understanding found in the latter's

works.

>

>In fact, given the evidence, it is far more correct to say that

>Prabhupada's interpretations derive from Shankara

><http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/sankara-life.html> 's than from

>Madhva <http://www.dvaita.org/madhva> 's. For instance, in explaining

>XI-47, Shankara clearly says `tvadanyena tvattaH anyena kenachit.h na

>dR^ishhTapUrvam.h' -- none other than you had ever seen this

(Universal

>Form of Krishna) before.

>Prabhupada follows suit by saying, in translation: "The Supreme

>Personality of Godhead said: My dear Arjuna, happily have I shown

you,

>by My internal potency, this supreme universal form within the

material

>world. No one before you has ever seen this primal form, unlimited

and

>full of glaring effulgence."

>Here's what Madhva says in explaining XI-47 in the gItA-tAtparya:

there

>he anticipates the mistaken exposition, and explains the correct

>interpretation of `tvad.h anyena na dR^ishhTapUrvam.h' --

> mayA prasannena tavA.arjunedaM |

> rUpaM paraM darshitamAtmayogAt.h |

> tejomayaM vishvamanantamAdyam.h |

> yanme tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvam.h || 47 ||

>

> tAtparya --

>

> `vishvanAmA sa bhagavAn.h yataH pUrNaguNaH' iti pAdme |

> `tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvaM' ityanena tenaivendrasharIreNa

> dR^ishhTamiti j~nAyate | tvadanyeneti tvadavarApexayA |

> tairapi tadvanna dR^ishhTamityeva |

>

> `vishvarUpaM prathamato brahmA.apashyachchaturmukhaH |

> tachchhatAMshena rudrastu tachchhatAMshena vAsavaH |

> yathendreNa purA dR^ishhTumapashyat.h so.arjuno.api san.h |

> tadanye kramayogena tachchhatAMshAdidarshanaH ||'

>

> -- iti brahmANDe || 47 ||

>

> "He, the Lord, is called Vishva, for being of complete attributes,"

> says the Padma. By `tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvaM' is

> indicated the fact that you (Arjuna) alone, in the body of Indra,

> had seen it before. By `tvadanyena', people lower than you are

> indicated. That they did not see as you saw, thus only.

>

> "The vishva-rUpa was first seen by the Chaturmukha-Brahma;

> a hundredth of that by Rudra, and a hundredth of that by the

> deities; as had been seen by Indra previously, so too was seen by

> Arjuna; other than he, according to worth, was seen a hundredth,

> and so forth," says the Brahmanda.

>Therefore, Madhva's reading of `tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvaM' is to

>say, "they, the people less than you in worth, did not see as you

did."

>This is stated by Sri <http://www.dvaita.org/scholars/Ragh_T.html>

>Raghavendra as:

> tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvamityasya tvatto.adhamairadR^ishhTa-

> pUrvamityarthaH | tairapi svayogyatAnurodhena dR^ishhTatve.api

> arjunavanna dR^ishhTamityadR^ishhTatvoktiH | tathA tvayA tu

> indrasharIreNa dR^ishhTapUrvamityapi tvadanyeneti

>visheshhaNAllabhyate |

>

> By saying `tvadanyena na dR^ishhTapUrvaM', that it had never been

> seen by people lower than you in worth, thus is the meaning.

While

> even such people had seen according to their worth, they had not

> seen as Arjuna did (i.e., did not have the same grasp), so

> [by his standard], non-sight is stated. Also, by you (Arjuna),

this

> had been seen previously through the body of Indra -- for that

>reason,

> too, "none other than you," such a qualification applies.

>Therefore, Madhva says, as clarified by his commentator, that "none

>other than you had seen this" means "none who were less than you ever

>saw as you did," and also that "it was none other than you, who saw

this

>previously [as Indra]."

>While followers of Prabhupada may have any number of objections

against

>this interpretation, it is important to remember that our purpose

here

>is only to establish an irreconcilable difference in this matter

between

>Madhva and Prabhupada, and that is achieved. Egregious as

Prabhupada's

>error in this instance is, it is not the only one; his explanation of

>the Bhâgavata's `kR^ishhNastu bhagavAn.h svayam.h' is radically

opposed

>to what Madhva has said in his commentary on Bhagavad

><http://www.dvaita.org/shaastra/gita/bg1041.html> Gita X-41 and

>elsewhere. It is clear that Prabhupada lied through his teeth in

>claiming that his purports followed a "disciplic succession" as

claimed.

>

>In addition, Prabhupada's lack of understanding of even the most

basic

>facts of science and astronomy is manifest, so much so that one

wonders

>if he ever passed high school. Consider for instance what he says

under

>X-21: "There are fifty varieties of winds blowing in space," and

later,

>"It appears from this verse that the moon is one of the stars;

therefore

>the stars that twinkle in the sky also reflect the light of the sun.

The

>theory that there are many suns within the universe is not accepted

by

>Vedic literature. The sun is one, and as by the reflection of the sun

>the moon illuminates, so also do the stars. Since Bhagavad-gita

>indicates herein that the moon is one of the stars, the twinkling

stars

>are not suns but are similar to the moon." Incidentally, Madhva reads

>the verse to say that the moon is not like the stars, so Prabhupada's

>grand delusion that he is in accordance with a "disciplic

succession" of

>understanding "Vedic literature" cannot be taken seriously.

>In all, a very poor work, which is to be read and understood only for

>what it most certainly is not -- a qualified, balanced

representation of

>the meaning of the Bhagavad Gita. It is indeed a travesty that it is

>often taken seriously by those believing it to have the sanction of

>Madhva.

>

>

>