Fwd: Question on Ishvara and Brahman

[Guest guest]

advaitin , " V. Krishnamurthy " <profvk

wrote:

 

advaitin , " mahadevadvaita "

<mahadevadvaita@> wrote:

>

>

>

> May I ask one last thing. I know that this again is kind of a

> controversial issue but I will ask. What is the difference between

> Atman and Ishvara ? In one of the lectures of Swami Parmarthananda-

ji

> (www.yogamalika.org), he says even Ishvara is endowed with Sattva

> qualities and Atman is pure awareness, totally devoid of

qualities.

> Ishvara to me is pretty much a synonym for Brahman. In one of the

> first Advaita sadhana postings of Prof VK, the Mahaswamigal said

Atma-

> jnana can only be achieved by the grace of Ishvara (I don't have

the

> exact reference). Who else but Atman can still and calm my mind ?

That

> Atman itself is Ishvara to me.

>

> thanks and best regards,

> Om Tat Sat

>

 

Namaste Mahadevji,

 

Brahman is nirguNa, attributeless; is not the predicate of

anything, cannot be pointed at, is neither this nor that – and thus

it goes on.

 

So there is no way of `worshipping' it. No, we cannot even talk

about that except by giving it a name, though not a form. Therefore

Upanishads give it a name `tat', just for purposes of referring to

it and to say that `tat' has no attributes.

 

But our intellect wants to do something with the Almighty Supreme. A

worship, a prayer, a meditation, an offering or whatever. All these

involve a duality of the worshipper and the worshipped. The moment

we think of Brahman as an object of worship or prayer or meditation,

im mediately, the concept of brahman is jeopardized. Thus the

intellect has created brahman with attributes – a saguna brahman.

 

The very fact that our intellect has come in the picture implies

that mAyA has done its job. It is mAyA's effect that there is an

intellect and we begin to think of objects through our intellect.

Thus Brahman, with the upAdhi (impact, coating, influence,

superposition, covering, conditioning, ... - - choose your word)

of mAyA, is called saguNa brahman. You can go on debating now

whether we (through our intellect) created the saguna brahman or

whether it is somewhere there, if not an object, as a subject. That

question is neither relevant now, nor will it take us anywhere.

 

That saguNa brahman is the Ishvara. Now Ishvara has all the

superlative qualities that any religion associates with Almighty

God. But mAyA did not create Ishvara. It is Ishvara that created

the mAyA. MayA is in His control. It is like a snake having poison

but is never affected by its poison. Ishvara is not affected by His

mAyA.

 

On the other hand, the spark of brahman which is the core essence of

beings,(jIva-bhUtAM) is the creation of mAyA. So all jIvas are under

the influence of mAyA. To get out of this mAyA we need the Grace of

that Ishvara, who, by His magic wand, can take us out of the grip of

mAyA.

 

Thus Brahman and Ishvara are the same, except for the way we look at

them. If we don't look for brahman, but knowing we are brahman, if

we `are' brahman, then there is nothing more to say or do. `aham

brahma asmi'. Period.

 

On the other hand, if we want to look `at' brahman in some way or

other, already we have made brahman an object and thus it is already

only the saguna-brahman that we are talking about. So we can `look

at' it, we can meditate on it, we can aspire to `reach' it and all

that sort of thing.

 

Jiva on the other hand, so long as it is in the grip of mAyA, is

separate from brahman and also separate from other jIvas. Once it

transcends mAyA, it is brahman. This is the jIva-brahma aikyam that

advaita keeps trumpeting to us. When jIva identifies itself with

brahman there is no need to bring in an Ishvara now; because the

very identification of jIva with brahman already includes the

identification of brahman and Ishvara – because the identification

itself is something which transcends the mAyA. So the upAdhi of mAya

is gone from both jIva and Ishvara.

 

PranAms to all advaitins.

profvk

 

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