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Re: Few questions

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VLN • November 12, 2002 


Srimathe Ramanujaya Namaha
Dear Shri Vaishnavas,

Dear Moderator, If this mail is of no use, please feel free to disregard the
same.

I was going through the first 100 messages in this list and was going
through the excellent mails that Shri Mani, Shri Sudarshan Iyengar and Shri
Krishna Kalale had written in reply to Shri Vidhyashankar's mails. This
subject was discussed in the same i.e the nirguna and satguna. I was just
thinking a lot on the same and came up with few thoughts which I would like
to share and would request the respected Shri Vaishnavas to validate.

Premise - Nirguna - No Guna & Saguna - Innumerous Gunas.

The approach I am going to take is probably math based. Hope I am not
confusing. I put forth the same argument to couple of my friends too. Please
be patient to read and read it carefully.

Let us assume that a Person P says that he MAY have some money in his house
and asks a person V to go and find out how much he has. V comes back and
says  that he was not able to count the money in P's house.

Based on V's reply, if we were asked a question that how much money does P
have. We may have two answers. 
1. P has so much money that V was not able to count. - Note: This is the
limitation of V i.e P has so much money but V is not able to count.
2. P has no money and hence V was not able to count (you can't count
something that is not there). Here, limitation is applied on P i.e P has no
money and hence V is not able to count.

So there is an ambiguity i.e we cannot decide anything based on this.

Assume that P is the paramatma and V is the veda. We are the jivatmas trying
to interpret the vedas. Vedas say that paramatma's gunams are not countable.
Should we take it as Nirguna or Saguna? 
In this case, we can make a decision. How?  
Let us examine the above two cases again with P as the paramatma and V as
the vedas.
Case 1: Paramatma has so many gunas(Saguna) that the Vedas are not able to
count - limitation of vedas.
Case 2: Paramatma has no gunas(Nirguna) and hence Vedas are not able to
count - limitation of the paramatma.

Now, the decision is in our hands. Which one would we choose? Should we say
paramatma is saguna i.e with all the kalyana gunas and accept that it is our
limitation that we are not able to count it? Or Should we apply the
limitation to the paramatma, who is called as the sarva-vyapi,
sarva-shakthan etc and say he has no guna?

Option 1(saguna) seems logical to most of us and that is what is declared by
Shri Ramanuja. While advaitins generally argue that the brahmam has no gunas
based on the vedic scripts, Shri Ramanujar argues that it should interpreted
as Saguna which makes more sense.

Shri Ramanujar has proved that, purely based on LOGIC, that the vedic
scriptures should mean only SAGUNA(akila heya pratyanika kalyanaika dhanaha)
and not NIRGUNA. He doesn't need any special explanation at all for this. No
wonder he is the Adiseshan by himself that he could come up with such a
fantastic explanation of vedic scripts (while our modern mathematics still
struggle with the concept of Zero and Infinity).

He claims that whenever the vedas say the paramatma is nirguna, in that
context, it should be interpreted that paramatman is beyond the three gunas
rajas, thamas and satvam. And this is applicable only in this context. At
all other places, it has been proved that paramatman has Saguna (I don't
have the knowledge to quote all those places and I apologize for the same).


I hope this wasn't a stupid explanation. My apologies in case of mistakes
and if I had wasted any of your precious time!

Adiyen Ramanuja Dasan,
Lakshmi Narasimhan.
 
-------Original Message-------
 
From: bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2002 19:38:07
To: bhakti-list@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Few questions
 
Dear Pradeep

While I dont want to comment on your analogy but still would like and 
love to add few rejoinders .. please read further...

> At a more unified theory level, non-controversial people would say
> that "Nirgunam" and "Sagunam" are like the 2-sides of a paper.
_________________________________________________________________

--- I would like to know what the contreversy is all about..and who the 
controversial
and non controversial people are ???.. -:)

_____________________________________________________________________________
_______ 


> Just as the paper definitely has 2-sides and appears based on which > 
> side and how we look at it, Lord also is both "Nirgunam" (wihtout
> Rajas,and Tamas gunas) and yet "Sagunam" posessing 
Ananta-Kalyaana-Gunams. >
_______________________________________-

There are some fallacies (as I see) in the above ....

So I shall put them as questions and intend to start off another thread....

1) What do the terms Nirgunam and Sagunam exactly Mean??
2) Are they antonyms??
3) As according to the statement above does it mean that the absence of 
Rajas and Tamas gunas alone is nirgunam??
4) So what about Sathva Guna?? Why the same hasnt been 
included(listed).. ??
5) If Satva Guna is not included does it mean presence of (Sudha) satvam 
is Nirgunam??
6) If it is a typo and so you feel that Satva guna must have been 
included(listed).. can we take that absence of such gunas themselves
as a way to to distinguish between a Saguna entity and Nirguna entity??
7) If so dont you feel absence of "Gunams" itself a Gunam for a 
Nirguna entity??

___________________________________________

> (the last paragraph is not my personal view, but I have heard the
> above being said by quite a few pravachana-kartaas)
>
> Radhe Krishna
>
> -- Pradeep

------- IMHO the content and saaraamsam of pravachanams by many 
pravachana karthas are heavily dependednt on time place and audience.
you may see at times the same pravachana kartha would be establishing 
different view (s) from one place to the other.

regards
Venkat



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