Maya and Avidya

[Guest guest]

Namaste Devanathan-ji,

Here’s the nub of the difficulty for me and I think the reason why the notion of sat-karana-vada is not mainstream. A ‘vada’ as I understand it is an ‘ism’, that is to say a body of thought concerning some matter which can be clearly distinguished and has specific historical origins. Satkaryavada easily satisfies those criteria, however what you propose as ‘satkaranavada’ in opposition to this is really no different from the general idea of material causality which everyone accepts i.e. the material cause of a vessel is the clay out of which it is made. This is not to focus the idea of causality totally on the material; there is as well efficient, formal and final causality. A single cause might have all those aspects.

Sankara still has use for the satkaryavada idea of the pre-existence of the effect in the cause. He has adopted it for his own purposes while at the same time rejecting insentient pradhana. B.S.B. II.i.18 is a full treatment. Prior to that he discusses cause as such from the material aspect. I think it is clear from this that there is no absolute disjunction between cause and effect. For the effect to be real it must pre-exist in the cause. Potency is being as much as act is. Simply because something is not tangible does not mean that it is not real.

My feeling is that the opposition that you suggest between what you call sat karana vada and sat karya vada is overstated. I do not find it in B.S.B. but I am open to correction by any of the learned members on this point.

Best Wishes,

Michael.