To Sri Neil

[Guest guest]

Namaste Sri Neil,

 

On 29/01/07, nlg108108 <nlg_108 (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:

> And second, I just want to say that your description of the negation of

> apparent conceptions of "I" is just marvelous. For several years I

> studied and practiced according to the Madyamika-Prasangika, as

> expounded by Nagarjuna in his Mulamadyamikakarika, and the principle

> commentators of that work. And you seem to hit on the nub of what

> became for me an irreconcileable problem: once all has been negated,

> there is still some "thing" left, which I am now recognizing as the true

> "I" (Atman) and -- as you point out in your discussion of the universe

> -- its complete identity with the ultimate basis of reality, Brahman.

> This is precisely what led me to Advaita-Vedanta

 

 

I am delighted to know that you have been a longtime practitioner of

the Prasangika-Madhyamika teachings. I have always had many doubts

about where exactly is it that the Madhyamika teachings differ from

those of Advaita. We have had discussions on this in the past and

while those discussions were useful, they were far from being

conclusive.

 

>From what I have understood so far, it appears that the Madhyamika

system in general avoids taking a stance on the substratum of all

apparent phenomena, which according to Advaita-Vedanta is the Self or

Brahman. Some commentators hold the view that the Vedantic Brahman is

the same as the shunyata of the Madhyamika-s. But I have always felt

that shunyata is equivalent to the Vedantic mithya rather than

Brahman. When the Vedantin says that the world/words/concepts/etc are

mithya, what he is really saying is that all of these are conventions,

not real in their own right. In this regard, you might wish to have a

look at the following 2-part article by Swami Dayananda Saraswati, one

of the foremost contemporary teachers of Advaita.

 

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds/pdf/Samadhi_One.pdf

http://www.avgsatsang.org/hhpsds/pdf/Samadhi_Two.pdf

 

The explanation of mithya in the first part is one of the clearest I

have ever come across, and seems to be similar to the Buddhist

shunyata from what little I have understood of the latter.

 

However Ken Wilber (who is supposedly a follower of the Madhayamika

system), in one of his books, makes a very clear reference to the

substratum. This has left me confused on whether the Madhyamika-s

accept the substratum at all. Sankara's one -sentence criticism of the

Madhyamika teaching in his sutrabhashya (as I have understood it) is

that negating things **without affirming the Self as the substratum**

is tantamount to nihilism. However, some people opine that this is a

criticism not of Nagarjuna's system but of a later variant propounded

by Dharmakirti.

 

Would greatly appreciate any clarification from you on this matter.

 

SrI gurubhyo namaH

Ramesh