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Avidya in Vedānta
even while affirming Advaita. Rāmānujācārya, for instance, says that cit, acit and Isvara are all different, but form a unity inasmuch as cit and acii are the višeşanas or qualifiers of īśvara or Puruşottama or Brahman; or they are His farira and He is their Atman, inasmuch as they cannot exist independently of Him, and it is is a bat statements involving sämänädhikaranya (like 'tat tvam asi', 'aham brahma'smi', 'sarvam khalv. idam Brahma') signify. Vallabhācār, a says that the jivas are 'aṁsa-s' of Brahman and the world is His kārya or effect, and yet Brahman is undefiled and pure aid uomoditied as Ee has 'acintyasakti' (unthinkable power).
Sankarācārya, following ia the footsteps of Gaudapāda, holds that that alone is 'sat or real which is 'trikālābādhita', uesublated in all the three times. Sankarācārya has propounded bis philosophy from two points of view-the higher or supia-empirical părumärthika) and the lower or the common-sense or empirical point of view (vyāvahārika). From the päramärthika point or view, Sunkara is an Absolutist. Brahmun is the only Ultimate Reality; everything else is unreal. Brahman is attributeless (nirguna) and eternally uncharging (kūtastha). Sankara firmly believes that bheda (difference) and abheda (noo-difference) being mutually contradictory cannot be predicated of one and the same thing; and the Bhedābheda view, further, does not solve the problem of causation. It makes the nature of the thing silf-contradictory and this points to falsity. Sankara admits tbat there are noticed two streams of thought in the Upanişads, but one of them is but a concession to the empirical modes of thought (apara vidyā or anuvāda) (see Br. Sū. Šānkara Bhāşya I. 2.21; II. 1.14 etc ). The only teachiog of the Upanişads is, according to him, that of Absolute Non-dualism (Kevalădvaita); all diversity is falsely superimposed on the lon-dual Brahman.
The Sāṁkhya recognises that there is a material element and a spiritual element in the universe, but it fails to explain satisfactorily the relation between spirit and matter. Sankara denies that there could be any relation between spirit and matter which are so distinct and opposed to each other; and yet our experience tells us that they are not only related but also identified as when we say 'I am lean', where leanness is a characteristic of the physical body and yet is predicated of the l' which should normally signify the inner self. The only way out of this difficulty is to regard the relation between them as ultimately false. A necessary corollary to this is that one of the things so thought to be related is unreal. Sankara regards matter as unreal, for
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