Video 21

21. Vedantasara | Texts 129-131 | Swami Sarvapriyananda

[Music] i take refuge in the atman the indivisible existence consciousness bliss absolute beyond the reach of thoughts and words and the substratum of all for the attainment of my cherished desire now in this book vedanta sarah we are considering this chapter the theme is who am i and the way the chapter is organized is around the different philosophical views in ancient india so each philosopher comes in turn and gives their theory of the atman of the self what do they think about the self and the way it is done is that we have to ask three questions what is the argument for their theory what reason do they give in sanskrit yukti then the second is experience what anubhuti do they give how do we know from our daily experience if you say that i am the mind self is the mind so what what is it in our daily experience that shows us that we are the mind so they have to provide an anubhuti and then third is shruti they provide i don't say they have to but they do provide that's the style of argumentation they do provide a supporting quotation from the scriptures in this case the vedas specifically the upanishads so this is what we have been doing we started off if you remember with a person who was not a philosopher just an ordinary person you know who said that my children are myself and then we went on to the first philosopher who came along was a very gross materialist who said the body is the self and then came another materialist another charvaka who said that no the senses are the self then came comes another philosopher who says the life itself is the self prana another one comes along and says no it's the mind which is the self thoughts feelings emotions you know memories this is the self these are pretty sophisticated theories actually and then comes the first uh buddhist philosopher multiple schools of buddhism the first buddhist philosopher which we which we come across is the yoga chaar of ghana bada the school of the mind only philosopher who says the ultimate reality there's no external reality the only reality is mind specifically he says vigna atwa this the the flashes of intellect there is only a series of flashes of vigyana or cognitions a series of cognitions thoughts feelings emotions ideas perceptions and that stream call it a stream of cognitions call it a stream of consciousness call it a stream of flashes of of buddhism this is the only reality and this is where we perceive the external world and we misconceive of ourselves as a self but it's only a stream of flashes of cognitions uh that's where we were at last time last time and we took a sort of stop to explore this school of philosophy which is a major school of buddhist philosophy it's in fact one of the two planks of tibetan buddhism modern tibetan buddhism which you find you know by his holiness the dalai lama and all the llamas who teach it um across the world nowadays there are two fundamental philosophies there's a twin philosophy which is the the ground or the foundation of tibetan buddhism uh both are from ancient india one is the this one which we read last time the yoga charter of ghana the mind only school the other one is the madhyama kasunavada the the uh emptiness what my teacher at harvard used to call the emptiness people the the bhagavad-gita these two modern tibetan buddhism is basically a synthesis of these two schools um okay now we shall go ahead now we come across some other philosophers they are all coming forth with their um they're criticizing the theories which preceded them and putting forth their own theories of self of atma what is the self text number 129 prabhakara anything um two schools of philosophers are mentioned here the prabhakara school and the tarkikas they say that ignorance agyana is the self why because of shruti passages such as different from and more internal than this is the self which consists of bliss and owing also to the fact that during sound sleep deep sleep the intellect etc merge in ignorance and further because of such experiences as i am ignorant i am devoid of knowledge etc so they say that the ignorance itself is the self there's a very peculiar way of looking at it but when you look attend closely to what they are saying it makes sense who are first of all who are we talking about here two actually three schools of philosophy are mentioned here one is that it says tarkikow um the tarkikas the tarkikas are two schools are included here the niya and the vaisheshika the niya's school and the vaisheshika and they are usually sometimes they are called tarkika literally it means those who argue those who debate the logicians the school of the logicians why are two schools classified together because their metaphysical and epistemological doctrines they share a lot most of it is shared in common what the niyah school says about the world and what the vaisheshikas say is more or less the same about the self about the world about epistemology and so on they share a lot in common minor differences um then why are there two schools well the difference in emphasis the vaishyashika school whose sutras were written by kanada they are more interested in the world the universe so they classify the universe into seven categories sapta padarta seven categories whereas the niya school the little literally means logic the school whose sutras were composed by gotama they are more interested in pramana ramana means how do we know for philosophy the moment you try to do philosophy you will immediately come across this question how do you know anything you're talking about self is the body or the world is real or the world is false brahman is real always the question will be how do you know so then we come to the study of knowledge itself how do we know anything it's called epistemology so epistemology you have to get your epistemology uh in order before you start your metaphysics metaphysics things which deal with literally after physics but it deals with the reality of the world and more technically correct name for metaphysics is ontology ontos means reality so ontology means the study of reality um and before you study reality what do you mean by reality universe body self all this is reality so what what is your theory of reality before you decide what is your theory of reality you must first decide how do you know anything at all so before ontology you have to get your epistemology right so the niyah school specializes in epistemology how do we know anything sources of knowledge the logic reasoning so the nehei school divides the universe into sixteen categories basically the seven categories of the vaisheshika school plus several categories which deal with knowledge itself and they are the ones who designed this whole system of logic used by all schools of indian philosophy the system of debate and reasoning wonderful contribution tremendous contribution of the near near school so they were sort of the major school of philosophy in fact today also even now if you study vedanta traditionally first you have to study um and you have to study sanskrit grammar and you have to study meemamsa padawak ramananda he means you must know prada shasta that means the science of words which is grammar then you must know the science of what your sentences how to interpret texts because you're going to talk about open issues these are parts of the vedas how do you interpret text how do you get meaning out of a text that is in the modern name for that is hermeneutics and the ancient name was meemamsa so you must learn meemamsa you must learn grammar vakarana you must learn vivansa and then you must that's not enough you must learn how to reason so pramara nashastra which includes epistemology and logic that is niyah so padavakya pramana literally means science of words science of sentences and the science of knowledge which translates into vyakarana grammar meemamsa hermeneutics and niya the niya system of philosophy so this is what you have to learn before you start vedant before you pick up the book of vedanta it's like a 20 or 40 year course or something like that now um so the niya vaishishika school is included here and then the imams of school the ones who are experts in interpreting the vedas the mimamsa school has two parts the purum imams and uttaram imamsa the early mims are the later meemamsa are yeah i can put it that way mewamsa literally means interpretation um there's a technical definition of that in sanskrit pujita reverential enquiry reverential inquiry into what reverential inquiry into texts which texts vedas the vedas are broadly very broadly speaking they can be classified into karma kanda and gyanakanda the portion dealing with rituals and the portion dealing with knowledge and vedanta is the portion dealing with knowledge the portion dealing with knowledge is found in the texts called the upanishads that's why we remember we defined vedanta's vedanta upanishad when we started this book what is vedanta the source of knowledge called upanishads is vedanta so vedanti is also a school of meemamsa mumsa means textual interpretation but the texts that we are supposed to deal with are the upanishads but the bulk of the vedas is not the upanishads bulk of the vedas are concerned with various kinds of rituals pre-upanishadic rituals and the school which specialized in that is called purums and in the mime sites it's a vast school of philosophy especially they are specifically interested in textual interpretation in fact if you attended professor clooney's talk last saturday one one of the texts he talked about was the it was a text purumasa text which is talking about the purusa text so the puru mimsa is also a vast school of philosophy and they had many great philosophers we will come across two of them one is called prabhakara so now you have two schools which are talking about two or three schools one is prabhakara prabhakar means the school of prabhakar what is the school of prabhakara it is a school it's a sub-school of meemams whose master was prabhakar who lived about hundred thirteen thirteen hundred years ago and who else tarkika the nyaya veshi shika school what do they say they say um ignorance or the blankness which you experience in deep sleep that's the real nature nature of the self the blankness which you experience in deep sleep that is the real nature of the self why do you say that where where does for give us a quotation from the scriptures give us um an argument give us some experience to prove your point quotation from the scripture their favorite of course taiter upanishad which is the go to for all of these people so they will because there is the panchakosha the step by step uh inquiring to the self you pick up just whatever suits you so for them the ananda my kosher suits them so they say annual deeper than this inward to this deeper subtler than this inward to this this means what the intellect which the which the mind only school of buddhists said caught on as the self they say no not that because there is there is a time when the mind also stops functioning you have no cognitions you're talking about the series of cognitions there are no those cognitions upanishad says deeper than this subtler than this more inward than the intellect more inward than the vigyana maya kosha is the anandamaya kosha the sheath of bliss which we experience in itself it is always there but we experience by itself in deep sleep sushupti that is the real nature of the self it's a very deep point in some schools of philosophy they stop here and such quotations from the shrutis or the the scriptures then um give us the reason why do you say what a strange thing to say that the real nature of the self is a blankness give us some reason the reason is this reason is pretty simple when you fall asleep everything every experience of self is erased you have no experience of the body you have no experience with children of your body of your you know about the children i give an example to when i want to talk about detachment people will say that oh it's okay detachment is for monks but we are householders we are attached and the one example i give is it's a stunning example it's not mine i got it from a monk he says that think of the that we are actually detached our nature is detachment asanga think of the greatest possible attachment in this world a young mother with her baby it's a tremendous attachment and that's necessary otherwise who would take care of the baby so young mother with the baby very attached to the baby even the baby with to which she is so much attached when she finally falls asleep at night she happily goes into deep sleep for getting the world forgetting her own body forgetting the most precious thing that she's always worried about the baby she happily forgets about it and goes into deep sleep and this is not the way we normally think about our mother going into deep sleep but this is an interesting point to note that you have no complaints you have no anxieties what's going to happen to the baby oh i i i cannot fall asleep i'm too anxious about the baby no very happily you fall asleep so when you fall asleep and it is erased the world is erased from you whatever you thought was the self the baby is erased from your experience your own body is erased from your experience your senses all those other schools the senses are not functioning mind is not functioning the intellect is not functioning all sense of individuality is lost even the sense of i am sleeping that's also lost there's no thought no memory no experience no external experience no internal experience also no dreams nothing neither um sense experience nor dreams subject objects are melded together together into one uniform blankness deep sleep and yet you might say okay that happens so yet when we get up what do we say i slept happily emphasis is on i slept happily then what was it that slept happily you are claiming the self it's not that somebody else slept happily or deep sleep happened to somebody else it happened to me i claim it therefore that is the ultimate nature of the self the self in itself has no consciousness even consciousness goes away by itself so uh that is the reasoning in fact why the naya vaishishika school has been included here is in the vaisheshika philosophy in the state of liberation moksha final liberation they use a very ancient word apavarga in the state of upper worker when the self atma reaches liberation there is no consciousness because for them in the nearby sheishika philosophy consciousness emerges when the self comes in contact with a mind very interesting and also pretty subtle point and also pretty close phenomenological description of what happens you see when do we really feel i mean we forget all your vedanta about deep sleep witnessing deep sleep the mandu kyopanisha and all of that actually practically when do we come to a sense of ourself only when we wake up when the first thought comes when the first perception comes when the first you know sensation comes i am i'm awake or the first dream starts again then only when the mind starts functioning then you feel consciousness so they say that consciousness emerges only when the self and the mind the mind comes in contact with the atma but without the mind no no consciousness and in in moksha in freedom the universe body mind they are not in contact with the self for them they are realists so there is a real universe universe will continue but the self is no no longer has a body no longer has a mind so the self just exists now you might say that's a very strange kind of freedom moksha is it something that you would want to aim for for that you have to look back and say that um the nyaya vaishyashika said but look this is what we promised let's go back to the beginning why are we at all following the school of nihilisa they say the goal is freedom from pain goal is freedom from suffering what about bliss no that's all those things are vedanta not nyaya nyaya is freedom from pain we will give you complete freedom from suffering and complete freedom from suffering requires freedom from the mind but the moment you're free of the mind you'll be free of consciousness also and you are you exist but no consciousness no mind nobody what about the world it goes on by itself there are other people around but you are free now we may sort of hesitate that's a weird kind of freedom um and in fact one great vaishnava teacher great vaishnava master in later centuries is very ancient in later centuries one great vaishnava master said better than this much much better than this moksha of the freedom of bhaisha shikha and nyaya is if i were to be born as a fox in vrindavana you know where krishna and radha were there even if i were to be born as an animal varam srigalatum navani far superior than the then the mukti of the vaisheshikas is to be born as a as a fox as an animal in vrindavana anyhow so it is that is their theory and therefore they say the real nature of the self atman by itself no consciousness and then what about the experience can you give us some experience where do we experience this so we experience it all the time ahmad i am no knowledge deep sleep or uh aham aggani i do not know the the absence of knowledge particular knowledges which we have in our day-to-day life and also the complete absence of any kind of knowledge in deep sleep these are signs that we exist without knowledge that means without mind without consciousness so this is a kind of subtle point they are making anyhow we may not like it but it's a plausible point they have made then the other school there is a another school of purva me mamsa um the bhatta school this is the school of purum imam sir which is whose master was kumari bhatta one of the greatest philosophers that india has produced just uh preceding shankaracharya kumar labata lived about 1400 years ago and he was a master of the purum imams school he has a different view about the self he's also purumen mamasa but a different view of the self text number 130. so this is subtle difference it says the bhattas on the contrary say that the consciousness associated with the ignorance is the self on account of such shruti passages as during dreamless self the atman is undifferentiated consciousness and full of bliss it's from the manduk upanishad owing also to the fact that both consciousness and unconsciousness are present in the state of dreamless sleep and from such experiences as i do not know myself etc so what has been said here it says that no unconsciousness is not the self the real nature of the self is consciousness illumining ignorance deep sleep is not just ignorance it is consciousness illuminating ignorance it's like light shining in a void you see a very good example is deep space in deep space which looks black completely black and dark but it is full of sunlight streaming through the space between earth and the sun is full of sunlight streaming towards the earth so much light is there it looks completely dark how do you know there's light say for example when a comet goes and you'll see the tail blazing forth what what's happening does the comet have its own lighting system no it's a sunlight which is reflected there's nothing to reflect the sunlight and therefore it looks dark similarly in deep in deep sleep there's nothing to be aware of except the ignorance itself so that's why it seems no consciousness but there is consciousness there is consciousness in deep sleep that's the vedantic position so consciousness with not knowing anything consciousness associated with ignorance consciousness associated with dananda my kosher the state of deep sleep that is the actual nature of um of the self so both are saying this one and the earlier one both are saying what we find in deep sleep is the actual nature of the self but there the two accounts differ for the prabhakar and the target there's no consciousness in deep sleep and for kumali labhatta there is only consciousness in deep sleep nothing for consciousness to be aware of so he says this is quotation is from this quotation is from mandu upanishad sixth mantra or seventh month of the month no the fifth month of the amanda cooperation where sushupt is described we have done all this then can you give us some our reasoning why are you saying this consciousness plus ignorance that is the nature of the self he says in deep sleep we have prakash or aprakasha bhavat the coexistence of light consciousness and darkness because there's nothing to be conscious of there's only consciousness with nothing to be conscious of i mentioned this earlier many years ago i had this interesting i was witness to interesting encounter between modern neuroscience and sankey philosophy so professor larson who was an american philosopher who passed away just a few years ago a couple of years ago he was a very noted philosopher of sankey especially he has a book called classical sankhya he had come to calcutta to the institute of culture to attend um conference on consciousness the science and philosophy of consciousness so there were indian philosophers and there were neuroscientists and they could find no common ground and finally things came to a head when uh professor larson asked a neuroscientist who had come from england said doctor according to neuroscience is their consciousness in deep sleep and the doctor said no according to neuroscience we define deep sleep as no consciousness there is no consciousness in deep sleep and professor larson said in indian philosophy samkhya and say vedanta and sepulveda there is only consciousness in deep sleeps this is the gulf brain sign says there is no consciousness in deep sleep though it has changed now now latest discoveries are there can be some kind of basal consciousness proto-consciousness and deep sleep they're using they're saying these things anyhow um so there is no consciousness in deep sleep and there is consciousness there is only consciousness in deep sleep this is the gulf which separates the two positions then one more thing can you give us some experience he says so experience is like i do not know myself [Music] so the footnote says even in the waking state a man says i do not know myself though is aware of his own existence therefore the self is according to the school consciousness associated with ignorance whatever that means so this is the view of kumari labhatta now i want to use this occasion to tell you a little bit not about these schools but some nice stories associated with these philosophers uh prabhakara and kumari bhatta so kumari labata is actually part of our story we last time we saw the great buddhist philosopher vasubandhu who is one of the major philosophers of three different schools of buddhism and especially the mind only school and his teachings on mind only were actually refuted two hundred years after him by kumari labata the great purvami mamsa philosopher who in one of his great books he wrote two great books tantra vatican shloka vartika massive books they're mostly about purum imam's interpretation of the vedas but many metaphysical and epistemological points are mentioned there one of the sections is called alambana parikshan where he examines the claims of the mind only buddhist philosophers and shows that that cannot be true that there's only the mind there's no external world he he just he does an extraordinary i mean the word i used is forensic i had to do an assignment on that what happened was one of the options we had was to study vasubandhu the the buddhist philosopher and so could you refute what about refutation of the buddhist school mind only school and i knew that kumari labreta school had refuted he had refuted the mind only school and i found a book called sanskrit debate very curious little book james allen curry i think um this gentleman is a mysterious i mean he turned out to be an ex student an alumnus of harvard philosophy department and he had never written anything else but he wrote this one book he studied vasubandhu the mind only buddhist philosopher and he studied kumari labhatta and he wrote a book about kumarilavata's refutation of the mind only school so has an essay called it's a part of his larger work it's called aalambana pariksha um so the word i used was like a forensic you know um he like takes apart vasu bhandu's uh arguments extraordinary intellect i mean was the one that is simply smashed by kumari but um so what is the story about kumar labata we often credit shankaracharya with having defeated buddhist philosophers you know and then reestablishing uh vedic philosophy but before him the groundwork was already done the bulk of the work had been done by kumari the story goes to this great vedic philosopher kumar labhatta this is about 1400 years ago in banaras he one day while walking down near the ganga he hears a lady crying and he goes to this lady and he finds this lady who looks like a goddess and she's weeping bitterly so he asks my lady why who are you and why are you crying and she replies oh i am the vedas and i am crying because the buddhists they insist on you know insulting me and abusing me and refuting me and that's why i'm crying who is there to defend me well kumar lapatta says don't worry as long as i am there you have no worries i shall you know i shall get down to it i'll immediately i'll defend you so um in sanskrit martha bhattos me brutally do not cry bhatta still walks the earth you know i'm still on the earth as long as i walk the earth kumari lavato walks the earth you don't you don't have to cry so he immediately challenged the greatest buddhist teachers of his time to a debate in those days there is like you know like the gladiatorial combats there would be this uh intellectual debates between different schools of philosophy and they would be umpires and they would draw large crowds and then um and this was serious because if you were defeated in one of these debates you would have to convert to that other person's school of thought so it's not just talking it's serious imagine if democrats lose a debate and then you have to become a republican a republican loses a debate have to become a democrat that that's that's what is at stake um so these are elaborate affairs kumar what the challenge the greatest buddhist masters at that time and there was a great debate which promptly lost so he was shocked and that he had lost the different debate and the buddhists had outmaneuvered him so he decided he had to learn buddhist logic so he disguised himself as a buddhist buddhist novice and he joins the school of the buddhist master and then he starts learning buddhist philosophy with this logic so the story goes one day he's sitting with all the other students he's in disguise as a buddhist novice and the master his teaching and then they get down to uh you know abusing the vedas his beloved vedas and he can't take it anymore so there are tears in his eyes you know tears roll down his cheeks and the other buddhist students near him they notice it and they say what's this tell us truly who are you so he has to tell the truth he said well i am kumari bhatta and uh i i disguised myself as a buddhist to learn your techniques but now i have learned your techniques so i'm going to go now go now and uh come back and challenge you the buddhist said not so fast and they grabbed him and they took him before their master and the master said you must be punished for this deceit and because you know this buddhism so it's non-violent you we won't kill you or you know hurt you you just take you take him to the highest tower and toss him the gravity will do the rest you can toss him off the tower so they drag him up to the highest tower and then they about to toss him from the tower push him off the tower and the kumari lavator says if the vedas are true then nothing will happen to me and he's kicked off the tower and he falls down it's amazing he lives but he loses one eye in that fall he one he lost one eye and he ran away and then um you know he went back to his school and he challenged the buddhists and in a great debate he managed to defeat the buddhists um and then so this is the story we have learned the buddhists have quite a different version in which they they thoroughly defeat kumar lavatta but anyway so somebody asked him why did you if the if you you claim that nothing will happen to you if you tossed off the tower but you lost one eye why did you lose one eye and he said it's because of the sin of having said if the vedas are true because i use the if i lost one i should have said the vedas are true and therefore nothing is going to happen to me but i said if the vedas are true then nothing is going to happen to me so i lost one eye anyhow he defeats the buddhists in debate and reestablishes the primacy of vedic hinduism um but quite apart from these stories it's true that his works contain very um searching and deep critics of buddhist philosophy including the one which the book sanskrit debate and the book is written in very thrilling language it's like a thriller so if you it's a small book he gives the original text of asubando's book he gives the original text of kumarila's essay and then he explains the arguments a very subtle argument so he explains the arguments so that formed the basis of my assignment that's why i know this quite thoroughly backwards and forwards now what happened was the story continues shankaracharya years later shankaracharya comes and meets kumari lavata the story is after a long and illustrious carrier in propagating the vedas kumar and writing books and all of that kumar labhatta decided that he had to perform repentance why because he had deceived his buddhist master after all that buddhist master was his master and he had not told the truth he had hidden his own um you know background and to become a student so the only repentance for this the the uh is to the price chitta that is the term is to sit on a slow fire a slow fire is going to sit on that and it slowly burns you from top upwards it's called tushar anala it burns slowly so it is much more painful you don't die immediately you burn to a most horrible death and so he sits there in repentance for having lied to his buddhist master but what happens at this time the young scholar and saints shankaracharya comes who has written a new commentary on the brahmasutras and he wants to prove that the upanishads are not part of the ritualistic portion of the vedas they constitute an independent school of philosophy vedanta that's us so it's very important this is we have a lot in stake here so he comes to argue with to challenge kumari labata you know in in my essay at the end i had written that so we can see step by step how kumari labatas forensically deconstructs every argument that vasubandhu had given so kumar labhatta won the battle but he didn't win the war because after him comes shankaracharya from his own vedic hinduism with arguments very similar to the mind only school of of buddhism and defeats kumarila's own school of purva purumsa so that might be the unkindest cut of all that i said that you find those people you thought you had defeated forever and tossed out of india you find they have entered into your own school and they are come forth in the form of shankaracharya anyway so shankaracharya comes up to him and says here is my book there's a movie about shankaracharya a sanskrit movie the whole dialogue is in sanskrit so it's very nice to see the shankaracharya with his disciples comes to meet kumari bhatta who is sitting on this slow fire it's a big funeral prayer on which kuwait is sitting and the young boy shankara comes with this book would you review my book a book review and the kumari lava and is shown quite comically you know because one eye is gone so one eye is like going round and round in circles it's damaged and he can see only in one eye and sitting on that fire he goes to the brahmasutra commentary of shankaracharya it's it's a very very difficult and dry and abstruse text so i can't imagine sitting on a slow fire and reading the brahmasutra commentaries but kumar labhatta enjoys it he says wow great it's wonderful fantastic he has all these great comments about reading it and he says i have no time um to respond to your arguments because my bottom is more or less burnt and the fire is proceeding upwards and uh so i recommend that you go and meet my disciple mandana mishra who lives in the city of mahishmati he is a great scholar of purum imam sir and if you can defeat him it's as good as defeating me right now i don't have time to debate with you because i am sort of half burnt up now and so uh shankara bows down to him and walks off to meet mandana mission that's quite another story and poor kumarila is reduced to ashes now that's one story the um other related story is of um prabhakara the one which we just read the earlier text prabhakar the second school of meemamsa so that is also a very cute story kumar labhatta had brilliant students one of them is mandana mishra whom he went off shankar he sent shankaracharya off to debate with and that's a very fascinating story in itself but prabhakara was his most brilliant student and prabhakara was a student of kumar gabatta prabhakara started his own school so all the stories about prabhakar are how he disputes whatever kumarila teaches him it's a prabhakar is well known for coming up with his own interpretations own theories and disputing his teacher and so the story is how prabhakara school sub-school is known as guru mata the the opinion the the version of the teacher he is the student kumar is the teacher kumari is the guru and prabhakar the student but prabhakar school came to be known as guru matam the the view of the teacher why so two incidents which will explain why one day kumarila was teaching and all the students are there and prabhakar is also there and there was remember this is mostly a matter of interpreting texts what is the meaning of text so this will just make sense to those who have some knowledge of sanskrit it's a it's also funny i mean it's just like an anecdote so imagine kumarila writes down that um a sentence of which he even he cannot make any sense of it's the sentence is um it has not been said here it has not been said there hence it has been said twice meaning of that sentence is not been said here it's not been said there at the top and hence it's been said twice and kumarila couldn't make sense of it how is it something that something has not been said here and something has not been said there here there wherever and hence it has been said twice and none of the students could make head or tail of this sentence so kumarila leaves the room for some something and when he comes back he finds that the sentence has been split in this way i'll tell you and then it'll make sense has been clubbed together into one word has been clubbed into one word now if you divide the sentence in this way the meaning will be here it has been said with but and there it has been said with also hence it has been said twice so the word sanskrit word two means but and sanskrit what api means also now na means no not if you if you arrange the words in a particular way it means uh but it is not said here and also it is not said there and therefore it has been said twice but if you divide it in another way the sentence reads it has been said with a but starting with a butt here it has been said again we're starting with also there and hence it has been said twice so um kumarila was so happy with this and he said from today onwards prabhakar who wrote this who did this and everybody must have looked turned around to look at prabhakar and prabhupada said i did it so from now on you are the teacher whatever you say will be the will be seen as the view of the teacher and hence prabhakara's view and sometimes later in later sanskrit text you will see guru matam the view of the teacher is such and such you must read it as the view of prabhakar so there is a commentary on the gita sridhara swami's commentary which used to study suddenly in between he said the view of the teacher is this what teacher it means prabhakar who lived 700 years before this commentary was written so it became quite a well-known story in the sanskrit tradition another story about it is this when kumar labhatta finally died um so one of the things they do in the purum imam says to talk about rituals one of the important rituals is to be performed after death how do you cremate a body what are the rituals to be followed um so um once kumari lavato was very sick towards the end of his life and he apparently went into a coma coma or something so when he was teaching these rituals before he went to the coma he was teaching these rituals and as usual prabhakar opposed him prabhakar said i will not accept this is not the way to do the rituals this is the way you should do the rituals after death this is it was a funeral rituals and they had a sharp disagreement kumari labhatta said no this is how the funeral rituals have to be performed and prabhakar said no this is not how it should be performed and finally they had a sharp exchange of words and prabhakar said i will never accept it as long as you live people were shocked at this harsh use of language to his own teacher anyway it so happened sometime after this kumarila was ill and he apparently went into a coma or something and people thought he was dead so immediately there was a discussion uh so our teacher has died and how should we perform the funeral rituals and they looked at prabhakar who was the leading student so and they all the students gathered around him and said i guess we have to do it your way because we can't do it his way you will not accept and what you say now it goes because you are the teacher now and prabhakar amazingly enough he said no we will do it the way kumari said not the way i said it we'll do it according to his wishes his interpretation at this moment commander sits up and says aha so you finally accept that i was right and prabhakar said no i said i will not accept his as long as you are alive you are dead that's why i accepted it so that's the story why did i tell all this yeah so these are the stories about prabhakar and kumar kumari labor and not much of this is historically terrible but these are things which are handed down by oral tradition from teachers to student okay i will reserve the next one let me just read the next part of it the next school but i'll discuss it later because next school is one of my favorite schools the emptiness people are coming that's the last one before and the most sophisticated one closest to advaita veyron this is the last one before advaita vedanta comes in text number 131 [Music] another school of buddhists this is the emptiness school one of the school of buddhist says that the self is identical with the wide emptiness on account of such shruti passages as in the beginning there was non-existence owing also to the fact that there is an absence of everything during dreamless sleep and further because of the experience regarding his non-existence of a man who just has awakened as when he says to himself during the dreamless sleep i was non-existent so who is this this is the school of the madhyamaka navada this is their school of buddhists called the madhyama kashum shinriwa the emptiness school what do they say self is emptiness the void is the self that's the real nature of the self quotation give us a plea please give us a quotation they wouldn't but anyway because that's the style in which we are doing things so there's a quotation provided from the chandelier before the universe was created there was nothing before the universe was created there was nothing you might ask just in context here why would upanishad say something like that wouldn't you say before the universe was created there's brahman yes that's what the upanishad says the upanishad says some say no like before the universe was created there was nothing but how could something come out of nothing and therefore there was something before the creation of the universe but that first sentence before the creation of the universe there was nothing that's what is quoted here before the creation of the universe there was nothing so all of this is empty it has come out of nothingness what has come out of nothingness must be nothingness notice here the difference between the christian doctrine of creation from nothing and this the indian philosophy is whatever is in the cause must be in the effect if the cause is an existent cause the effect also must be existent if the cause is ultimately you can somehow show that there was nothing at the beginning of the universe then whatever you see now is also must be nothing so it cannot be that something has come out of nothing um so experience please give us an experience where do you find that you are nothing awesome in deep sleep there is nothing that's my argument there is no experience of the world there's no experience of the body there's no experience of the self but why don't you look at our experience after waking up we say that we experience deep sleep i mean haven't you heard vedantins keep on ad nauseum saying uh you know i slept happily and all of this this is just playing with words his uh his experience his explanation is different he says here is an experience for you to think about when you wake up from deep sleep you feel i was not there now i am and this shows that your original nature is non-existence but what about our arguments that deep sleep was experienced by some consciousness otherwise how can you even speak about deep sleep no you're just inferring it that could be i mean we don't agree but it's a pretty subtle point and pretty interesting intelligent point of view it's you're just playing with words the emptiness philosophers say you're just playing with words actually there was nothing why don't you admit it there was nothing in deep sleep there's nothing in coma the self just disappears it just comes out of uh in existence it's not even an existence it's an illusion at the core of which there's an emptiness so emptiness is the self smite so this their view is the self is emptiness it's not a fair characterization of the emptiness people and that's what i will talk about next time i'll talk about the first of these philosophers nagarjuna was actually a brahmana from andhra pradesh one of india's most brilliant philosophers most brilliant philosophers extraordinary he was called the second he's called the second buddha in buddhist philosophy he's called the second buddha after gautama buddha he lived about 500 years after buddha about 2000 years before our time in the first century ce so um he became buddhist and he is at the source of all mahayana philosophy the first and the major mahayana philosopher whole of tibetan buddhism the philosophy of tibetan buddhism is traced back to the work of naga arjuna he set this new school of buddhism the mahayana school on a firm philosophical basis in tibetan buddhism directly what i saw i did a full course on nagarjuna at harvard but the interesting thing is i was introduced to nagarjuna about 20 years ago when i was a novice in bellurmut so we had i used to explore the library thoroughly and i came across two books nagarjuna's major work is moola madhyamaka karika the verses on the middle bay mullab democracy and another book is refutation of other doctrines and suril you know advice from a well wisher and uh ratnavali a collection of gems so these are the well-known books of nagarjuna especially the mulamat democracy and the graham yavartini and both of these came to my hand in with english translations when i was a novice i never knew that 20 years later i would be doing full courses on these books in harvard university it was unthinkable but i just was fascinated so i studied them in fact i did my dissertation in the in our monastery we had to do a dissertation so i did my dissertation on nagarjuna's work so that was a long time ago very immature dissertation at that time but anyway i was very fascinated so nagarjuna talks about shunyata the idea of emptiness what it is and what are the consequences of that i mean today nagarjuna is a big name um you know in india it was not all that important for some time his commentator was chandra kitty who lived a couple of hundred years after nagarjuna and he wrote a commentary on nagarjuna's mullah democracy called prasannapada and also something called the madhyamakavatara introduction to the madhyamaka philosophy so what did nagarjuna do what are what do these books say what was his arguments what is the actual meaning of shunyata emptiness in fact if you say one thing that will be the theme of next week's talk will be what is this emptiness and why is it unfair to say that unless they say the self is nothing it's not really true emptiness is nothing is not an entirely fair characterization though many many of the hindu philosophers especially shankaracharya vedanta philosophers they simply dismiss the emptiness people as being totally empty that they are not they are saying that there's nothing that exists they are nailists they just say nothing exists it's not as simple as that um so why did this i just make one remark and stop why did this school at all originate the school of the name of the school is madhyamaka sunya those who propound emptiness madhyamaka means middle the middle path now why did this school originate at all this school comes from the silence of the buddha the buddha was asked some important philosophical questions about the atman about existence after death after what happens to the buddha after nirvana after the buddha will give up the body does the buddha exist or not in and all of these questions buddha said nothing so does the atman exist the self exist the answer was did i say it exists so it doesn't exist did i say it does not exist then the student asks the buddha but what are you saying then the other teachers some of them they say it exists sometimes they say that it does not exist and so on what do you teach what does you do buddha said what would you say to a person who you know if he is in the accident hit by an arrow and you run to help him and the man says wait a minute before you help him what is the wood from which this arrow is made who is the archer who shot the arrow and what which country does he come from before you answer these questions i will not allow any treatment what would you say to such a person and the disciples said i would say he's a is a fool he will die before he gets what is the use of these questions what is the use of these answers also he needs treatment and the buddha said precisely that tathagata teaches there is suffering there is a reason for this suffering and there is an end to suffering and there is a way to end suffering the four noble truths well that's fine so this is a well-known story now what nagarjuna takes away from it is why did the buddha keep silent why one the usual answer we get is that because it's not useful to know the answers to these questions but these are very important questions fundamental questions why should we at all undertake a spiritual query if there is nothing to be searched for what is there a god is there an atman is there freedom how what is we need a world view another theory is that the buddha did not know the answers that's why he kept quiet no that's not terrible because the buddha we know we know that he was very learned in every philosophy which was being taught at that time in ancient india we know he had read he had studied sankhya and yoga also the protestant and yoga of those times under well-known masters so he knew he was very well-versed you could you can't say he didn't know anyway finally nagarjuna comes to the conclusion that silence is the correct answer silence is the answer not because answer should not be given to these questions not because the buddha did not know it is because silence is the correct answer no answer that you give no philosophy that you propound will be correct because the truth cannot be captured in language so nagarjuna says emptiness of all philosophies he had a huge fight with the niya school that little book vigraha vyavarthini um which i read 20 years ago as a novice and we it was prescribed for reading last year at harvard so i found it quite nice to go through that old book again uh so there it's the fight between nagarjuna and the nayakas the nyaya school now school is logicians you know so they they immediately attack nagarjuna so they're very subtle in their logic they're you're saying that all philosophies are empty shunyata sarvadrishthin and rishti means point of view all points of view are void or empty then your point of view is also empty what you are saying that everything is empty that's also empty nagarjuna replies yes if i had a point of view that would be empty but i don't have a point of view if i say something you could prove it to be false i'm not saying anything i'm just waiting for you to say something and i'll prove that to be false. so it's a kind of uh philosophical judo jiu-jitsu which is doing he is not attacking but any position you take up he will prove that it is false it's self-contradictory on the on the merits of that position only he will take up that position and show that it is self-contradictory and he does that throughout how he does that we'll see next time just a few glimpses of that and then we'll see what has been said here is either an oversimplification or just unfair the way it has been characterized and then we will go ahead all right quick let's see the points of view rick says if no consciousness how do they explain such a fun person functions when when the person is functioning um then there's a body and a mind in the world and consciousness arises that you're talking about the naya school but you're saying that you might ask and how does the person function after enlightenment it doesn't because then enlightenment would require nobody so the their enlightenment would be the final enlightenment would be after death then uh krishnamurti says nyaya vaishika sounds like they could achieve freedom by sleeping forever you know but they can't you can't sleep forever because sleep is is a bijav's the seed state a seed will always germinate so it is always deep sleep is a seed state and it's a seed of all trouble mind body awareness wonder how it relate relates to nirvikalpaka stages of yoga yeah it's very interesting it is not um a dumb thing to say what the naive sheishikas are saying it is actually if you look at it the the way they present it if you go into some depth it's not so far from what advaita vedanta says also or yoga philosophy says also one thing is lacking positive bliss joy or happiness you know bliss of freedom like you might get the bliss of staying with god in heaven after in a dualistic philosophy so what do the nayaka say that i say about that what great niyah philosopher gangesha has harsh words for that he says the search for bliss is shows deep worldliness is an it's a an absence of your dispassion you are grasp the very search that i want to be very happy perfectly happy which many dualistic philosophers say many vedantins and all they say this shows um you know inconsistency in your spiritual search you want freedom from pain you want freedom from pain and happiness won't work so that's their perspective girish says what exactly is new advaita and how it's different from direct path new advaita big question we see uh later kiran says other than buddhism all philosophy mentioned so far sound atheist as they don't mention god or higher self buddhism is atheistic kiran so you see other than buddhism no but it's buddhism which is atheistic [Music] the niyah school so we have come across the charvakas charvakas are atheistic no doubt about it they don't accept any higher self or god buddhists are also atheistic or at least agnostic they don't accept a god in fact the school which we just mentioned the they are the first ones to propound existence of god the school says that there is there is self and higher self jivatma paramatma self is of two kinds jivatman paramatma they optimize us and there's a higher self called god a very dualistic school and their ideas have been taken up by later dualistic devotional schools rick has given a link to kumari labhatta if you read those things you will see that how complicated it actually is whether mandana mishra actually was sureshwara of the story you know becomes disciple or was there a separate mundane mishra who was an advaitha teacher and a separate sureshwar and so all this modern scholarship new jerry is asking why is sunnyvale they covered separate from buddhism it's not covered separate from buddhism he says another kind of buddhist is the sunnah rick says would it be fair to say that all these people espousing different philosophies were not fully enlightened like the blind men having only partial perspectives of the elephant would fully enlighten people all ascribed to the same philosophical view no they wouldn't um if you have touched the elephant in some way then you have touched reality the only mistake that the blind men made made was they thought that what they attached was the whole view of reality notice the elephant is like a pillar elephant is like a rope elephant is like a like a fan elephant is like a like a you know like a hose pipe or something you're touching different parts of the elephant and thinking that is the entire elephant that's what in fact nav arjuna targets the emptiness of all points of view it takes up each point of view and he exposes its how it's self-contradictory it can be but notice they have also touched the reality so an enlightened person would be one who touches the reality who realizes god in some way or the other and leaves it open knows that the reality which he has realized is also infinite and others can realize in different ways what sri ramakrishna said um one more shiva prayer blankness in deep sleep cannot be self if self is brahma yes um that's our point of view so we are looking at different points of view about the self right where these all these people where they enlightened notice that what we we are doing here in this book is a very oversimplified outline of these views nyaya has over 2000 years of vast literature there are more naya books than there are vedanta books for example for example this this book is an introduction to vedanta for the last 600 years traditional vedanta students start with this book and this book has three important commentaries three commentaries sanskrit commentaries on this book the vedanta sahara so and students study those commentaries to understand this book better the equivalent book in nyaya vaishashika would be a book called the tarka sangra which we studied as novices that introduces you just like this introduces you to advaita vedanta tadka sangra introduces you to nyaya and vaishu shekhar together yaya and vaishishika together now notice the tarka sangra which is an introductory book for neya and by sheishika has about 80 commentaries eight zero this has three advaita vedanta introduction has three commentaries shri sheikh introduction has 80 commentaries which shows you the sheer scale of nia by shashika scholarship so these are vast schools the school which we just now talked about nagarjuna's madhyamaka has about um six seven hundred years of indian scholarship on it after nagarjuna and then it really took off when it went to tibet there's a thousand years of tibet and commentarial tradition i have one whole shelf of translations of nagarjuna's one work mulam dimaka karika translations and commentaries written by tibetan masters over the last seven 800 years those have been translated into english so those books are there our professor garfield who taught us um indra tibetan madhyamaka that was the name of the course into tibetan native and he's crazy about introducing madhyamaka philosophy i remember the first day he in the class he said look if you can do madhyamakar philosophy why would you do anything else in the world this is so fascinating you just do this thing only and he he some professors made it a rule that you have to buy the books which is difficult for many students because it's expensive those books are very expensive so he said there is good news and bad news about the books the bad news is that you have to buy them all so we did and he said the good news is that they are very pretty i know you will never read these books again in your life but they look pretty on your shelf and he was right they look very pretty on my shelf i'll show it to you something remind me next time so much work has been done by great tibetan masters in the last seven 800 years very subtle discussion on nagarjuna's work so my point here is this may seem like oversimplifications you know you might get the feeling like are these people really enlightened why are they saying silly things like bodies the self or ignorance is the self or intellect is the self but no these are just the tip of the iceberg each one is a very well thought out very consistently developed well argued well defended citadel uh philosophical citadel which has stood thousand years fifteen hundred years eighteen eighteen hundred years uh with hundreds of scholars huge histories of debate infighting external attacks refutations counter refutations dialectical works so they're all very well developed philosophies yeah all right let's stop here next time emptiness and the rescue from emptiness [Music] [Music] be