Avidya Vritti continues …

Nihilism in Advaita is centered on the sad-asad vilakshana concept that offers an ontological status to the argument by adding dialectic dimensions to the meaning of vyAvaharika, in the process of evaluating avidya. Thus lays the parOksha jnAna or the mediatory knowledge which falls between sad and asad vilakshana characterizing avidya to be the anyathAjnAna or the mithyAjnAna. Sankara’s philosophy interprets sad-asad vilaksana of avidya as an independent entity and is a combination of real and unreal, truth and otherwise, hence beyond classifications. With such dialectic dimensions, avidya falls under a sui generis category, which makes it lose a phenomenal adjunct to be a potential rival against the ultimate reality hence justifying the rejection of duality. Differing upon the above sad-asad vilakshana vAda of advaita sudharshana batta in his sruthaprakAsika (commentary on SriBashya) approves only sad vilakshana to avidya as according to the arbitrary hypothesis of nature of Brahman; it is subtle that the substrate of unreal is real again. The much plagiarized state proves avidya to be unreal alone and not in any other manner. The later seemingly a deductive argument in which the premises provides a guarantee of the truth, by making it impossible for the conclusion of avidya as an adjunct to be false. Whereas, the former appears to be an inductive argument in which the premises provide reasons supporting the probable truth of the conclusion? Here the premises are intended only to be so strong that, if they are true, then it is unlikely for the conclusion to be false. Thus the counter arguments of advaita and visishtAdvaita about the characterization of avidya evolve a sort of correlation & regression that the perceiver conceives it somewhere between the premises and the conclusion wherein the difference is attributed with regard of standards of evaluation. Interestingly according to SurEshwara in his TaitriyOpanishad bAshya vArtika (verse 607 – BrahmAvalli), the cognition of self also obscures along with that of with the vritti jnAna the knowledge through mental mode that which destroys the primal ignorance or the anyathAjnAna. He points out that there is no time interval between the rise of vritti jnAna and the annihilation of anyathAjnAna – both are simulateous hence nothing prevails. This is a evident example of ShunyavAda or complete nescience. also it is important to note that the knowledge of Brahman does not cause complete cessation of avidya but just unveils the nature of supreme reality wherein one other manifold function ie, the illusionary projection is merely concealed and not destroyed. They mean to say it virtually exist probably in the form of Brahman itself just to mark monism epistemologically tenable. The shunyavAda that epistemologically projects the conceptualization of complete nescience conjoins to evolve contextualization. Subjunctive conditionals account of knowledge or on the relevant alternatives theory of knowledge that is associated with the epistemological contextualism. The Upanishads and important commentaries, tactics of hermeneutics are all based on contextual implications that features the epistemic standards set to evolve a skeptical criterion to maintain judgments. Such are invariably based upon contentious and possibly dispensable theoretical ideas about the subject and the premises of the particular or related object. Hence the coherent end of validating argumentative variants such are anupalabdhi and anyathajnAna with respect to context of characterizing avidya eventually explains the epistemic judgments which are generated by its own standards.