bAdha

[Guest guest]

Nameste Rameshji,

thanks for your note about the commentary in

Tripura Rahasya being by the translator. This is not clear from the

layout of the book. What is being written as a gloss on the text is

allied to its purport. On pg.127 (Chap.XVI.paras.71 - 72) it is written

" Their true significance lies in the fact that the universe exists, but

not separately from the Primal Reality - God. Wisdom lies in realising

everything as Siva and not in treating it as void " .

 

If I might add just a small point here about the rope/snake trope. When

it is used in relation to sublation it is an example of sublation/bAdha.

When it is used in relation to superimposition/adhyasa it is an analogy

for it. That is to say that it is to be understood in a narrowly focused

way to express the transfer of the 'inert' object into the conscious

subject. The upadhi/limiting adjunct theory is an explication of this

essential insight. Vedanta Paribhasa is a key resource in this area. Sri

Sastri has provided notes to it on his web site.

 

http://www.geocities.com/snsastri/

 

Best Wishes,

Michael.

[Guest guest]

Namaste,

 

I must confess to being somewhat uncomfortable with technical terms

like 'bAdha' and 'sublation'. Literally 'bAdha' means 'opposition,

repulsion, driving away'. And in advaita logic, this term describes

the exposition of a contradiction, on the way to an underlying

clarity of truth. Hence 'bAdha' is translated as 'sublation' ('sub-'

meaning 'under' and '-lation' meaning a 'removal' or 'taking away').

 

But then, what is it that gets contradicted in this way? The

contradiction is directed against 'mithyA' which implies a false

confusion or mixing up of different things that need to be

distinguished. And the goal is a clear truth, beneath the

complications that confusion breeds.

 

Advaita logic thus proceeds through the distinction of a complicating

duality, towards a non-dual clarity where all distinctions are

dissolved in uncomplicated truth.

 

A piece of verse is appended below, trying to suggest this

paradoxical investigation of reflective reasoning, from complex and

confused appearances towards plain and simple truth.

 

Ananda

 

 

Complexity and truth

--------------------

 

If truth is taken to be complex,

this implies that lies are told.

 

For, any such complexity

must add to truth a something else

which is at least a little false.

 

What thus appears is a confusion,

mixing up what's true and right

with something else that's false and wrong.

 

The mix-up is not fully true.

Nor yet is it completely false.

It's a perplexing, tricky show

of mind's belief in partial lies.

 

These partial lies keep being told

by our perceptions, thoughts and feelings

of a world that seems made up

from many different, changing things.

 

Each show of any part of world

that is perceived or thought or felt

is not quite true; as it ignores

what's left unseen, unthought, unfelt.

 

True knowing cannot know in part.

It cannot be attained mixed up

with ignorance of what perception,

thought and feeling fail to show.

 

Where knowing truly is attained,

it must be realized unmixed

with part perceptions, thoughts and feelings

showing objects in the world.

 

Just that true knowing stays on present

through all change of mental states.

Its knowing presence carries on,

as they appear and disappear.

 

It is their knowing principle:

found common to each one of them,

as they perceive and think and feel

each object in the seeming world.

 

That knowing is called 'consciousness'.

It knows itself, as knowing light,

illuminating every act

of body, sense and mind in world.

 

Whatever may appear perceived,

or thought or felt, by anyone,

expresses that same consciousness

and is absorbed back into it.

 

It is thus plain and simple truth:

found by returning back to it

as that which knows, as one's own self,

identical with all that's known.